The darkness intensified when his frown deepened. “What else did he say?”
“A lot. So did I. I regret most of it.” I felt empty now. Empty except for the sadness and this vile shame over how I’d behaved. It was like it was making my blood sticky, more difficult for my broken heart to pump through my veins. Maybe that was why my limbs felt too heavy to move.
“Why did you say it then?” Kyle asked. “It’s not like you to say anything you might regret.”
I sighed, so tired that my eyes were burning. I’d barely gotten any sleep, and every time I tried, it evaded me. “I just got so mad at him. After I got back from your room, he still wasn’t here. I thought about what you said, about how he hadn’t been at all excited about the news. The longer he was gone, the more I stewed.”
“And you snapped at him.” It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t answer him. He already knew. “It sounds like he was pretty adamant about you not staying here.”
“Does it matter?” He was gone. Gone because I’d chased him away in a fit of anger, and there was no taking it back.
Kyle, however, turned contemplative. “Yeah, I think it does.”
“Why?” I waved a hand around my room. “Do you see him here?”
“No, but why did he go? If he was that adamant about it, why isn’t he here?” Confusion filled his eyes. “I’d have thought he’d be camped out right outside your door.”
“He’s gone because I told him to leave. I also told him to never come back.” I slammed my head back into the pillow but cradled my arms over my belly. “No matter how angry I was, I shouldn’t have done it. My emotions just ran away with me, and now my baby will have to grow up without a father.”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions, shall we?” Kyle put his hands over mine. “Even if, by some miracle, Marco doesn’t come back, at least the baby will have the coolest uncle in the world.”
I laughed dryly. “Yeah, at least there’s that.”
“But,” he said, reaching up to slide his finger beneath my chin and lifting it, “I don’t think it’s going to come down to that.”
“Why not?”
A small smile played at the corners of his mouth. “I think it’s safe to say that we all reacted poorly to the news. That doesn’t mean it’s not going to blow over. I don’t know the man very well, but I know you. You wouldn’t have fallen in love with a man who would just walk away from his family.”
“That’s the thing, though,” I spat. “In his head, he’s not walking away from his family. He’s going back to them. Elena warned me, but I didn’t listen.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about right now. How are you not his family?”
Tears stung the backs of my eyes, which was surprising. I’d really thought I had none left to shed. I guessed the water I’d managed to get in a little while ago had replenished the reserves.
“I’m not Italian,” I said as if that explained everything, which it did. My lower lip quivered. “He could never love me because his mother would never accept me.”
Kyle scoffed. “Are you feeling okay? If this is how much sense you were making yesterday when you spoke to him, I think you can be forgiven for anything you said. Clearly, your brain is offline.”
“It’s not,” I cried. “His mother hates me, and now he hates me, too.”
My brother muttered something under his breath. When I looked up at him, I realized he wasn’t in a hospital gown.
Faded blue jeans clad his legs, his feet were encased in sneakers, and a tight fitted blue T-shirt that matched his eyes finished his look. There was even a bit of gel in his blond hair, and he’d shaved off his hospital stubble.
It was only then that I noticed the leather overnight bag he’d dropped at his feet. “Have you been discharged?”
“Yeah. Word on the street is you’re being paroled, too. I wanted to see if you felt like going to get lunch so I could convince you two to stay at my place instead of a hotel...” He trailed off. “Obviously, though, now you’re staying with me.”
“Thanks, Kyle. I promise I won’t mooch off you for too long.”
The things I would have to get done over the next few months loomed ahead of me like unclimbable, unconquerable mountains. Elena was going to build a voodoo doll of me for ditching her with the apartment. I would have to formally resign from my job, then hope that my ex-boyfriend and baby daddy still gave me some kind of letter of recommendation I could use.
All of my stuff was in Florence. I would have to make a fresh start with little other than the clothes in my overnight bag, which had been in Marco’s rental car last I knew. So that meant I didn’t even have that.
One small folded pile of clothes I’d had on when we’d arrived was all I had in the world. Except for a relatively small sum of money in a European bank account and a baby in my belly.
Yeah. This is not going to be fun.
Kyle must have seen where my thoughts had gone because he shook his head firmly. “Don’t worry about mooching off me. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times. What’s mine is yours.”
“But it’s not,” I started to argue, but then I realized I didn’t have the energy for it. As I moved my eyes away from his, I spotted the ultrasound pictures the doctor had taken. “Hey, uh, do you want to see the pictures of your niece or nephew?”
His face brightened as he nodded. “I’d love that. I can’t believe you were alone for your first ultrasound. You should’ve told them to come get me.”
The tips of my ears heated. “Marco and I caused
