Total pages in book: 197
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
The next time, Ginevra shifted on the bed beside Corrado, drawing his attention to her. Her hand had come to rest of the top of her twenty-three week swell and the over-sized T-shirt she’d thrown on for her had ridden up just enough that he figured she would soon be stealing a blanket because even though she pretended to enjoy sleeping without one ... more often than not now, she woke up with one.
And didn’t complain about it.
Reaching over, his hand found the spot overtop hers. His thumb stroked the curve of her midsection, slowing just enough to appreciate the firmness of their child growing. Another one of his favorite things—though new, it still seemed as though it had always been.
Or maybe it was just always meant to be.
“Is he pacing again?”
The soft question had Corrado dragging in another heavy breath as his gaze found Ginerva’s. Had he not touched her, he bet she would have stayed sleeping. As she should. If pregnancy taught him anything besides what it felt like to sometimes walk on eggshells, it was that a woman needed her rest. Growing a baby was exhausting.
In the darkness of the bedroom, she watched him.
Waiting.
Eventually, Corrado nodded, saying only, “Yeah, babe.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
It’s what bothered him the most.
Everything was good.
Better.
Always getting better.
After everything, all that they shared could have been changed in ways that would have ruined all they worked for. Instead, despite his selfishness and the hurt between the three of them, they came on top. Even Les had told him—more than once—this had never been better.
More complicated, sure.
But better.
“Go,” Ginevra whispered against the pillow.
As though she just knew ...
Corrado made himself stay put—Les didn’t suggest he should do otherwise. Then again, how could he when he was doing his best to hide that anything was wrong in the first place?
She did know them best, though.
Lifting his hand from her swell, Ginevra wove their fingers, squeezed, and repeated, “Go.”
How could he tell her no?
He learned that wasn’t his job.
With either of them.
By the time Corrado managed to pull on a pair of sleep pants and get down to the office, he found Alessio was no longer pacing. Instead, the man had found a seat in the window bench while he overlooked the small rear property of their brownstone.
Les passed him a look over his shoulder—there was no surprise about his arrival, and frankly, Corrado hadn’t bothered to even try. He also didn’t make an attempt to ease into the fact that something was clear wrong and he wanted to know what it was.
“Something you need to say?” he asked Les.
Stormy eyes watched him from across the room.
Corrado waited his lover out.
“It snowballed,” Les muttered.
Corrado arched a brow. “What did?”
“These thoughts. The doubts. Every little answer to every question I might have about this baby or being a father or—it just ... one after another, you know?”
The choppy, confusing statement might have made someone else scratch their head, but Corrado got it. He understood exactly what Alessio was trying to say without really saying it. He took a moment to consider how he wanted to respond—Alessio wasn’t known for his doubts and fears; not when he was constantly the most fearless of them all, it seemed.
Sad how their baby—something that would only bring them love—was the thing that scared him the most.
“Have you talked to anybody about it?” he decided to ask.
Because that was the thing he’d come to learn about Les although there had been a time, before Ginevra, when Corrado thought he knew everything there was to know about the man across the room. And one of those things was that, while he wasn’t always aware of it, Alessio had more people than Corrado realized who he used as a support system and network.
People he trusted.
People that weren’t Corrado.
Which was fine.
It was the familial aspect of the people Les surrounded himself with in his life that made Corrado think it was worth something deeper to Les. Those he called when he needed a laugh, or just a too-late chat about fucking life or whatever else it was that put him into a spell every now and then. He found fathers in the generation that came before him. A mother in Corrado’s own. Siblings that doubled as friends. Those people weren’t his blood, and he really had no family to speak of, but he’d managed to create his own.
Corrado wasn’t even sure Les realized it.
“Well?” Corrado asked when Les stayed quiet for too long. “Did you talk to somebody—or were we not the only people you were trying to hide it from?”
“Hey.”
The word was sharp.
It almost stung, but not quite.
From across the room, Les tipped his chin a fraction higher, his gaze never leaving Corrado’s when he said, “I want this—more than anything. I just didn’t want you—or her—to think differently because I had stupid shit in my head. That’s it, that’s all.”