Take It All Off

by Weston Parker

  What was I doing here? It was a very good fucking question.

  I thought I’d come here to support Addy while her only family was in hospital. It had been a split-second decision made on the fly.

  Now here I was, standing in the parking lot however the fuck many hours later, and I’d just found out I was going to become a father. How had that even happened?

  The sun was high in the sky. I still hadn’t slept. There was less humidity in the air here than I was used to, so my lips and my nostrils were dry. And, oh, yes, I was becoming a fucking father.

  I gripped the ends of my hair with my hand and released a silent scream. What is happening right now?

  As if he could sense my anguish despite the thousands of miles between us, Aldo released his own scream, but he did it right into my ear. I yanked the phone away, but it was too late.

  There was a faint ringing in that ear now, so I swapped it to the other side. “Are you serious? Ouch. Stop it.”

  “Come home then,” he barked. “Honestly, you shouldn’t be on the other side of the goddamn world right now. Just come—”

  “I can’t,” I snapped, my breathing ragged and voice hoarse. “I can’t just come home. I love her, Aldo. I don’t know when it happened, but I realized it earlier after she collapsed. I’m in fucking love with her, and she’s carrying my child. I can’t just leave her here.”

  The admission had my soul feeling like someone had hung it out to dry, like it was flapping in the warm breeze. I felt naked, stripped down to the bare bones of who I was, of who I wanted to be.

  Fatherhood wasn’t something I thought about all that often, despite my mother’s constant yammering on about it. It had always been like this hypothetical, abstract thing that wouldn’t happen to me. I wasn’t ready for this.

  Hell, the youngest girl I’d ever held had been sixteen. Granted, I’d only been seventeen myself at the time, but still. What the fuck was I supposed to do with a baby girl?

  And a boy? Sure, I knew how the equipment worked, but that was where it ended. I didn’t know the first thing about raising a tiny human being. I’d never even seen a damn diaper in real life.

  The closest I’d gotten to those things was when I occasionally took the wrong turn in a store. And those had been packaged. I’d never seen one—

  “Breathe, Marco,” my brother said, surprisingly calm all of a sudden. “Just breathe, buddy. Stop that runaway train right now and just breathe. It’s going to be okay.”

  “It is?” I wasn’t so sure.

  “It is,” he said slowly. “So you love her, huh?”

  “Yeah.” I pulled my collar away from my neck. I really needed to talk to the tailor. It was obvious this thing was way too tight. “I do.”

  “I’m glad you’ve finally caught on, brother. You okay now?”

  I shook my head, but I needed a few minutes to myself. “I will be. Call you later.”

  “Let me know if you need anything. I can be on the next flight out there.”

  “I’ll send the jet back for you if it comes to that, but we’re not there yet. I’ll let you know if I have any news. In the meantime, just sit tight.”

  “Will do.”

  I ended the call, spotting a concrete bench beneath an awning nearby. I went to sit on it, resting my head in my hands as I ran them through my hair repeatedly.

  But I was determined not to let the train run away with me again. I needed to man up and go back inside.

  Jesus, I’d taken off on the woman I loved minutes after she’d been told she was pregnant—with my child. I probably shouldn’t have done that.

  No, scratch that. I definitely shouldn’t have done that.

  But I had. Now it was time to put my own fears aside for the moment, to hold Addy’s hand and let her lean on me if she needed to. I also had to get around to telling her that I loved her. What a fucking day.

  When I got back to the room, however, Addy didn’t really look like she wanted to lean on me. Unless she was leaning on my neck while holding a very sharp blade in her hands.

  Rage flashed in her eyes when they met mine, but there was also a deep sorrow in them I didn’t understand. Time stood still again as I glanced around the room. “Did I miss the ultrasound? Did something happen with the baby while I was out?”

  “They haven’t come yet,” she said, her tone clipped.

  The hospital bed dwarfed her, but her emotions seemed to fill up the whole room. Her eyelids were puffy, and there was evidence of dried tears on her cheeks.

  My legs ate up the distance between us, but when I tried to reach for her, she pulled away. “What’s going on? Why are you so upset? What happened?”

  She blinked up at me, her face contorting into something very much like intense pain, but I had a feeling it was fueled by all that rage.

  “What happened?” she asked. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  My jaw slackened. I had no idea how to react. “No?”

  “I’m pregnant, Marco,” she ground out. “I have your spawn growing in my belly and you couldn’t even hang around for one minute longer than the goddamn doctor?”

  I felt the blood leaving my face. “I know I shouldn’t have—”

  “Why were you so upset about the news? Did you not know this could happen if you fuck someone six ways from Sunday every night and more than once on every actual Sunday?”

  “Of course, I knew it could. I just—”

  Her head reared back. “Oh, that’s it. Isn’t it? This is about your precious mother. You can’t be excited to have a baby with me because I’m American?”

  A nurse ran into the room, undoubtedly because Addy’s voice had risen several octaves in the last minute or so. As soon as she saw what was happening, though, she apologized and slammed the door shut behind her.

  Great. The professionals don’t know how to deal with this, either.

  “Addy? Pasticcino? Just listen to me please.”

  “Don’t call me that.” She shook her head hard and waved her finger at me. “No, I’m not going to listen to you. There was a time for you to talk to me about this, and you ran away. So run, Marco. Run all the way back to Florence for all I care.”

  “I’m not going anywhere without you,” I said evenly. “When I go back, you’re going to be in the seat beside me. I get that you’re pissed off with me right now. I deserve it.”

  “If you’re going to hang around until I get on that plane with you, you’re going to be waiting a long-ass time. I think I’m going to stay here. In Oregon. With Kyle.”

