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“Yeah. Vanessa said she thought you and Zoe had plans already, but if you don’t and you want to join us, I’m sure Virg would be cool with that.” Was there a drop of sweat on his forehead? Maybe. Santino had never been a fan of lying or excuse-making, but here he was.

“We did but it wasn’t a big deal. We were having dinner anyway, might as well go with the group.

We’ll meet you guys out there.” Satisfied he’d gotten his invitation, Bobby fell quiet again.

Then he speared Santino with a sudden piercing look.

“Let’s get to the point. Standard line: what are your intentions toward my sister? ”

Santino didn’t even have to think about it. His automatic response was, “I intend to reclaim my wife.”

“Well, damn. That was straight up,” Bobby said with a chuckle that was tinged with sarcasm.

“We should have never broken up. It’s not what I wanted. You know that.”

“Yeah, I remember how upset you acted,” Bobby replied, folding his arms thoughtfully.

Santino’s jaw tensed. “I wasn’t acting. It fucked me up.”

Bobby seemed uncomfortable with that brutally honest answer, but he didn’t argue back.

“Alright. Next question: did you cheat on her? I know you said you didn’t, but I still have a hard time understanding why a man would take an ex-girlfriend to a romantic island resort overnight if he had no intentions of fucking her.

I mean, I’d be fucking.” He shrugged. “Man to man. Be honest. I don’t want my sister hurt, but I also understand that after a few years of marriage, when you’re that young and you don’t know what else is out there… well, I get it.”

“Are you playing good cop right now?” Santino asked with a short, disbelieving laugh. “You’re trying to be all ‘I’d cheat too, bro,’ to get me to admit to something that didn’t happen? Come on, man. You really don’t know me better than that?”

“Good cop? Not at all.” Bobby shook his head.

“I’m saying that I know what it’s like. I’m saying that…

” He trailed off, staring at their surroundings, at the pair of blonde girls at the next table over, giggling shyly and eyeing him and Santino like they’d welcome them if they asked to join them. But Bobby wasn’t smiling back.

“Alright, this is the deal,” Santino said, deciding to spill.

“Me and Antoinette were boyfriend and girlfriend since we were fourteen, but we never took it past a certain level. She was a ‘good girl’ saving it for marriage like she’d promised her nonna on her Italian side.

” He used air quotes. “Daddy’s little princess wouldn’t let me get farther than feeling her up over her clothes for four years and I went along with what she wanted because my Pop said —”

“You don’t push a girl to do stuff she doesn’t want to do because that would make you an asshole,” Bobby finished with a sigh. “My dad died before he could pass on the gentleman’s rules for dating, but my uncle stepped in and did it for him.”

“Yeah. I mean, I did try a couple times ‘cause I was a horny young man,” he said, making Bobby chuckle. “But she was just never comfortable, and I really didn’t want to be an asshole about it.”

And that was the dead truth. It had been frustrating as fuck, but he couldn’t ditch Antoinette to go fool around with anyone else.

By senior year, she’d mastered the art of getting him worked up with kissing and grinding fully dressed and the promise of more “someday.” In return for the vague “someday,” she extracted a promise from him to wait for her until the wedding bells rang.

But when she left for Boston, she admitted she didn’t know what she wanted.

“I don’t want you to move on and forget about me. But…we’re both so young.”

He and Antoinette were a done deal. Tommy had advised him to run out and do it with a random new girl just to “get it done,” but that didn’t sit well with him.

He didn’t want to admit it to any of his brothers or even Dominic that he wanted it to happen with someone special.

Santino had already been used to waiting.

It wouldn’t kill him to wait a while longer.

“I purposely waited for the one. That was Vanessa. When I met her, I knew she was it. My first and my last.”

“I don’t know how much I want to hear,” Bobby said, fake shuddering. “But that doesn’t mean you didn’t start getting that itch after the wedding. I mean, getting married doesn’t mean your eyes fall out of your head.”

“No, no, no fucking itch,” Santino said, shaking his head resolutely.

