I’d temporarily forgotten that we were in the middle of a crowded street, and had he instigated, I would have let him take me right here. That was hot.
But then he stopped.
As Leo abruptly broke our connection, he spoke with a trembling chest and choppy breath. “See?” he asked, his lips plump and swollen. “There’s definitely a difference.”
“I don’t know,” I whispered against his warm lips. My heart thundered in my chest, my ears, even in the tips of my fingers. Leo’s did the same, and I could see the vein in his neck pulsing erratically as his breathing slowed back down. What had he just done? I was pretty sure he’d melted that entire case of gelato in the shop across from us. We were going to have to pay for that.
“Like I said before,” I grinned, my mouth now on his so he could feel the flirtatious curl of it, along with the words that seeped out. I nipped at his lips one more time and whispered, “The way I see it, it’s pretty much all dessert.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“There’s a 25 percent chance Leo’s getting shit-faced tonight.” Walker leaned back so far in his patio chair that I swear I heard the back legs start to crack. His head would be cracking against the stone wall behind him if he kept that up, too. “And a 78 percent chance that I’ll be joining him.”
I didn’t get Walker. I’d tried to over the past three hours as we dined and celebrated Leo together along with his other friends and family, but he remained an enigma. Which was a word that I’d learned the hard way. Never mix up enigma with enema. They are most definitely not the same thing.
So yeah, Walker confused me like that. I knew Leo said he was always readying for the part, but I couldn’t figure out his most recent fascination with percentages. He literally had a running commentary on every interaction tonight that involved numbers and statistics. Maybe he was studying to play a mathematician or a strategist in an upcoming show. That was the only way even 50 percent of what he said made any sense.
“Why is Leo getting drunk?” Ian asked, his fingers around the slender stem of his wine glass. He took a slow sip and settled it onto the brick ledge behind him.
The four-course meal that Ian and Gio spent all afternoon preparing had been cleared from the outside tables while we waited for dessert to be brought out. I’d only been in the vineyard during the day prior to this, and it took on an entirely different aura now that the sun had winked its last rays.
White lights were strung across the patio, dotting the sky in what looked like hundreds of flashing stars. There was a large fire pit crackling and popping to my left where several partygoers gathered to keep warm from the evening chill, leaning back in Adirondack styled chairs. They held their hands over the flames, rotating from their palms to the backside of them, back and forth like a rotisserie. Yellows and oranges danced along every vertical surface. The outdoors were alive with chatter and warmth.
It was a quaint, yet festive celebration, equipped with a traditional Italian duo of a man with a guitar and another with a voice to make your knees weak. Leo had been making the rounds for the past hour, being sure to spend some time with each person in attendance. I thought it would be a small gathering, and I supposed it still was relatively small with between thirty and forty dinner guests, but something about watching him interact with all of these people made me feel like I was glimpsing what it would be like on our wedding day as he greeted and exchanged pleasantries with each of our attendees. “Thank you for sharing this special day with us,” he would say. “We’re so glad you could be a part of our joy.” I knew it was crazy to think this far ahead, but my mind no longer listened to the logic in my brain. It didn’t reside in the here and now. My heart had truly taken over, and my heart was a future-minded thing.
“I said there was only a 25 percent chance of that happening,” Walker slurred in a cocky tenor, much too long after Ian’s initial question. I realized there was a 100 percent chance Walker was already wasted. “But there was also only a 25 percent chance he’d make it to see this birthday, so maybe those odds are better than they seem.”
It was a good thing I didn’t have anything in my hands when he said it, because it would have gone crashing to the floor. Along with everything else.
“What do you mean?”
I exchanged a nervous glance with Ian, who immediately placed a calming hand upon my knee.
“His cancer.” Walker’s shoulder sagged and his head fell to the side. “Damn. He hadn’t told you?”
