Page 98 of Say It Isn't So

She cut me off, placing a finger over my lips. “No. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter what Angelo wants.”

Did she not see what this was doing? She’d called her dad by his first name. Usually it was Daddy, sometimes Dad, but never Angelo.

I heaved a sigh. “Bianca, you deserve to be with a man who doesn’t tear your family in two. Someone who can fit into your world like a glove, not make you have to choose sides.”

I wanted her to be happy.

And I knew that, in time, having a piss-poor relationship—or, worse, no relationship—with her dad would only make her miserable, angry, and bitter. She’d come to resent me and I didn’t want that.

She shook her head, the glimmer coming back in her eyes.

I didn’t think I’d ever meet anyone like her again. She was once-in-a-lifetime, if you knew what I meant.

But that didn’t change anything.

I was doing what was right for her, and she’d thank me in the long-run.

I just wouldn’t add to her hurt tonight.

“Ideserveto be with you, Knox. We owe this to ourselves to see if we could be something, but really, I already know we can.”

The sad part was I did, too.

I brought my thumb to the small dip in her chin and stared into her eyes as I said, “I know.”

“So can I stay here?”

“Of course you can.”

“Thank you. It’s just, I thought about my sisters, but Perla and Frankie are in that blissful little love bubble of theirs; Maria has Isabella, and I don’t want to ruin their routine; and Allie finally found a roommate. So, really, you’re it. I have nowhere else to go.”

As if any of that even mattered. I’d never turn her away. Never in a million years. I was only sorry I’d missed her earlier texts, that we hadn’t connected sooner, that she’d showed up here like she had. Actually, sorry didn’t begin to cover it, not that there was a word for what I felt.

I rubbed my hands up and down her arms. “You’re welcome to stay here as long as you need, okay?” I tilted my head. “But I have to go. I was on my way out when you showed up.”

“Right, okay.”

My hand on the doorknob again, she asked, “Where to?”

I didn’t want to lie to her, but I also knew she wouldn’t be up for the truth. Not now. Not after everything she’d been through. “To pick a friend up from a bar.” Technically, that wasn’t a lie, it just wasn’t the whole truth.

As I closed the door behind me and left Bianca on the other side, I knew I was leaving all the hope I had for us on the other side, too.

Then again, we didn’t always get what we wanted, did we?

And it was exactly what I’d always thought: Bianca was the worst kind of forbidden fruit because I’d taken a bite and now I craved more. More that I could never let myself taste again. Because it wouldn’t only be deadly to me, but her, too.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Rina

I was done.

Done putting myself out there.

Done looking like a loser.

Done waiting and waiting and waiting for what? Knox to come to his senses and realize that we belonged together, that there was a reason we’d run into each other again in London?

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