I Left the Underboss for the Man Who Remembered Me novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Mine

I couldn't sleep.

It was one in the morning in Ettore's loft, and the bed was warm.

He was breathing slowly beside me with one arm thrown over my waist.

I slid out from under it, put on his shirt, and went to the kitchen.

He had a bag of flour in the cupboard, which surprised me, and a block of butter, and a lemon.

I stood looking at the lemon.

Then I laughed, quietly, until I had to hold the counter.

I started the cake anyway.

Butter and sugar in the bowl, eggs one at a time, the zest of the lemon, the whole warm sweet smell filling the room.

It was the first thing I had made in a week that wasn't for a table.

I was humming when I felt him in the doorway.

"What are you making?"

"Practice."

"For what?"

"Something I want to do right." I didn't turn around. "Go back to bed."

"No."

He crossed the room in his bare feet and stood behind me.

I felt the heat of his chest through the cotton.

"You have flour on your face," he said.

"I know."

"Do you remember when I said it?"

"You never said it."

"I thought it." His mouth touched my temple. "You were twenty-one, and you came into your father's kitchen at midnight in your socks, and you had flour on your cheek, and you were singing to yourself. And I stood in the pantry door and thought, that's her."

I put down the whisk.

"Say it again."

"That's her."

I turned around in his arms.

His eyes were dark, and open, and nothing was hidden in them.

"Fourteen years, you gave me a gift and walked away," I said. "I want you to tell me what you wanted to do when you walked away."

"Gianna."

"All of it. I'm asking."

He took a breath.

"I wanted to come in," he said. "I wanted to knock and come in, and sit at your table, and eat whatever you made, and not leave."

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