Cassio
“I can’t fucking lose her, Leon,” I croak, letting the brutal honesty flow from me. My freak out today wasn’t just because I saw an infant that reminded me of Angel, it was seeing Ana—my Ana—holding him.
One glance at a years old picture and I was assaulted with the thought of my wife in Isobel’s place. My mind taunted me with the idea of being cursed. I could get Ana pregnant, and she could end up dying in my fucking arms… all my fault. The mental torture brought me to my goddamn knees.
“I barely made it through before. With my son and Isobel, I felt like I was going to die. But Ana? Jesus Christ, I can’t. It will kill me. I mean it.”
“You love her,” he states simply.
“Too much,” I confess. “Way too fucking much, man. It’s different than before. She’s not just my wife, she’s like a limb, Leon. I need her.”
I can’t believe I’m even admitting this out loud, even to one of my most trusted brothers. Isobel was supposed to be my one, and she was, but falling for Ana wasn’t something I could escape. It’s not something I would ever want to escape now that I’ve experienced it. I didn’t think there were levels to being in love, and maybe levels is the wrong way to describe it.
All I know is, Ana can’t leave me. I need her like I need oxygen. Waking up next to her is what gives me the ability to get through each and every day. The way she looks at me, the way her every touch feels, I need all of it. I crave it more than anything else.
I expected to come to care for her. I knew she was a sweet girl, and I knew in helping her that I would develop some kind of emotions toward her. But this? This undying devotion and utter passion that I have for her? I couldn’t have seen this coming. And when she confessed she felt the same? It was like experiencing true heaven on earth for the first time in my life.
“You two need to talk,” Leon advises after a moment of silence. “I know I’m not exactly the picture of a perfect husband, but if your relationship is going to work, you have to lay all your cards out. Have you talked about kids? At all?”
I feel the blood drain from my face and he shakes his head.
“Yeah, I figured.”
Sighing, he stands up from his chair and walks over to the small bar cart. Glasses clank and liquid bubbles as he pours two glasses of dark liquor. The drink rolls across the end table nearest me, and I catch it with a quick hand. Fire burns at the back of my throat as I drain it in one go.
“Only you would shoot vintage scotch like it’s cheap tequila,” he grumbles disapprovingly. He sips his and lets out a deep breath. “Guess you’re still not much of a drinker.”
Never have been, likely never will be. Alcohol dulls the senses and lowers inhibitions. I like to be alert and on my game at all times.
“No,” I agree, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.
“Always the practical one.” Taking another sip of booze, he sets his glass down and crosses his arms. “So be fucking practical, Cassio. Can you handle Ana being pregnant? Is it something you ever want to try? Because if it’s not, you need to talk to your wife about it.”
“What if she wants it someday? What if she needs it and I can’t?”
“From everything you’ve mentioned, and everything Armani tells me, the girl is just as in love with you as you are with her. You know what that means? It means she doesn’t need or want anything more than she needs you. Talk to her, make a plan. You’ll feel better once you do.”
He’s been talking to Armani, too? I’ve been texting him more recently, needing to share some of what I’ve been going through with Ana. I had no idea that my younger brother has been doing the same thing.
“Will I?” Somehow I doubt it. “Ana deserves to be a mother if she wants to be one.”
“Sometimes, for someone so smart, you can be so fucking dumb.” Leon groans and I frown. “Cassio, there’s more than one way to be a mother. You said the girl used to volunteer at the orphanage like it was her damn job before this whole mess, for fuck’s sake. If she wants kids, a pregnancy doesn’t need to be the way to make it happen.”
She could want to adopt.
“I did tell her that,” I remember, like a light clicking on. “I said when I see our future, I think about her wanting to bring a kid home one day, and what room we’ll put them in.”
Hope swells in my chest like a balloon of relief. I latch on to the idea hard. I could handle that. I could be a father again. I could make Ana a mother if it meant not risking her life with a pregnancy.
“Cleo and I are considering it too,” Leon mentions hesitantly. “Adopting.”
I blink in surprise. “You are?”
He shrugs. “She wants another, and it hasn’t been happening.”
Oh, wow.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” I had no idea they were trying and struggling with fertility.
“Honestly? I didn’t want to freak you out.”
“Because Isobel and I had trouble,” I surmise with a small frown. “You didn’t want to upset me. Fuck, Leon… I feel like an ass. You’re always here for me and I—”
“Wasn’t ready,” he cuts me off. “Emilio knows, Cleo and Melani have started talking.”
That’s even more surprising than the previous news. Cleo has never wanted anything to do with making friends. She’s always been extremely introverted, and never responded to Melani’s attempts in the past. Maybe after years of being married into the family, she’s starting to warm up.
“And you’ve talked about adopting?”
He nods, finishing off his scotch. “Pretty sure that’s the route we’re going. Cleo likes being a mom. It fulfills her.”
“But you two still aren’t..?”
“In love?” He laughs. “No. Our relationship is clinical at best.”
“Fuck, I’m sorry.”
“She’s a good mom,” Leon says. “It’s enough.”
I’m not so sure he means it, but I’m not going to pry. He’d tell me more if he wanted to. There are some things a man has to keep to himself.
“The expansion here is taking more time than we thought, so she’ll be here with Bastian tonight. They’re going to stay with me for a few weeks. I’d say we should have dinner—”
“But you know I won’t let my nephew anywhere near the mess I have going on,” I cut in, interrupting.
Leon smiles. “Yeah, that.”
“One day,” I add, lifting my chin. “We’ll get together when this is all over. Ana will love meeting Bas.”
“It’s a plan.”
Ana
“Oh thank God,” I breathe out, rushing toward the door. Cassio grunts as I tumble into his chest, catching me around the waist. “I’m so sorry. Leon texted Armani that you were with him. Did the picture—did I? Are you okay?”
