He surprised her by flinching at that. “No, Bina. No. I’m not. You’re your own hero. I don’t want to be that. I just want to be a man who loves you.”
It was her turn to flinch, and her resolve bowed under the weight of that word. She didn’t know whether he was professing his feelings, or whether he was suggesting the potential. Either way, she could not engage that thought and keep her resolve. No man had ever said such a thing to her. So she dropped her head and said nothing.
After a moment, he bent down and kissed the top of her head. “Let’s go back. I need to pack.”
~ 13 ~
Carlo was torn from a restless sleep by Trey’s terrified wails. His boy’s night terrors had come back, and they were worrisome in their intensity. He rolled out of bed, turning on the bedside lamp but still nearly tripping over Elsa, who’d come in looking for help, and went into the living room of their sparse suite at an extended-stay hotel.
Trey wasn’t awake yet; he was curled into a fetal ball, crying with hopeless fear. It broke Carlo’s heart. He leaned over the mattress of the fold-out sofa and scooped his son into his arms. As soon as he hit Carlo’s chest, Trey woke with a start and then nearly strangled him, his little arms encircling his neck like slender iron bands.
“Daddy!”
“Shhh. Shhh, pal. I got you. I got you. Come on, come sleep with me.” He was going to have to give up the idea of Trey sleeping on his own, at least for now. There was too much turmoil in his young life.
They’d come back to Providence almost two weeks earlier. With the loft trashed, and Carlo, those blood-red words etched into his eyes and brain, sure that he’d never be able to bring his son to live there again, he’d moved them into this crappy little suite until he could figure out a better situation. He had no idea what his long-term finances even were like at this point, so he couldn’t begin to look for a new place.
He’d done well for himself at Supratecture. He’d made an excellent salary and had been moving up in the company—hence his Porsche and the loft. He’d also had a healthy savings account, but he’d sunk a lot of that into Pagano-Cabot. And now that fledgling business, his dream and Peter’s, was on the ropes. Insurance payouts hadn’t yet come for either the loft or the office, and that pile of confetti that had been Carlo’s drafts had lost them some prime opportunities.
Peter was pounding the pavement like a madman, and Carlo was designing until his hands cramped, and they had some new opportunities coming up. But the big question was whether they could hold out long enough to get the insurance payout and get some proposals accepted. Without the insurance money, they were keeping things going with rubber bands and chewed gum. Carlo was missing important tools that he couldn’t afford to replace without that money.
In the first month after the destruction, Carlo had been focused on Sabina and helping her get healthy and feel safe. The attention from law enforcement and media had been white-hot for weeks, when she was at her weakest. He’d neglected the business, and he was paying for it now. So was Peter, and it was taking a toll on their relationship. Peter seemed to be making an effort to avoid him at every opportunity. Carlo understood; all of this was his fault. All of it. He’d taken on James Auberon, and, though Auberon had been beaten, he’d done a lot of damage on his way down.
The greatest toll, though, since they’d left the Cove, had been on Trey. He hated it at this place. There was too much commotion outside the door during both day and night, and he didn’t have his toys or anything that made him feel at home. And Carlo, focused on work, was not paying the attention to him now that he needed.
Natalie came over every day, working her full schedule, and Trey was better then, but Carlo’s garrulous, happy son was growing quiet and guarded. He was taking two naps a day again, when before all the upheaval he’d been on his way to abandoning naps entirely. But naptime was the only time Trey slept peacefully. At night, he had terrors.
Now, he curled tightly against his father’s bare chest and stuck his finger in his mouth—another thing he’d been growing out of that had come back in earnest. Elsa, satisfied that her charge was safe and calm, slid to the floor with a groan and a sigh.
Carlo looked down into his son’s green eyes. “Go back to sleep now, pal. I’ll be here to keep you safe.”
Trey took his thumb out of his mouth mid-suck, making a wet popping sound. “I want to go home, Daddy. Or to Pop-Pop’s house. I don’t like it here. This is a wrong place.”
“I know, pal. But I told you. Our house got broken when we were at Pop-Pop’s, and I need to find us another one. It’s going to take some time.”
“Let’s go back to Pop-Pop’s, then.”
Carlo thought of Bina. He knew she wasn’t living at the house anymore, but she’d taken his advice and stayed in the Cove, and he couldn’t be that close to where she was, not yet. He’d told her he’d stay away, until she was ready. If she was ever ready. He hadn’t heard from her since the morning after their talk on the beach, when he’d packed Trey and Elsa up and brought them here. Almost two weeks.
“We can’t, Trey. Pop-Pop is too busy right now. We’ll go back as soon as we can.”
Trey began to cry again, and Carlo sat up and pulled him onto his lap, holding him as closely as he could. “Come on, pal. We’re okay. I’ll keep you safe, and Natalie comes over every day, and there’s the cool playground by the pool, remember?”