“No,” I shook my head. “No, he had.” My lower lip quivered and I bit hard on it with my teeth to mask the tremble. “I just hadn’t realized—”
“Leo was given a 25-78 percent chance of surviving five years past the last reoccurrence.” Walker rolled the lip of his beer bottle between his fingers. While the rest of us drank wine, Walker didn’t seem to discriminate when it came to the form of alcohol he consumed. And beer seemed to suit him better in my opinion.
“Those actually seem like pretty good odds,” Ian suggested, looking to me for approval.
“Right,” Walker agreed. He tipped the bottle to his lips and took a long pull. “But those were the same odds his mother was given and she died three weeks after hearing them.”
My stomach lurched.
From across the courtyard, Leo’s gaze caught my eye. He was bent down talking to a middle-aged couple, his hands hooked on the older gentleman’s shoulders, and though he was engaged in conversation with them, his eyes locked with mine. Communicated with me. I covered my face with a smile and pretended that I hadn’t just heard one of the most tragic statistics yet.
“Honestly,” Walker began, his foot pushing off of the table so he rocked back onto the hind legs of the chair again. The housekeepers were going to be cleaning his blood off of that wall, I was sure of it. “I don’t think Leo thought he’d live to see this day. He was much more focused on those 25 percent odds than the 78. That’s why he waited the very last minute to plan the party.”
“Who said he had anything to do with the planning?” Her voice greeted us before she did, with her Jessica Rabbit hips swaying side to side under her jet-black cocktail dress. Sofia sashayed up to Walker and draped her arms around his neck from behind. She seemed just as intoxicated as he was, and I wondered if Ian and I were the only sober ones left at the party. “I’m responsible for putting this bash together, along with some culinary help from Ian and Gio.” She pursed her bright red lips. She batted her eyes like they had wings. “You know Leo doesn’t like to do anything that makes him the center of attention. Which is so very different from his best friend,” she crooned, leaning in closer to his ear. It almost felt inappropriate to watch the two of them. “You know, that one that always has to be center stage.”
“And so very different from his ex-fiancée.” Walker smoothed his blond hair and glanced up at Sofia’s rounded eyes. His sarcasm was thick. “You’re not any better, Sofia. That little swimming pool spectacle several years back?”
I prayed to God they wouldn’t elaborate, but that request line must have been busy because my wish obviously didn’t get through.
“It came untied, Walker!” Sofia feigned innocence. I feigned sanity as I crinkled my nose and shut my eyes, somehow hoping in doing so I could keep the words from traveling through my ears. But the damn girl kept talking. “I didn’t realize you all would come back from your slingshot excursion so early. I was sunbathing!”
“Of course you didn’t,” Walker smirked, downing the remainder of his drink in one long swallow. His lips flipped inward and he smacked them loudly. “There is no way you could have heard all twenty of us heading back to the pool. Us guys are known for how quiet we are. Like cats. Or better yet, like a Prius. Those damned things sneak up on you like panthers.”
Sofia didn’t add any more words to her denial and just shrugged her slender shoulders in a quick acquiescence of defeat.
“Not that I had a problem with it at all,” he droned on. Walker angled his head back toward her,
but her chest was in his direct line of sight. “In fact, I think you should try to make that happen again—”
“I’m gonna go get something to drink!” I jumped from my chair, pressing my hands to my knees to push off to stand.
Ian looked up at me as if to ask if I wanted company and I waggled my head at him. He mouthed ‘You sure?’ and I nodded once more. I needed to get away from Walker and Sofia. I needed some alone time.
Sober Sofia was acutely endearing. Drunken Sofia was a slut. I didn’t like the thought of Leo ever being with her, and though I tried not to let my mind wander there, it didn’t do a good job staying put. It had trespassed into dangerous territory with that one.
“Would you excuse me for one moment,” I overheard Leo say to that same couple he had been talking with earlier. Meeting my eyes, he wove through the chairs and tables and headed my direction. I loved the casual, yet polished look he wore with his white linen shirt and fitted navy slacks. This man had the fashion sense of a GQ model and the body to match.
