Chapter Twenty-Eight

Knox

Bianca: It didn’t go well. It was such a mistake.

Bianca: He’s being totally unreasonable.

Bianca: I’m done, I’ve had it up to my eyeballs. I will not let him do this to me or act like you’re the bad guy here.

Bianca: He also can’t pretend like what I’m feeling isn’t valid. It’s like he wants to run my life. I can’t be there anymore, Knox. I just can’t be around him.

It had been a half hour since her messages came in and I’d just seen them. Now, Bianca was not usually a serial texter, so I knew this was bad. Instead of texting back, because I recognized a spiral when I read one, I decided to call her.

No answer.

I tried again, but still got her voicemail.

I was about to just text her back when a call came in. Only it wasn’t Bianca.

It was Rina.

I hesitated to answer it. Okay, so maybe that made me a bad guy, but come on, give me a break, would you? I was trying to do the right thing by Bianca and she clearly needed me. I’d said I would always be there for her when she needed me and I’d meant it. I’d never broken a promise to her and I wasn’t about to start now.

But something told me to answer Rina’s call. It sounded a lot like the villain who’d told me to cheat on a math test in high school. But that was unimportant and a story for another day.

Deciding to go against my better judgment, I answered. I didn’t get to say anything, though, because the loud music on her end had me pulling the phone away from my ear for a beat before putting it back. “Rina?” I finally asked, practically screaming into the phone. I didn’t think there was any way she could hear me with all that noise. Geez, where was she?

Her voice came in raspy and monotone as she answered, “Oh, you answered. How nice. I didn’t think you would.”

I shook my head, trying to make sense of what was going on. “Rina, where are you? It’s really loud and I can hardly hear you.”

“I went to a bar. You know the one where they let you stand on the top of the tables and dance like no one’s watching. Yeah, that one!” She got louder at the end and let out a hiccup. All right, she was drunk.

“That’s a lot of bars,” I gritted out, annoyed that she’d be so foolish as to go to a bar in the city and get drunk. I would have bet she was alone to boot. “Where are you? Are you alone?” I demanded answers.

“Yes, I’m alone. No thanks to you.” She sounded like she was either on the verge of tears or about to be sick.

“Where are you?” I tried again. “I’m coming to pick you up.” I grabbed my keys from the fishbowl and made my way to the door, hoping she’d give me the name of the place.

I stopped short when she screamed into the phone, saying, “Wait! I don’t want you to come get me.”

Clearly, I was meant to pull my hair out tonight. What was it with chicks? It seemed like they didn’t know what they wanted. They all drove me up a wall sometimes. I mean, you’d think this was exactly Rina wanted—for me to come and pick her up, us locked in a car together where she could continue her crusade to convince me that we were meant to be.

“And why the hell not?” I practically barked into the phone, annoyed that she was pulling this childish behavior. We weren’t teenagers anymore and it wasn’t okay.

I wasn’t good at math (as we discussed before), but I happened to know that a woman alone at a bar + booze + intoxication + slimy men + a strange (read: maybe slimy) driver = not a splendid idea.

That was why this wasn’t even up for discussion anymore.

“You,” she said, then stopped before trying again, jumbling her words and giving up.

“Rina.” I was trying to keep my cool, but she wasn’t making things easy.

Then she finally got it out, slurring, “You’re never going to love me again, are you?” The cracking in her voice made my insides churn.

I never wanted to hurt her. I didn’t want her to feel this way—unwanted. “Why don’t we talk about this another time? When you’re not drunk.” Yeah, that feels like a good idea.

“You don’t even need to tell me. I already know. You don’t look at me the way you look at her.” She didn’t need to say Bianca’s name because we both knew that was who she was talking about. “I’m done, Knox. I know I’d said I’d fight for you and that I was confident you’d come back to me, but I’m not anymore. And it’s too hard, too. . . too. . . pathetic for me to keep doing this to myself. To you. To her.”

In a softer voice, I tried calming her down—“Rina, don’t leave the bar, okay? I’m coming to get you.”

She groaned. “I just want to sleep with some random guy and forget all about you. Why did you have to show up in London? Why couldn’t you just stay in my past? I thought I had everything I wanted and then you had to come and ruin all of that.”

I heard loud sobs now as I placed my hand on the doorknob, ready to get out of here and get to Rina. Wherever she was.

Crying through her words, she went on, “I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want to die alone. I don’t want to die and no one even know I’m dead because I’m all alone with no one who cares about me.”

Her biggest fear.

I opened the door finally and went to take a step forward to leave, but I almost bumped into. . . “Bianca,” I said aloud, almost not believing how this evening was unfolding.

“What?” Rina shouted in the phone.

“Call me back. Leave the name of the bar on my voicemail,” I insisted before hanging up and shoving my phone in my pocket.

Bianca blinked rapidly, her eyes red-rimmed and swollen like she’d been crying. The sight was like a punch to the gut.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, placing my thumb on her face to stroke her cheek. Her skin was damp from the tears she’d so clearly shed over her exchange with Angelo.

She leaned into my touch and closed her eyes, sniffing. “I need a place to stay,” she answered, her lip quivering as she choked back a sob. “Can I come in?”

I backed up and let her in, rolling suitcases and all.

She left the luggage by the door and turned, running her hands down the sides of her jeans as she shrugged when I closed the door. “He’s really mad. I don’t know how we’re going to come back from this.”

I couldn’t stand the position Angelo was putting Bianca in. He wasn’t being fair to her at all. It was like it was Angelo’s world and we all just lived in it.

Well, news flash: it wasn’t, and Bianca had a right to live her life the way she wanted.

He shouldn’t make her feel bad for the choices she made. For the choice she made when it came to me .

Then that little villainous voice came back— that’s right, it’s all your fault, this is because of you .

Silencing that blasted voice, I kept my focus on Bianca. I didn’t want to see her this way. It quite literally pained me. “Come here.” I wrapped my arms around her shoulders and pulled her into a hug.

Her head on my shoulder, she let out a good cry before taking a step back and running a hand through her hair. “It’s fine, I’m fine.” She sucked in, gaining her composure. “I’m not going to let him consume one more second of my thoughts. He’s being totally unfair and I thought he’d hear me out and we could have an adult conversation about it, but obviously he has his mind made up.” Then she added, “There’s nothing I can do. Honestly, I told him that I didn’t want to talk to him ever again and I meant it. I’m done with him, Knox.”

I found it hard to swallow past the lump in my throat. It must’ve been the size of a golf ball—no, a tennis ball—because I thought I was going to lose the ability to breathe, my airways closing.

This wasn’t what I wanted.

This was why I’d stayed away and why I’d been so insistent on staying friends.

Not that that was what I wanted, but what other choice did we have?

Bianca Morelli was (and always had been) untouchable.

I knew she wasn’t going to want to hear what I was about to say. Man, I didn’t even want to put the words out there. I wanted to kick myself for even allowing myself to open my mouth and say the words, but they needed to be said. “I think maybe it’s for the best if we—”

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.

“I deserve to 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.