Total pages in book: 161
Estimated words: 151410 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 757(@200wpm)___ 606(@250wpm)___ 505(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 151410 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 757(@200wpm)___ 606(@250wpm)___ 505(@300wpm)
His eyes flickered with bitterness. “Oh, Rory, I know you don’t need me or the fucking mess I was and probably still am in some ways. You’re tough as steel the way you took care of Battista. The way you handled everything. But you know what?” Nevio leaned down so we were almost at eye level. I tensed, ready to shove him away if he tried to kiss me. He didn’t.
“I need you. I want you. And I will stop at nothing until I get you. Until I’ve proven to you that I deserve you. At absolutely nothing.”
His eyes darted to Battista. “And I’ll prove that I can be a good father for my son too.”
“What makes you think I’m still available? You were gone for a year. What if I moved on and am dating someone?”
Nevio shook his head. “You want to get me out of your head, but I’m still in there. I can see it in your eyes. And I know you wouldn’t have moved on to someone else so quickly, especially not when you had Battista to take care of.”
I glared. He was right. I hadn’t had time, or the mind frame, to see anyone. Battista, my work at the Camorra hospital where I’d started to learn everything I needed to work as a nurse, and Carlotta’s health problems had kept me busy. “You probably had Massimo and Alessio give you updates about my love life anyway, so you could fly in and ruin it if you felt like it.”
“I’m not a good guy. I’m a very, very bad guy, trying to be a slightly less bad version of myself. Letting the girl that I want more than anything in the world see other guys isn’t part of my self-improvement strategy, I’m afraid. So yes, if I’d found out a guy would have made a move on you, I would have made sure he regretted it.”
I wasn’t really surprised. I wasn’t even as annoyed as I should have been. Part of me loved Nevio exactly for that reason, no matter how crazy it sounded. Maybe it was in my genes. Mom had fallen for Dad, even though she hadn’t even grown up in the mafia world, even though she’d known he was bad news and even after he’d killed her father. Falling for bad men seemed my fate. Could you evade fate?
“Battista wants to play in the sand for a bit. I can bring him over once you’ve changed into dry clothes so you can spend some time with him, if that’s part of your self-improvement strategy?” I cocked an eyebrow like he liked to do.
Aside from my anger for how he’d treated me, I was even more furious for how he’d just abandoned Battista, his own son, when he needed him most. I wasn’t sure how he ever wanted to make up for it. Battista was still young, not even two years old, so maybe he’d eventually forget that his father had missed so much of his early life.
“I’m going to step up now, Rory. I’m not going to half ass it again. I’m here to stay, here to take responsibility for my son, for you.”
“You don’t have any responsibility when it comes to me, Nevio. We’re not a couple. You left. You moved on.” I smiled tensely. “But I’m glad you decided to finally be a father for your son. He deserves a good father.”
Battista briefly looked up from the sand, probably because of my tense voice, but after a smile from me, he focused on the sand castle in front of him.
“From what I hear, he has a good mom already,” he said, his dark eyes softening.
I swallowed hard. “Someone had to take care of him. He’s been abandoned often enough in his short life.”
“You didn’t have to. You could have handed that responsibility over to my parents. They wouldn’t have expected you to help them.”
“That responsibility is a little boy who already lost his mother and then his father because they both didn’t want him. By the time you left, Battista had formed a bond with me. Handing him to your parents would have been another hard hit in his short life. I couldn’t do that. Not before I was sure he wouldn’t suffer.”
“You still haven’t. You’re still taking care of him, and Dad said he started calling you Mom.”
My heart swelled thinking of it. It had shocked me to my core when Battista had called me Mom one morning when he’d woken beside me in bed, and he’d kept doing it ever since. “I didn’t make him. He just started it.”
“Because you act like a mom should.”
I didn’t say anything to that. I felt like Battista’s mom, which was strange because I’d really never intended to let it happen. What had been meant as a temporary solution, had turned into something I didn’t want to lose. Battista had become part of my life. I supposed that what he and his father had in common. They’d both wormed their way into my heart and simply wouldn’t leave.