I stood at the small outdoor bar along the wall of the Villa and filled my empty glass with the Chianti that so badly messed me up just a few nights ago. Though it had only been a day since I completed my Renaldo sketch, Leo and his team had been hard at work designing the new label, and they even had a few prototypes already adhered to the bottles we were drinking from. It was surreal to see a piece of mine on something so prestigious. And you know what? I decided I really liked the surreal. Since I wasn’t sure I’d ever get used to the fact that any of this was really happening to me, I’d just have to accept that things in my life might be surreal for as long as Leo was in it.
“You having a good time?” Leo asked, his voice low and thoughtful. He came up behind me and dropped his hands onto my hips and spoke into the shell of my ear. “Or is Walker up to his old antics again?”
“If by antics you mean flirting shamelessly with Sofia while consuming copious amounts of alcohol, then yes, he’s up to them. Knee deep in them actually.”
“I’m sorry.” His voice was apologetic. “He’s a little rough around the edges, but at the heart of it he’s a quality guy.”
I drained the contents of the bottle into the glass and settled it back down onto the bar. I sighed. “Oh I don’t doubt that. I like him. And honestly, I even like Sofia, as much as I want to dislike her. I just didn’t want to hear any more of her topless sunbathing stories.”
“Gotcha,” Leo nodded, like he knew exactly what I was referring to. I decided I had to quickly change the subject so he didn’t start visualizing that memory as well.
“This turned out phenomenal.” I motioned a hand toward the label. It truly was stunning. They’d managed to achieve the Old World style and tradition, while still creating a label that would sell in the modern market. A genius move to position them at the top, no doubt.
“Right?” Leo picked up the bottle and turned it between his hands in adoration. “It’s exactly what I was looking for. You really nailed it, Julie.”
“I’m good at nailing things.”
“Is that so?” Leo spun me around with just one hand on my waist and rubbed his nose against mine. Pulled back. Locked eyes. “I love you.”
He’d said it to me earlier this afternoon before we shared our gel-ah-to together, but I hadn’t anticipated a follow up so soon. I was still worried he confessed it too early and would want to retract that statement. But here he was, just a few hours later, saying it all over again. Confirming it. Letting those three words hang in the air between us.
“Only because I’m going to make you even more millions with this award-worthy label,” I teased, protecting my heart with a little witty banter. Always my go-to.
“Because you’re going to make me even happier than I ever imagined possible.”
I stared into his eyes, searching out the meaning behind what he was saying. “And when will that be?”
“Tonight. Now. This moment,” Leo answered, not blinking as he spoke. He leaned in a touch and kept his eyes trained on mine. “I want this to be the start of our night that is fifty years long, Julie.”
I wasn’t sure if that was a proposal but it sure as hell sounded like one. Maybe not for marriage necessarily, but I knew he was at least proposing the idea of Leo and me becoming an us.
“I want that, too.” I curled into his chest. Breathed in deep. “I want you, Leo.”
“I want you, Julie.” His lips parted. Warm air rushing through them tingled my scalp. I gripped on tighter around his waist to disguise the shivers, but nothing could hide what Leo did to me. I’m sure it was glaringly obvious to everyone in attendance just how head-over-heels I was for this guy. I might as well be doing a handstand. He’d turned my entire existence upside-down.
I swallowed down all caution as I asked, “Did you honestly think you wouldn’t live to celebrate this birthday?”
His breath left him in a heavy sigh. “I don’t know what I expected.” Behind us the musical duo crooned out their melodies of love found and lost. Their notes wrapped around us. “My mom died right after they told her those same odds. For a while, I didn’t allow myself to hold onto any hope. Not in doctors. Not in medicine. Certainly not in statistics.”
“How come?”
Hope was often all we had. I believed that in this life, hope was the one thing we were actually allowed to cling to, regardless of the circumstance. It was our God-given right, wasn’t it? To hold out hope, even against all odds?
“Because I didn’t have any reason to hope.”
