Call Me Crazy (Bellamy Creek #3) - Melanie Harlow Page 0,74

and took my hand. “I get it.”

Eventually, the doctor came out and said my father was fine, nothing was broken, but because he’d lost consciousness and had elevated blood pressure, they wanted to keep him overnight. We ended up waiting another couple hours for him to be admitted. I told Bianca a hundred times she didn’t have to stay, but she refused to go. We ate terrible hospital food for dinner and didn’t even end up talking to my dad because he was asleep by the time we got to his room.

When we walked out of the hospital, it was late and dark and pouring rain. My head was pounding, and I figured Bianca’s was too. I was parked closer, so I drove Bianca to her car, waited for her to get it started, and then followed her home.

Once we were back at our place, I set my keys on the counter and caught her around the waist from behind. “Hey. Thank you for being there today, it meant a lot to me. I’m sorry it was such a long day.”

“Don’t apologize. I wanted to be there.” She turned around in my arms and put her hands on my chest. “And if—if you don’t feel like trying tonight, I would understand.”

“Hush.” I kissed her lips. “You go upstairs and relax. Take a bubble bath or something. I’ll be up in a little bit.”

“Okay,” she said. “But I mean it. No pressure.”

“I heard you.” I glowered at her. “Now go do what I said, woman.”

She rolled her eyes and headed for the stairs.

I waited until she was out of sight, then went back out to the garage for the package I’d been hiding in the back of my SUV. In the house again, I listened for the sound of the bathtub running upstairs before grabbing a beer from the fridge.

Then I dumped the contents of the package onto the counter and cracked the fuck up. This day might have been stressful, but this night was going to be epic.

Fourteen

Bianca

Upstairs, I filled the tub and sank into the water scented with lavender bath salts. I closed my eyes and took deep breaths, listening to the thunderstorm outside, trying not to see it as a bad omen, and repeating all my positive affirmations, determined to get the universe on my side. Like attracted like, right? So if I wanted that good energy, I had to put it out there.

But it wasn’t all woo woo—science was on my side too. Biology was a thing. And medical intervention. I’d followed all the instructions, used the predictor kit, and by all indications the timing was right.

Still, I was nervous. Nervous . . . and excited.

Like, beyond excited.

It had been ten days since I’d felt Enzo’s hands on me, felt his body over mine, felt that deep, sharp twinge of pain before it melted into pleasure. I knew he was anxious too—for heaven’s sake, he’d pestered me for sex almost every night—but I’d stayed firm in my resolve not to give in. If I could resist him, or at least sex with him, then I was still on safe ground. It didn’t matter that my feelings for him were growing stronger and deeper each day, as long as I was still in control. Being able to say no to sex that wasn’t for procreational purposes made me feel like those walls around my heart were still standing.

Actually, I’d sort of hoped he might act a little distant while we weren’t having sex, or at least give my feelings a chance to ebb. But if I’d thought he wouldn’t be interested in hanging out with me without the lure of an orgasm at the end of the night, I’d been totally wrong. He came home for dinner every evening. He brought groceries or takeout or offered to cook. If we watched TV, he let me choose what we watched, and he didn’t complain—much—if I chose something girly and romantic. One night he even gave me a foot massage while we watched a movie.

He came with me to visit Grandma Vinnie at the nursing home, where we listened to her tell stories about my great-grandparents, the bootleggers, and about growing up on Detroit’s east side. We looked at old photo albums and marveled at the resemblance between my great-grandmother and me. Grandma Vinnie even thought the name Enzo DiFiore, which was Enzo’s great-grandfather’s name, sounded familiar to her. We laughed and wondered if maybe they’d known each other after