“You don’t want to hear shit, and I really don’t want to share details, but I was happy at home, trust me.

Yeah, we fought, and yeah, there are pretty people in the world, but it never occurred to me to start looking elsewhere.

If it came to that, I would’ve fucking left rather than do that to her. ”

“So, why would you take your ex to Aruba? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Because she got engaged to a psycho billionaire who she said she was scared of. When she first mentioned him, she said he swept her off her feet. Said he reminded her of me, even looked like me, a tall, blond motherfucker. Occhi azzurri e capelli biondi , except he was Norwegian or Danish or something.”

With a wry grin, Bobby remarked, “Nothing like a few billion to change someone’s mind about premarital sex.

But Van already told me the ‘what’ part of what happened.

I want to know why you thought it was okay to risk jail time or worse for someone you’d never been into when your wife asked you not to. ”

“First of all, Vanessa didn’t ask, she told me.

I felt like she was talking to me like I was her kid and I didn’t respond well to that.

But I did it anyway because she Ant was my friend, and I wanted to help.

Now I see how fuckin’ dumb I was to do it, but I can’t change what I did. I’m just trying to fix it.”

“Whoo! Yeah, that was a fuck up right there,” Bobby said after absorbing what he’d said. “So, what happened to Antoinette? Three years later, is she still down in Aruba?”

“Nope. She went back to the psycho.”

Bobby’s response was an intake of breath followed by explosive laughter, clapping his hands until he was breathless and crying. Santino let him take his time getting it out.

“Yeah, real fuckin’ funny. She called me like four months later to say she’d made a mistake leaving the psycho, she realized she loved him, it hadn’t really been as terrible as she’d made it out to be, blah blah.

She said he promised he’d never hurt her.

I washed my hands of the whole thing, and I blocked her.

After what she cost me, I was fucking done,” Santino said harshly.

“What about the psycho?” Bobby asked with his brows drawn, the thought dawning on him that there might be a lingering problem. “Does he know it was you who helped her?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

Bobby shrugged. “I guess all’s well that ends well.”

Santino shrugged too, reluctant to admit to Bobby that sometimes he did worry about that. Not for what the guy could do to him, but to Vanessa, if he was as dangerous as Antoinette had said he was. Would he harbor a grudge and come looking for vengeance someday?

Someone getting to Vanessa when he wasn’t there to stop them was the only thing he feared second to her loving someone else.

These were the secrets that sometimes kept him up at night, that sometimes fueled his nightmares in sleep.

But if Santino voiced those fears, it would give them power, like a dark talisman that had lain quiet suddenly surging to life.

“What about now? What’s next, huh?” Bobby picked up after a time of staring at the musicians inside the bar.

“You’re, what, twenty-eight, twenty-nine?

I’m not saying I don’t want you back with my sister.

If you intend to treat her right, go for it.

But she wants the whole thing, the marriage, the babies.

She doesn’t say it, but I see how she is with my daughter.

If you’re not absolutely sure you’re about that life, don’t waste her time or yours. ”

Santino flushed. “Are we still talking about me or about you?”

“Both I guess.” The melodic notes of a slow song drifted between them from the bar. Bobby’s voice, deep and smooth, had always seemed suited for singing to music exactly like this. But chords of regret, of quiet pain, were woven in between his next words. “I got married too young.”

The words hit Santino in a tender spot. This is exactly what everyone told him he should feel, that it was expected he would feel, even from Vanessa. To hear it from Bobby, who’d always seemed so mature, so wise, born knowing exactly what he wanted out of life, was disturbing.

“I started seeing Zoe because we were together at the hospital all the time. She was fun, she was sweet. The bangin’ body didn’t hurt, and the sex was crazy.

But the truth is, she just wore me down.

My mother loved her. And together they just pushed and pushed .

” He leaned forward, balancing his elbows on his knees, his face and his voice strained.

Santino didn’t interrupt. He let Bobby get this out, unsure if an open moment like this would come again. But old guilt pressed on his shoulders, the way it had for years. If Santino had spoken up back then…

“Van was the only one who told me not to go through with it if I wasn’t one-hundred percent sure I was ready.