“But Mommy doesn’t know this place! When she comes home, she won’t know where we are! She’ll be sad and lonely!” His desolate wails overtook him, and he all but threw his head into Carlo’s chest.
Carlo’s heart had frozen at Trey’s first plaintive exclamation. As far as he’d known, Trey had stopped thinking about Jenny months ago. He hadn’t mentioned her, or drawn her picture, or made any kind of indication that Jenny was in his head or heart at all in months. He’d thought that Trey had forgotten her. Now it seemed that he’d just tucked her away for safekeeping. Stunned and saddened, he didn’t know what to say or do, but he knew he had to say something.
“Trey, pal. Do you remember what I told you when Mommy left?” He hadn’t had the faintest idea what to tell his three-year-old son about his mother’s abandonment, so he’d been as simply honest as he could.
Trey nodded, and Carlo was surprised again. “Uh-huh. Mommy had to go away because she was sad.” He looked up at Carlo, his eyelashes beaded with tears. “But maybe she’s happy now and can come back.”
“I don’t think so, pal. Mommy has to stay where her happy is, and you and I stay here, where our happy is.”
“But my happy isn’t here. I don’t like it here. I want to go home.”
“I know, Trey. I’m sorry. I’ll fix it. But it’s just you and me, okay?”
“And Ms. Bina? Can Ms. Bina be in our happy?”
Trey and Bina had become something of an item while they were all staying at the house, and Trey was missing her since they’d left. Carlo hoped that she wasn’t another woman who’d come into his son’s life to disappear. But if she was, it would be his fault, not hers.
He was surprised she’d never had children of her own; she’d been easy and nurturing with Trey from the moment she’d met him. Then again, he could understand not wanting James Auberon to sire children.
“I think we should make our own happy for now, pal. Just you and me.”
Trey thought about that for a minute and finally nodded, his anguish easing with the speed only available to the very young. “Can we find a house that isn’t broke?”
Maybe he could find a short-term rental. Considering what the hotel was costing him, he thought it couldn’t put him any deeper into the red than he was already gushing. “Yeah. We’ll start looking tomorrow, okay?”
His eyelids finally drooping again, Trey nodded and stuck his thumb back in his mouth.
Carlo lay awake for a long time after that, watching his son sleep and thinking about his ex-wife. He’d been thinking a lot about Jenny since that last night on the beach
with Bina, when she’d called him her hero—thinking about Jenny, and Bina, and what Carmen had said, wondering if his sister was right, wondering whether it mattered if she was. Now, he let himself think it out. Had he rescued Jenny? Was that all it had been? Was that why she’d left? Was the same thing at the root of his feelings for Bina, feelings that were only intensifying during this time away from her? Was he setting himself, and his son, up for the same kind of devastation?
He’d met Jenny Cassidy six years ago, while he was working at Supratecture. She’d been not long out of college, with a shiny new degree in English and American Literature from Bowdoin, and she had a new job as a copy editor at a small textbook publishing company in the same building. He’d seen her several times in the first-floor coffee shop, usually balancing a couple of stacked trays of cups to take up to her office. On his way up, too, one day, he’d taken a tray off her stack and helped her bring them to her office. She was small and waif-thin, with fair, straight hair, huge, green eyes, and a striking, angular smile—which she used only rarely. He’d found her lovely. Elfin. One day, he’d pulled her aside in the coffee shop and asked her to sit and enjoy her coffee with him before she lugged the trays upstairs. She’d given him her number while she sat with him.
He’d been dating since tenth grade and had had a couple of girlfriends, but he was neither the casual fling type, really, nor had he been ready to settle down. He’d had a couple of friends from college who were game for hooking up from time to time, and that had seemed to Carlo like a decent compromise—women with whom he had an honest connection, but who wanted nothing more from him than friendship and physical enjoyment. Friends with benefits had been the real deal for him throughout his twenties.
He’d felt something for Jenny, though, that had made him interested in more with her. Maybe it was that rare, fragile smile, so bright and rewarding when it appeared. Jenny was high strung, to be sure, and riddled with anxieties and doubts and strange little foibles. She’d never let him go to her place, not even to pick her up. When they’d spent nights together, she stayed with him, in his new loft.
And she hadn’t been able stand him to be late. Carlo had never been excessively punctual, but if he was a few minutes past a time when he said he might call, or when he was supposed to collect her from work or wherever she’d asked him to get her which was not her own place, she’d freak, sure he was dumping her. But when he’d held her and reassured her, she calmed and clung to him.
She’d broken up with him once, while they were planning their wedding. Spun, he’d gone home to the Cove to regroup. In the few days of their separation, his siblings had all managed to make it known that they were relieved, because they didn’t like her much at all. She was odd, they’d said. Needy. Suspicious. Demanding too much of him.
