“You knew I had money.”
“Yes,” she said, glancing across at him, a frown tugging at his lips. “But the Santoro money isn’t just money, it’s…you’re like…royalty.”
He shook his head once, thanking God that wasn’t true. He was spared, at least, the ignominy of too much press intrusion into his life. The occasional paparazzi photo, some interest in various business successes, but for the most part, Raf kept his private life private. Salvatore’s accident had caused a heap of fuss, of course, but even that had died down now.
“We’re from completely different worlds.”
She was a waitress in a bar, who was still working out what to do with her life; he couldn’t really argue with her statement. But deep down, he wanted to. Because on that night they’d shared, he hadn’t felt as though they were worlds apart. There’d been a connection that had made the sex they’d shared even more mesmerizing. He’d dismissed it, and run a thousand miles from her—literally—because trust was poison, and he’d already been through that once before.
“That’s no longer relevant.”
“Please, stop doing that,” she muttered. “Don’t dismiss my feelings.”
“There is no manual on how to handle something like this,” he pointed out. “I’m just trying to stick to the facts.”
“Well, don’t you think your last name was a relevant fact?”
“Would it have changed anything?”
She sat back in her seat, her gaze slipping to the window, hiding her features from him in a way he resented. “I don’t know,” she answered, and he both felt and appreciated the raw honesty of that statement. Marcia had lied like she’d breathed—something he hadn’t fully appreciated until the extent of her duplicity was revealed. Elodie was open and honest, even when she didn’t know the answer.
But every cell in his body was warning him off trusting her completely. She might seem honest but looks could—and often were—deceiving.
“I think it probably would have,” she whispered then, shifting her gaze back to his face and raking it over his features with a deep frown. “You on your own were intimidating enough. Knowing you were a Santoro probably would have scared me half to death.”
“There is nothing scary about my family.” Imagining anyone fearing Gianni Santoro, Raf’s uncle, and his penchant for truly bizarre pizza experimentation, had him shaking his head dismissively.
“But just the idea of who you are…” Her throat shifted and he realized how close to the surface her emotions were. How close to breaking point. Something like guilt flared in his gut but he ignored it. He had to protect himself, and that meant keeping a hard heart, particularly now.
“I’m twenty-six and I have nothing, Raf. I’m starting over in life. I’m working a dead-end job because it’s all I could find, and it happened to be around the corner from my cousin’s flat, that I’m living in rent free while I try to get my shit together. I’m pretty much at rock bottom, and you’re—very much not.”
He listened to her summation with a gnawing sense of concern, and something he disliked and actively fought against; protectiveness. A feeling that he wanted to protecther,to reassure her and remind her that she was smart and beautiful, that there was something impressive about her, even if everything she’d just said was factually true. He’d only spent one night with Elodie, but if he were honest, he’d admit he’d thought of her often since.
Instead, he stuck to the facts, at least inwardly disputing her statement that he wasn’t at rock bottom. The truth was, he’d been scraping along it for years now, living every day as though he didn’t care if it was his last. Getting drunk, having sex. Even in work, he’d been reckless. True, his gambles had paid off—he’d chased down risky investments, and they’d triumphed, but he’d done it with a carelessness that came from where he was in life, and nothing else.
In that, they were the same—both at rock bottom. He didn’t admit it to her, though. His grief and anger were his own to carry, his own to marinade in. Sharing them with Elodie felt like a cop out. As though it might somehow lessen their power over him, and he was not prepared to do that. His suffering was a constant protection against ever being stupid enough to care again.
“What did you mean, anyway?”
He fixed her with a level stare, his gaze scanning her face.
“About the appointments.”
Her brow furrowed in a way that made his fingers ache to reach out and smooth it. “What was your plan, Elodie?”
She bit into her lower lip.
“You’ve just described a situation that is far from ideal, yet you told me you didn’t want anything from me. So, what was your plan? How exactly did you think you were going to do this?”
She flinched, and he regretted the harshness of his question. But Elodie wasn’t the only one whose life was spiralling completely out of control. This pregnancy was a bombshell he couldn’t have foreseen.
“I was going to go home,” she murmured.
Something tightened in his gut at the idea of the future she’d planned for their baby—a future in which he had no part. His own flesh and blood, being raised in the English countryside—not fucking likely.
“And then what?”
She lifted an unsteady hand to her cheek and smudged her skin there, so he realized a tear had slid from the corner of her eye. “I don’t know, okay? I thought I’d stay with my parents a while, until I could work everything out.”