  “What?” My eyes narrowed as my heart kicked into a gear I hadn’t even known existed. “No. No way.”

  Her eyebrows jumped. “No? What are you going to do, kidnap me?”

  “Of course not. Can we just talk about this rationally please?”

  “Oh, so now I’m not being rational?” She fell back against the bed, folding her arms as best she could with the tube still connected to her. “Go figure.”

  “I didn’t say that.” I took a step closer to her, imploring her with every fiber of my being to give me a chance. “It’s just that staying here isn’t an option.”

  “It’s not?” When her voice became that quiet, I almost wished she’d go back to yelling at me instead. “So what? I’m being irrational for wanting to stay here with the only person who’s ever been there for me? The only person who was there for me today when, even if he didn’t know I had a boyfriend, was willing to actually sit and talk to me?”

  “That’s not fair, baby.”

  “Stop. Calling. Me. Fucking. Nicknames,” she seethed between breaths. “Staying here may not be an option for you Mr. Bigshot Billionaire, but it is an option for me and for my baby.”

  In hindsight, I shouldn’t have let her statement derail me, but it did. Whether it was shock, adrenaline, fear, sleep deprivation, stress, or something else, I didn’t know, but I snapped right back at her.

  There was a reason I’d needed her to balance me out sometimes when I
dealt with clients, and this was it. “It’s not only your baby, Adaline. Unless you’ve cheated on me or achieved immaculate conception, it’s just as much mine as it is yours.”

  “But it has to live in my body for the next nine months, so sorry. You can’t take it with you back to a country where your mother will forever ridicule it for its origins.”

  “Leave my mother out of it. Are you never going to let that go?”

  “Excuse me?” She hiccupped. “Did you really just ask me that? After what she did to me, you expect me to just let it go when she hasn’t even apologized?”

  “It’s not like you’ve given her thousands of chances to.” Which, granted, wasn’t Addy’s fault. “Just leave her out of it. This is about you and me. We found out you were pregnant less than an hour ago, and now you want to take the child away from me?”

  “Like you care.” She snorted. “You don’t even want this baby. You’ve been an absent father since you found out it existed. At least I’ve been here.”

  I couldn’t hold back an incredulous laugh. “You have got to be shitting me right now. This is a joke, right? I’m an absentee father because I needed a fucking minute after that bombshell was dropped on our heads?”

  She shrugged. “If the shoes fits, wear it.”

  My heart raced so fast I felt my blood pumping through my body. Specks of red blurred my vision as my chest heaved. “You’ve lost it. You have totally fucking lost it. What do you want from me here, Addy? Do you want me to drop to my knees and beg your forgiveness? Because I will. Do you want me to—”

  “I want you to leave,” she said flatly, abruptly sliding her gaze away from mine. It landed on the window, and she kept it there. “Leave and don’t come back. Go get on that fancy plane of yours and go home. If you ever felt anything for me at all, you’ll leave right now.”

  I couldn’t believe what I heard, but I nodded slowly. “That’s how this is going to be?”

  “That’s how this is going to be.”

  I looked at the woman in the bed and wondered if she’d been body-snatched. She wore the face of the girl I loved, but my Adaline had checked out of the building.

  Clenching my fingers into fists, I waited for her to say something else. Anything else. After several minutes had passed without her so much as looking at me, I blew out a breath and did what Aldo had suggested in the first place.

  I got the fuck out of Dodge.

  Chapter 34

  Addy

  A profound sadness had taken root in my soul after Marco had stormed out. There was a part of me that was waiting for him to come back, but he’d left over twenty-four hours ago, and there was no sign of him yet.

  So no, I didn’t think he would come back any longer. The sooner I accepted that, the better.

  By now, he was probably at home. It had only taken us a little over twelve hours to get here. He could have made the trip twice in the time since he’d left.

  I could almost picture him sitting in that hot tub on the roof with a glass of brandy or Grappa in hand, celebrating how he’d dodged this bullet. It nearly killed me to think about it like that, but it wasn’t a massive leap to have taken. Not after the way he’d reacted to the news.

  And, okay, I knew I wasn’t totally innocent, either. I’d gone off on him like a broken fire hydrant when he’d come back into my room, but it was like this rage from somewhere outside of myself had just consumed me.

  A soft knock at my door made my head jerk up. Hope blossomed in my heart until Kyle made his way inside. “Hey.”

  “Hi.” I tried to smile, but it fell flat.

  He frowned at me, looking around the otherwise empty room. “Where’s Marco?”

  “Gone.”

  “Gone?” Crossing the floor to join me on the bed, he tilted his head to the side. “What do you mean gone?”

  “I mean he left yesterday before the ultrasound and he hasn’t come back since.” It felt like I’d ripped a chunk of my heart off when I said the words out loud. “I don’t think he’s going to come back.”

  “But the ultrasound was scheduled for less than an hour after you left my room. What happened?”

  I sighed, hanging my head to hide the tears forming in my eyes. “We got into a huge argument.”

  “What about?” He curled his fingers over mine. “I’m sure you could fix it if you wanted to.”

  My head shook, my dirty, stringy hair that hadn’t been washed since his plane barely shifting when I moved. I was disgusting. “I can’t fix this. I told him I was thinking about staying here. Let’s just say he disagreed.”

  “He disagreed?” Strange darkness filled Kyle’s eyes. It looked a lot like guilt, but I didn’t know what he had to feel that way about.

  I’d find out later, though. For now, I just lifted my shoulders. “Disagreed is putting it mildly. He vehemently disagreed and told me it wasn’t an option.”

  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 h
ow 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?”