Camden
Dante snorts. “No, not really. It was hard. It’s hard to change, Camden. But it was worth it. I did it for Mia and for our little girl.”
“When’s she due?” I ask.
“Soon,” he says. “Any day. I worry myself sick thinking about Mia going through labor.”
I swallow hard. I hadn’t thought about that, not yet. It’s like the baby is just some possibility, some future problem. I hadn’t thought about all the pain that Kendall will have to go through. I think about the scar on her face, how angry that scar makes me.
Not because it makes her less beautiful. Because Marco Barone had been the cause of it. Been the cause of her pain and trauma.
I hate him, and I want to take him out. That’s why I need Angelo, and that’s why I need Dante to give me the location. At least he’s finally agreed to it.
“I don’t know if I can do it,” I admit.
“Do what? Go after Marco?” Dante asks.
I shake my head. “That, I can do. I mean about changing. About being a different man for Kendall.”
“You can do that, too, if you want to,” Dante encourages. “It’s not easy, but it’s possible. I’m living proof.”
“You make it look so easy,” I grumble.
Dante chuckles. “Well, you saw me before. When I was conflicted, just like you. It’s easy now because this is the way it was supposed to be.”
“You really think that? You believe in soulmates?”
“I got shot saving Mia, and then she came back into my life and she’s going to give me a beautiful baby girl. How could we not be soulmates?”
I think about it, how I feel when I see Kendall, how it’s different from Dante and Mia. Kendall was always in my life, for a long time. She’s been Elora ‘s best friend since they were kids. But the way it all happened, Marco shooting Bruno, her seeing it, me being the only one who could protect her Is it fate? Is that what soulmates are?
I shake my head to clear it, sucking down my second drink and pouring myself another. I don’t think I can have this conversation sober.
“I don’t have to change if I don’t want to,” I argue stubbornly. “I can still be a good father if I’m not with Kendall.”
“You can,” Dante agrees. “But do you want to?”
I tilt my head. “What do you mean?”
“I saw Mia so much differently when she got pregnant,” Dante says. “I saw her as mine, you know?”
Jesus. I do know. I see Kendall as mine, and I have even before she got pregnant, but I don’t say that. Not to Dante.
“I don’t know if I feel that way.”
Dante clears his throat. “So, you’ll be fine when she finds someone else?”
I freeze, my blood running cold. “What do you mean?”
“Pretty young thing like Kendall, she won’t stay single long,” he drawls, and my skin heats up with anger.
“Don’t talk about her like that,” I snap.
“Interesting,” Dante mumbles.
“Oh, fuck you,” I grumble, and shoot down my third drink. “I wouldn’t care if she found someone else,” I lie. I know I’m lying. I know that I would go crazy if another man so much as touched Kendall.
“You don’t mind anyone else touching her? Kissing her? Making-”
“Don’t,” I say, holding out my hand to stop him.
Dante laughs. “You’re in trouble, Camden, and not because you’re going after Barone.”
“Shut up,” I grumble, and Dante laughs again, and I hate him.
I hate him because he’s right, and now all I can think about is some possible future in which Kendall has my baby and has another man at her side. God, what if she gets married to someone else? What am I supposed to do? Stand there at the wedding with our child and grit my teeth and bear it?
Why do I even feel this way? I’ve always been a little territorial, but nothing like this. Is this what Dante’s talking about with Mia? Is it fate? Soulmates?
I’ve never believed in any of that. I can’t start believing it now.
Can I?