It didn’t take me long to assume that the photo of Elliot was probably difficult for Cassio to see. I cursed myself for the oversight, and wished I could take it all back immediately. Colton and Armani tried to keep me occupied with a camera search, but I was nearly chewing off my nails as nerves ate at me. And we didn’t even find anything!
“I’m all right, forza,” he mutters into my hair. “I just needed a minute.”
Puffing a reassured breath, I relax against him. I never wanted to trigger Cassio, or hurt him in any way. He was already worried about the lunatic stalking me.
“We’ll give you two some space,” Colton says from across the room. “This whole place is clean, though. Not a trace of a bug in sight.”
“I have no idea how that fucker is listening to us,” Armani adds in a grumble. “But I’m going to find out.”
“Thank you,” Cassio tells them both, watching as they retreat upstairs. Running his hands up and down my back, his lips press into my temple. “Can we talk, baby?”
“Of course.”
We sit on the sofa together, and Cassio takes a minute to compose himself. He looks more nervous than I’ve ever seen him.
“Leon said that we should talk about children,” he eventually says, looking conflicted.
“I know kids are hard for you,” I begin cautiously, fiddling with my hands. “I’m sorry if it’s difficult to think about going to St. Mary’s with me. I wouldn’t blame you, if you didn’t want to come. I would understand.”
His throat bobs with a rough swallow.
“Kids aren’t hard for me,” Cassio replies gruffly. “Babies were difficult at first. Any time I saw one, I saw Angel. But when Jade had the twins, it became pretty evident that children weren’t the issue—pregnancy was.”
Which explains his insistence on using condoms. He’s worried that even with my birth control implant, we could accidentally conceive. I figured he thought it was just too soon to risk it, but this makes much more sense. His fear is deeper than timing being the reason.
Making a small noise, I encourage him to keep going.
“Melani’s pregnancy with Mila worried me, but she already had Valerio, so I latched on to that fact. I convinced myself she would be okay because she had done it before. Jade’s pregnancy, on the other hand, terrified me.”
He breathes out a shaken breath.
“I kept fixating on the idea that it could happen to her—what happened to Isobel. They both had perfectly normal pregnancies. They were both young and healthy, too. When Jade said she wanted to give birth at home I thought I was going to lose my fucking mind. I couldn’t watch my little sister die in the same place that—”
Getting choked up, he cuts himself off, shaking his head bitterly. “There was no reason. No fucking reason, and it still happened. We had every resource, we did everything right. She was fine and then she was dead.”
My stomach churns with an awful wave of grief for him.
“And our son… he was only alive for three minutes. Three minutes. One hundred and eighty seconds and he was gone. He wasn’t sick, he wasn’t even a premature baby. It just happens sometimes, that’s what every doctor said. Every expert and no one could give me a goddamn reason.”
“I’m so sorry,” I croak, whispering the words into his shoulder where my head now rests. “Life can be inexplicably cruel. I wish you didn’t have to experience the depths of its viciousness.”
Cassio seems to deflate, his chest falling with a long sigh. “We’ve both been given a fair share of the world’s wickedness, forza. It’s only right that we try to make the best of the time we have left. Helping out at the orphanage is what you love, and I have no problem going with you.”
Biting my lip, I tuck into his side further. “Do you see us adopting one day? Can you picture it… like you said before?”
He stiffens ever-so slightly. “You wouldn’t want a biological child?”
“Absolutely not,” I reply, my eyes snapping up to meet his. “I’m not putting you through that, Cassio. As it is, I’ve never had the dream of carrying my own baby. I’ve always sort of assumed I would adopt one day.”
“I could handle it,” he tells me, the words barely a whisper. “If you wanted to get pregnant, I could give you that.”
“Just because you’re capable of enduring it, doesn’t mean I would want you to. The stress alone would be unbearable. I don’t want you to hurt any more than you want me to hurt. You’re… you’re a wonderful husband, Cassio. I want us to be happy together. I can be happy with or without children, I just wanted to know if adoption was something you can see for us—whether it’s months or years from now.”
“You mean it?”
I really, really do.
“My mother adopted me when I was three,” I reveal, fighting a watery smile. “From the same orphanage she grew up in, in Birmingham.”
“I didn’t know you were adopted,” Cassio says quietly.
“Nobody really does,” I explain slowly. “My mom was never adopted, she lived in that place for fourteen years. From age four to eighteen, she watched adoption after adoption and it was never her. She was quite literally a starving artist until she turned twenty-two. This socialite in New York saw one of her paintings while visiting London and her career shot off from there.”
“People have a tendency to fall in love with her work, don’t they?” my husband muses, making my lips tip into a wistful grin.
Nodding softly, I continue. “She told me the first thing she wanted to do when she got her first big check was to go back to the orphanage and take a little girl just like her home. She said when she saw me, three years old with the same dark hair and sad eyes she used to have, she couldn’t let me stay there a second longer. When she found out I was abandoned with no details just like her, it felt like fate.”
“It sounds like fate,” Cassio agrees, squeezing my hand in his.
“She had just moved into her new house,” I keep going, sniffing back the impending emotions. “She didn’t even have a couch yet but I thought it was the most magical place in the world—half-empty or not. She had a huge pink bedroom made for me the very next day.”
Cassio’s thumb traces a small pattern into the back of my hand. “That’s why the orphanage is your passion.”
“And exactly why I don’t need a baby with our DNA to know we could be loving parents one day. We can keep using condoms until you decide you want to do something more permanent to prevent it, but just know, I’m one hundred percent content with this, Cassio. All I need is you.”
“You’re incredible,” he declares, lifting my chin to lock our lips.
The feeling is so mutual.
