I turned. “Agnes.”
“Matteo!” She wrapped her arms around my neck with a big smile on her face.
It fell when I stepped out of her embrace, pulling Stella closer to me. She tried to step out of my hold, but it was too tight.
“Stella, my wife,” I said. “Agnes. Her aunt owned the chocolate shop in town.” She’d sold it to Agnes when she got too bored to run it.
Agnes nodded at Stella, and Stella only stared at her.
“So,” Agnes said, “I’d heard you were back in town. I’d heard you were married, too, but I just thought it was a…stupid rumor.”
“It’s not a rumor,” Stella said, and her tone was on fire. She lifted her left hand, showing her rings. “We married in Italy in June.”
“Oh.” Agnes was having a hard time deciding what to do with her hands. She ended up clapping them. “Congrats to you both! Hope you have a wonderful trip home, Matteo. Good seeing you.” She set her hands on my shoulders, leaned in and kissed me on the cheek before she almost ran away.
I didn’t have time to fucking step out of her embrace. She was faster than a rabbit with those lips.
Stella’s eyes were narrowed into dangerous daggers, and she turned them on me. “I want to go.” She crossed her arms over her chest. And that same vibration seemed to radiate off her as it did in Los Angeles when the trap kept trying to flirt with me across the table. But maybe worse.
On our way out, papà gave me a look I couldn’t understand. It was probably meant to be sympathetic. He’d screwed around with Agnes’s aunt when he was a young man. She was his first.
Agnes was my first.
Stella kept trying to walk a step ahead of my touch on her back. When we got outside, I took her arm, and she flung it out of my hold. She crossed her arms over her chest.
“Did you sleep with her?” she blurted out.
Abe, probably the oldest man in town, was sitting outside, enjoying his pipe, and he started cackling. “You done did it now, Son of Brando Fausti.Hehehehehe.”
Instead of grabbing for Stella’s arm, I hauled her up and threw her over my shoulder. She beat against my back until I set her down in front of the truck. The red neon of the light fell on her face, and it seemed to reflect whatever was going on inside of her. They say jealousy is green, but I wasn’t so fucking sure about that. When I’d turned Carter into shark bait, all I could see was red.
Stella kicked a rock at me, and it hit me in the knee. “Well.” She put a hand out. “It’s a yes or no question. Did you or didn’t you sleep with the woman who smells like chocolate?”
The woman who smells like chocolate.
I was so fucked.
“Yeah. I did. Fucking years ago.”
Her mouth opened before it closed on a snap. “She’smucholder than you.”
I shrugged.
She shrugged, mocking me. “Take me home.”
I opened the door for her, and after I picked her up and set her in the truck, she acted like she was dusting my fingerprints off her. I expected her to yell at me some more, or maybe even throw a boot at my head, but she went completely silent.
Her silence grated against my skin, making it to my bloodstream.
It was cold.
Burning.
But there was no light.
She set me in the dark and refused to shine for me.
Chapter 42