They’d almost had enough time for him to see it for himself when he’d gotten a call from her. She’d been nearly incoherent, but she’d managed to convey to him that she’d swallowed a metric ton of painkillers and washed it down with her beloved merlot. In his loft, to which she still had her key.
By the time she was released from the hospital, she was in therapy, on meds for bipolar disorder, and the wedding plans were back on track.
From that point on, things had been good for them, he’d thought. Decent, anyway. He’d been surprised when she’d gotten pregnant, because she’d been on the Pill. They had had long conversations about it, because she’d wanted a baby, and he had not been ready. He’d been thinking about leaving the firm and striking out on his own with Peter, and he’d wanted her to be more settled. She’d quit her job and was trying to write a novel; he’d wanted her to be able to focus on that before they started a family. But then she’d gotten pregnant, and he’d rolled with it.
And the first years with Trey were the best of their marriage, by far. Motherhood settled Jenny. She’d been wonderful with their son. She’d seemed happy to be a stay-at-home mom and dove into the role with relish. But her book languished. Then, the fall right after Trey turned two, she’d hired Natalie to care for Trey in the afternoons, and she’d started working on it again. She’d also joined a writing group.
She’d pulled away by inches. Then she finished her first draft and pulled away more. Carlo had been so happy to see her completing this thing that had been so important to her, he hadn’t even noticed that her writing group was meeting later and later into the night. At the beginning of that last summer, she’d submitted her manuscript to an agent, using her contacts in the publishing world, and got signed. Instead of relaxing and coming back to her family, she’d become more distant.
Her book was picked up by a publisher in late July. Trey turned three in August, and they’d had their usual party on the beach in Quiet Cove. Jenny had left a little early, saying that she had an early morning meeting with her agent the next day. When Carlo had arrived at the loft around nine that night, Trey snoring on his shoulder, everything that was Jenny’s was gone from the loft. She’d left a note: she wanted nothing but a quick end. She didn’t want Trey, she didn’t even want scheduled visitation. She wanted nothing but an end. He hadn’t seen her since.
Later, he learned that she’d moved to New York City and was living with one of the writers from her group.
Had he rescued her? Had that been all? Had there ever been love there? He couldn’t speak for Jenny. But he knew the pain he’d felt when he’d stood in the loft’s kitchen reading that note, his son asleep in his arms, the scent of his chocolate chip birthday cake still on his breath. He knew how much he loved the family he and Jenny had made. He knew the ache in his heart. Maybe he’d rescued her somehow, or had at least tried. But he hadn’t loved the rescue. He didn’t think so highly of himself as that. He’d loved the woman.
Yes, he’d really loved Jenny. Past tense. But what he felt for Sabina was different. It was stronger, even after only these short weeks. She was stronger. She’d told him that she didn’t feel strong, but he saw it. She was a survivor. God, what she’d survived. And the strength to know she needed to stand on her own—Jenny had never had that kind of strength. Jenny had needed to lean—even when she’d left, she’d simply moved to a different shoulder.
Sabina Alonzo didn’t need rescue. She had saved herself, was saving herself. He hoped she would see him as a man who might stand with her and not as a man who wanted to save her. He only wanted to love her.
He already did.
~oOo~
In the hopes of settling Trey’s worries, he’d brought him along to look at rental homes. Two afternoons and evenings of slogging through a list of properties that might be rented on a month-to-month basis. So far, it looked like the landlords willing to consider an arrangement with so little security didn’t have the kind of offerings, in the kind of areas, in which Carlo would consider letting his son live. If the insurance payout would happen, he could get the loft repaired and get it on the market, then start looking for a place to buy—a place better suited for a child’s home, with a yard and kids in the neighborhood. The loft had never been the ideal home for Trey, as much as they both missed it now.
Trey was crabby and ill-mannered by the end of the second day, and Carlo took his kid home. He had a ton of work still to do; they were preparing a proposal to submit the next week, and getting that job could smooth things out for the company.
Natalie was still in the suite when they got back, and she was making dinner. Carlo sent Trey to the bathroom and turned into the tiny galley kitchen, his eyebrow cocked. He’d expected her to take the evening off.
“Hey. What’re you making?”
She slid a glass dish into the oven and closed the door. “Nothing special. Just a casserole and a salad. Are you working tonight?”
“I have to. I have to get this draft done. But you don’t have to stay. I thought you’d want to be home with your teacher.”
Natalie shrugged. “Yeah, well. Whatever. I’d rather be here with you guys.”
“Nat?” Carlo rubbed his hand over her b
ack. He thought she was very pretty. She had a breathtaking, sparkling smile and the wit to match. Lush blonde hair and clear blue eyes. She was on the bigger side, though, and he guessed not all men appreciated that. If he examined his own history, he’d have to admit that he was just as guilty of that as anyone. But he hated that Natalie had gotten her heart broken so often.
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