That’s why Zoe doesn’t like her, because my dumb ass told her what Vanessa said.

Everything was good for a while until a few years ago.

Neither of us were happy. I worked a lot, and she resented that.

The sex…” Bobby made a thumbs down that went lower and lower.

“Then I came up here for that medical conference to present a paper. I met someone. A representative of a company that makes artificial hearts. Ling Wu.”

Holy shit. Santino was stunned. Was Bobby serious? He was ready to get pissed the fuck off. This man had threatened to beat his ass for supposedly doing the same thing.

Bobby must have seen the growing anger on his face.

Quickly, he insisted, “I didn’t sleep with her, I swear.

Didn’t kiss her, didn’t lay a hand on her.

But there was just something so lovely and genuine when we talked.

I felt like I’d never had that same connection with Zoe.

And I started to wonder, what if I had just waited?

What if I had given myself time to figure out who I was outside the operating room, outside of my family, and what they expected of me?

“I went home and told Zoe I thought maybe we should take a break. I said we were both obviously not in synch anymore, but she said absolutely not. Maybe we needed something more to bring us closer together. Something like…” The sentence hung in the air, dangling by a thread that was weak and ready to break.

“Like a baby,” Santino guessed. Suddenly, he felt so sorry for Bobby, maybe even a little for Zoe.

“I’m not saying I didn’t want my daughter.

She’s my world. And Zoe has been the best wife and mother a man could possibly ask for.

She’d do anything for us, and I’d do anything for them.

I didn’t have my dad for reasons beyond his control, and I damn sure won’t be walking out on my child.

” Determination stiffened his shoulders as he stared straight ahead.

“So, you and Ling. Is she the reason you planned to come up here with Vanessa?”

Bobby nodded, not looking especially proud of his answer.

“Ling and I kept in touch. I knew she was seeing Virgil, she knows I’m married.

I was hoping to reconnect at the show or anywhere else she’d agreed to, even if it was in passing.

When Zoe invited herself, I didn’t tell her about Ling specifically, but we do have an agreement that we get a weekend pass. ”

“A pass? You mean you get to fuck someone else?” Santino asked derisively.

“We both get one. If Zoe meets someone, she’s free to do whatever she wants, and so am I. It’s honest. No foul. And when we go home, we go home with each other.”

Santino wasn’t sure how to respond except with the truth. “Sorry, but that doesn’t sound honest to me if you didn’t say you’ve already caught feelings for someone. I’m not saying leave Zoe for Ling because she’s with Virg. But if you’re that unhappy, why stay? You can still see your daughter.”

Bobby shook his head with a short laugh. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“See if I don’t.” Santino waited while Bobby pressed his fingertips together, apparently searching for the right words.

“People would perceive you differently if you’d been the one to leave Vanessa.

Your family already had wealth. But a man who leaves his wife after she helped build him into a success is a walking cliché.

Especially a Black man who leaves her for a non-Black woman. I don’t want to be seen as that guy.”

“Alright. It probably would look different if I did it. I get it, you don’t want to fit a stereotype. But fuck what it looks like. That’s not a good reason to stay and make each other unhappy.”

“The agreement is the next best thing,” Bobby said resolutely, determination written across his features.

Slowly, Santino replied, “You didn’t ask for my opinion, so feel free to tell me to fuck off, but I think that’s a mistake.”

“Okay. Fuck off.” Bobby’s grin was more genuine this time, even if still sardonic. “You worry about your own mistakes. And I’d like it if we kept this between you and me.”

A soft alarm went off somewhere in the back of Santino’s head at the ask to keep all of this from Vanessa.

This was supposed to be their fresh start, nothing but honesty from both of them from now on.

Still, this was Bobby’s life and Bobby’s marriage.

Whatever happened between him and Zoe was on them.

“Alright.” Santino pulled an imaginary zipper across his lips. “She won’t hear about Ling from me.”