‘What if you do not let fear of what you can’t control overtake this moment? What if you pick up the pregnancy test and see what it says? Be present in this moment and nowhere else?’
His eyes held hers and she clung to them. To the anchor of them that was holding her steady when she felt rudderless.
‘I understand your fear—’ he said.
‘How?’ she interrupted. ‘How can you understand?’
‘Because I understand the fear of the parts inside us that we can’t control,’ he said, his jaw determined. ‘The things that live inside us that we cannot change. My mother was depressed. Deeply so. I didn’t realise it was a condition until my teens. I didn’t understand it was a mental illness. I only understood that she was very angry.’ His nostrils flared. ‘With me.’
He dismissed the platitude she was about to use.
‘I’m sharing information that you think is important,’ he said. ‘Your biological mother was a drug addict. Mine was very sick. You think your mother’s sickness might live in you, that it reveals itself in your impulsivity. If you believe that, then my mother’s illness could live in me too. The difference between what came before and what comes after is the choice we make. The knowledge we use to guide us to make the right decisions.’
‘Is that why you told me you would marry me before we even knew we needed options?’ She swallowed, trying to organise everything that had happened in the last few hours. ‘Because you—?’
‘Because I need to know that what is mine is safe. I will keep you safe,’ he promised. ‘Both of you.’
Her breath hitched. She believed him. He was claiming her—them—even before they knew if the test was positive.
‘I’m still scared, Raffaele.’
‘No. You’re not afraid of this.’ His eyes flicked to the test. ‘The baby does not scare you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re scared of the night you let your guard down...leaned in to the womaninsideyou...’
He placed a hand on his chest, fingers splayed, and she wanted to touch them. Place her hand on top of his.
‘Because the woman you let out,’ he continued, ‘upheaved your world. Shook it to its roots.’
‘She upheaved your world too,’ she added, reminding him that she wasn’t the only casualty of her actions the night they’d met. ‘Not just mine.’
‘No. We did it together,’ he corrected. ‘We claimed that night, and now we must claim this moment too. Know who we must become to raise a child.Thatis what scares you,piccolina, isn’t it?’
‘What...?’ she asked.
But he was so close to putting all the facts she’d given him together. So close to seeing the part of herself she hadn’t revealed, had been too afraid to voice.
‘Who you are with me.’
She felt...what? Relief? No, it was more than that. Her skin prickled. Her mind itched. She wanted to close the inches between them on the sofa and thank him. For seeing what she couldn’t.
She closed her eyes. For just a moment she shut him out—and the test, the future—and looked inside at herself. Saw the fear of breaking the rules and hurting those around her, and the worry of who she might become if they didn’t rein her in...control her impulsivity and her need to have what she wanted.
Her eyelids snapped open. She had wanted him, and together they might have made a baby. And he was right—how could that be bad?
‘Be brave,’ he said. ‘Choose to be yourself. For you...for our baby.’
Her breath caught. ‘You are so sure I am pregnant, Raffaele?’
The darkness of his pupils panned out. Spread to turn his eyes into a pulsing ring of colour. ‘As sure as you know my name.’
‘Have you always been so...sure? Of everything?’
‘Always.’ He swallowed thickly. ‘I’ve always known what it is I must do. Who I must be.’
‘And you just...do it?’
