Chapter 140 142

Chapter 140 142
Ubert wakes up, and then Durante. Nario is well enough to swing by in his hospital gown. He stands over the bed, his face tight. I think he’s holding back tears. “I should’ve been there, Carlo,” he says. “Never again. I’ll never abandon you again.”

“Nario,” Alda whispers. She has taken off her veil. This whole floor is basically mafioso-owned now. She places her hand on his shoulder. “Carlo would not want you to blame yourself. You know this.”

He nods, looking unconvinced as he falls into thought.

And then we wait some more.

Sometimes, I’ll wake in the middle of the night with my head resting on the edge of his bed, snoring lightly. I’ll remember his arrogant smile when we first met, standing outside the rec center. How I hated him at first!

I think about that evening we weeded the garden together, working side by side, and how shocked I was to discover that there was more to Carlo De Maggio than met the eye.

“Wake up, you asshole,” I whisper, giving his hand a little squeeze. “You don’t get to make me fall in love with you and then just sleep forever. That’s not how this works.”

This is the sort of soppy stuff I would’ve laughed about before. But maybe being soppy isn’t that bad. Who can blame me?

Two more days pass and Carlo’s induced coma continues. We make a sort of base in his room, with Emily in the corner shrouded in blankets as she taps away at her keyboard, Alda knitting in the other corner, and me with a notebook in hand, sketching.

“I didn’t know you knitted,” I say to Alda.

She smiles. “I didn’t know you sketched.”

Sometimes, Maury and Durante and Nario will play poker on the little side table, swapping Carlo stories as they do. I make myself small so they won’t get self-conscious and stop talking. I learn about the time when Nario was eighteen and Carlo was just a kid, how Carlo got revenge on some thugs that had been harassing Nario.

“Said I wasn’t allowed to walk by this one corner store. Said I needed written fucking permission. You believe that shit? Carlo, he heard about it—and he wasn’t even a man back then—and he goes charging in there with a goddamn baseball bat, smashing the whole place up. Then we learned that it wasn’t even their store, so he made his old man pay for the damage.”

All the men laugh and I smile to myself, thinking soppy things like: that’s my man. He’s my shadow. I love him.

And then, finally, he wakes up.

Carlo’s eyes blink open and his lips spread in that familiar smile. It takes him as long to focus as it takes me to really process the fact that he’s awake. Then I’m at his side, grasping his hand, looking down into his eyes as he seems to come abruptly alert and panics, his mind still stuck where it left off at the fight.

“The baby,” he croaks. “Hazel, the baby—”

“They’re safe,” I reassure him, swallowing back tears of gratitude that he’s come back to me. “We’re all safe.”

He picks his head up and looks at Emily and Alda, who are sleeping in their usual spots. He smiles and lets his head drop. “Thank God for that. How’s your leg?”

I squeeze his hand again. “You mean my very minor flesh wound? Yeah, it’s fine. Don’t worry about me. You’re the one pulling the Sleeping Beauty routine.”

His voice is hoarse from so long without use, so I help him drink half a glass of water before he continues speaking again, croaking a little less this time. His blue-green eyes are bright as he turns to me, squeezing my hand back with surprising strength. “I need to be with you, Hazel,” he whispers. “I can’t fight it anymore. I don’t want to fight it. I love you. I trust you. You’re the best woman I ever met and there’s nothing in this world that’s going to stop me from being there for our kid.”

Tears are streaming down my cheeks like a dam has been busted. I don’t even know when I started to cry.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” he laughs.

I lean close to him, kissing him softly. I don’t want to press too hard. I don’t want to hurt him. But then, with a growl, he slides his tongue into my mouth. I explore him and it feels new, even though we’ve been here before. So much has happened since we last kissed like this. I’m moaning, I realize, which is pretty damn inappropriate.

“Sorry,” I demur, breaking it off. “I didn’t mean to get carried away.”

“Why’d you stop?”

“Because I think sex might kill you right now.”

He grins. “Then I’d die a happy man. How are the men?”

“Ubert is still asleep, but he’s out of the danger zone.”

“Grazie Dio. And the others?”

“Alive, recovering,” I say. “Nario, Durante, Maury, they’re doing okay. I mean, that albino guy is a little scary, but other than that … Do you want me to get them? Should I wake up Emily and Alda?”

“Soon,” he says. “But I just want to be with you for a while first. Does that make me selfish?”

“Maybe.” I shrug. “But I don’t really give a shit.”

He laughs, and then narrows his eyes, reading something in my face. You’re hiding something, he silently says. What’s wrong?

I shake my head. It’s nothing.

“Hazel.” He draws patterns on my palms. “I’m sorry for how I treated you. It was just the shock, y’know, the betrayal—”

“You just said y’know,” I point out in shock. “You absolutely just said it.”

“No way,” he denies. “You’re a liar. You’re a dirty twisted liar.” Laughing, he goes on, “I mean it, though. I’m sorry.”

“I know, it’s not that. I’m sorry, too.”

“What, then?”

“It’s just … if the baby is a boy, do you think we could name him Ben? Or maybe his middle name could be Ben?”

I expect him to show some sign that this is fucked, that this is really, really messed up. But instead he nods slowly. “I get why you want to,” he says. “He proved himself in the end. He died saving you. I’ll always be grateful to him for that. And if what he said was true, he wasn’t the monster I thought he was. Yes, Hazel, let’s honor his memory. But you’ve lost your damn mind if you think he’s not going to have an Italian middle name.”

“Luigi?” I tease. “Mario? Ratatouille?”

“Ratatouille?” He looks horrified. “That’s French, first of all. And second…”