Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 154525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Nico swallowed the lump forming in his throat, deciding if there would ever be a time for him to do it—to ask what he wanted to truly know—now might be it. “Can I ask you something? A couple things, maybe?”
Carina stared straight ahead. “Sure, but I reserve the right to not answer, or whatever.”
“Did you want to keep me?”
“I loved you,” she said instead, “but keeping you wasn’t an option. That wasn’t a choice.”
“You, uh, you turned eighteen a couple of weeks before I was born, right? Your birthday is just before mine.”
She nodded.
“So, you were seventeen when you got pregnant, and sixteen when it started—”
Carina let out a sardonic laugh that gained the attention of more than one person sitting around them. Once the gazes had averted, she looked his way with an arched eyebrow that spoke of her annoyance. “It started when I was thirteen. The grooming, long before that. At thirteen, it just didn’t look like how it looked when he started fucking me at sixteen. I had two abortions before I even got pregnant with you. He wouldn’t make me kill you, too. You actually looked like more than a blob on the screen. His wife hadn’t been able to get pregnant again after Marco, and I kept it secret just long enough. The tech told him you were a boy, and I could see it in his eyes...”
She let out a slow, painful breath. “I can still see it.”
The pup licked more at Nico.
His boot tapped a beat to the floor; the rhythm kept him steady. “And his first wife? How’d that play out?”
“Saw me as a problem. By then, anyway. I think she was the first one to ever call what was happening that business between Carina and the boss. I hated her. It was a mutual feeling.”
“What about Carmen? She’s almost a decade younger than me, so you were an adult. I don’t mean to be an asshole; I’m just trying to understand.”
Her hand fluttered up to touch her upper lip, but she quickly dropped it back to her lap as if it hadn’t happened at all. “I don’t really want to talk about that one, but it wasn’t any different. I just hid her longer.”
Nico’s jaw ached. “So, you did want to keep us. If you hid being pregnant, that means—”
“With you, it meant I was a child who didn’t know what else to do; who had no one to protect her; who was just trying to survive.”
“Right, sorry.”
Her fingernails started drumming a beat against the bag in her lap. A lot like his bouncing knee.
“No, I’m sorry,” she said, sniffling before pulling the sunglasses resting at the top of her head down to cover her eyes. “It’s been a long time, but it never feels that way. Jesus, I couldn’t even be faithful to my own husband because of what that man did to me. I couldn’t look at my babies without seeing him. I started nude modeling just to have enough money to get the fuck out of his grasp.”
“But you loved us. You loved me, you said.”
She didn’t reply.
Nico didn’t really need her to, either. He still remembered Salvatore’s comment about how Carina reacted when they found Nico nearly smothered to death in a closet.
Carina cried.
“I don’t blame you,” Nico told her quietly, wanting her to know. “You did what you needed to. You became who you needed to be. I get it.”
“No, you don’t,” she replied, her tone thick and words wet with tears he couldn’t see, “and fuck, I hope you never do, Nico.”
He could tell Carina had hit her limit for the conversation.
Another four graduates passed the stage. Carina steadied her breathing into long, slow inhales and exhales.
He glanced her way, more unsure and unsteady than ever. He made himself stay quiet, and stop asking questions, because she’d returned to the same long, slow breaths. Only now, her face had paled a bit.
“You okay?” he asked.
Carina shook her head. “No, I’m gonna go puke. Third time today.”
Nico made quick work of moving his ass out of the way. She even shoved her Birkin into his grasp before she darted up the aisle. Not two seconds later, someone else had clearly noticed something changed a couple of rows back.
Salvatore, glancing over his shoulder, waved two fingers at Nico. A silent call for him to come down. He did.
“What’s wrong?” Sal asked, eyeing the pup hiding at Nico’s front with both amusement and disbelief. “Where’s Carina?”
“Morning sickness.”
“It’s three in the afternoon.”
Nico didn’t know what the man wanted him to say. “Are you pregnant?”
Salvatore blinked. “No.”
“Right, well, I’m not, either. So, I’m not gonna comment on when or why she pukes. You know? Seems...not right.”
The man just rolled his eyes, but he stood from his chair after leaning over to whisper something to Sissy at his right. In the aisle next to Nico, he took the purse Carina had left behind.