I didn’t get that. From where I was standing, Leo had so much to live for. This party displayed every aspect of that in a statement of visible grandeur. “But you had your business and your money and your wine label. And don’t forget that gorgeous car and this breathtaking Villa.”
“Those are just things. You put hope in things and you’ll be disappointed every time.”
I supposed that was true, but I didn’t know where else to place my hope. Never before had I actually had someone to carry around the basket that I’d dumped all of my eggs into.
“But now I have you, Julie. And I have the hope of what we can become, you and me.”
I smiled against the fabric of his shirt. “Yes, you have me. And I’m not going anywhere. In fact, I’m thinking Italy might be the perfect place for me to settle down. Permanently. Got any more busts you need drawn?”
Leo bristled.
The song ended.
Straightening his arms, he pushed me out from his body slowly, like I was a bomb about to detonate. “Julie.” That didn’t sound good. All of the other times he’d said my name it was like a prayer, but this was a warning. “Julie... You have to go back to New York tomorrow.”
“What?” I shouted it, unable to control my volume. “Why?”
“I’ve been in talks with your counselor and they’re not approving our internship for valid course credit.”
My heart rate slowed a little and the tightness in my chest released. Not the worst-case scenario I’d leapt to in my head. “Oh,” I breathed. “That’s fine, Leo. Honestly, graduating this spring isn’t at the top of my list anymore.”
“But it should be.” He cut me off and his hands dug tighter into my flesh. “I’m not letting you rearrange your list of priorities all because of me. You need to go back and finish out the quarter. I’ll still be here when you’re done.”
I didn’t like the sound of that, and if I had anything to do with it, I wasn’t going to let things go down this way.
“Leo,” I began, trying to maintain my calm. “You said yourself that you could never expect someone to wait for you. I’m not going to make you do that for me. I’ll get those extra credits later. Right now, I just want to be with you. Here. Like this. Us.”
At that moment I knew no matter what I said it wouldn’t work to convince him. Leo had already made up his mind. With his eyes closed—as if he couldn’t even look at my face as he delivered the news—he said, “I’ve already booked
your flight.”
“But I—”
“You head out tomorrow morning at nine.”
I could hardly see him through the tears that gripped the edges of my eyes. “You’re coming with me, right?” Two rivulets of water slipped down my cheeks. Leo used the pad of his thumb to sweep them away. He kept his hand lightly on my jaw as I looked into his helpless blue eyes. For someone who supposedly orchestrated this, he looked absolutely heartbroken. Lost. Drowning, just like I had been the first time I laid eyes on him. “Are you at least coming back?”
“Not just yet.” His brow tightened in an effort to keep his own emotion at bay, but I could see that. Each word was like a knife slicing his gullet on its way out of him. “Soon.” He pulled my chin up to guide my face toward his. “Hey. This isn’t the end of us, Julie. I pretty much just told you I have plans to marry you.” I allowed myself to smile at that. Allowed myself to seek out the joy in this sudden pain. “This isn’t even a pause button. More like just flipping the channel from the one with the Italian subtitles to the English version. We’ll be just the same in New York as we are here. I promise.”
“You do?” I asked, placing my hope in those words. I still had hope, and it was my right to put it in whatever I chose. But I knew I would place all of it in Leo, whether that was fair to him or not. It was a lot of responsibility to carry the burden of someone’s hopes and dreams, but I couldn’t fathom not giving him the chance to at least attempt it.
“I do. I promise. Like I said before, I love you, Julie. So much that I can’t let you walk away from your dreams and your education just for me.”
“But maybe you’re my dream now,” I offered, because I was certain he was.
“I know you can dream big enough to include all of those things in your future. Me. College. Graduation. There’s room for all of it.”
He was right. I had big dreams. Ones I didn’t want to wake up from. I knew getting on that plane tomorrow was a risk, but with Leo’s assurance, it didn’t feel like I was abandoning these current dreams I of mine, only adding to them. Maybe it could all work out in our favor. Everything else had so far.
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