[Dawn]
The sun sets by the time we realize we’ve been on the couch for an hour like this. Aldo is still tender in the ribs, and he groans slightly as he sits up.
I slide out and run to his fridge to find some ice or peas to press against his face. We’ve literally been sitting in silence while I stroked his hair and he lay in my arms.
The whole time I thought about telling him, but never did.
I come back, and he tries to get up. “No, back,” I command, pushing him with one finger.
He groans but doesn’t fight it. He even exhales a satisfied breath when I press the cold ice pack to his face. It turns out there’s barely anything in his fridge, and it turns out there’s barely anything in the freezer too. I was lucky to find the pack.
“He hits hard,” he says, finally talking of the fight. “I guess he’s just pissed off.”
“At what, though? Who’re these Russians? What’s the note?” I ask, intertwining my fingers and scratching nervously at my leg.
Aldo pauses for a few beats and then makes himself sit up again, against my wishes. “On the trip, do you remember when we stopped for lunch?”
“You asked Leandro about the Russians, remember?”
“Oh, yeah, sorry. I guess my head is a little rocked.” Aldo sits back again. His breaths are short, I can only guess that his ribs have been bruised or broken. I hope for the former.
“Well, the note is from some other family. I’d begun to think that after our drop off, and I always meant to ask him who he’d worked for up North. Now that he was feeling better, he was always in a more of a talking mood.
But I didn’t, I forgot. And then it came out when he was having a go at me. Turns out he’d been having us followed.”
“What?” the word shrieks out of my mouth in shock. “I mean, what?”
Aldo shakes his head. “I know. He denied it-the following, but he knew we’d been doing all this stuff together. Said he’d seen evidence of us at the restaurant, the beach, and the cafe.”
The words sound so foreign to my ears. My brother is hiring a private investigator?
Andre has never been one to get nosey, he’s always confronted a problem head on. “But why use it against us if he then denies it?”
Aldo shrugs. “Your guess is as good as mine. Either way, he was pissed that we didn’t tell him. It wasn’t the only thing we fought over. He seemed off anyway. Which is why I know he wasn’t being fully honest about the Russian thing.”
“How was he off?” I fold my arms now.
Of course my stupid ass brother is going to go and make a mountain of trouble.
But Aldo shrugs. “He’d been rereading some letters. I dunno.”
Aldo now looks at the tv and console that’ve been on the whole time. “Worst part is that he kept calling me a backstabber. He kept saying it was me ruining him, like all his problems are my fault.”
“That sounds like the Andre I know.”
“Yeah, but it pissed me off because this isn’t wrong.”
He turns toward me, the motion slow and deliberate, his face pale and bruised but his eyes steady and intense.
“I want to take care of you. I want to marry you. I would never consider what I’m doing backstabbing because all I want to do is love you.”
The room feels suddenly smaller, quieter, as his words hang in the air. My heart thuds loudly in my chest, and I feel warmth rush to my face. Of everything he’s just said, my stupid brain latches onto one word.
“You love…me?” I ask, my voice soft and almost fragile.
Aldo smiles faintly, his lips quirking despite the pain. “That’s all you heard?”
Heat floods my cheeks, and I grin nervously, knowing how red I must be. “Sorry. It’s just that no one’s ever said it to me before.”
His expression softens, and despite his injuries, he leans forward. The moment his lips meet mine, the world seems to fade.
His kiss is warm, tender, and unhurried, like he’s pouring every unsaid word into it.
“That’s what I told him, though,” he says softly when we pull apart.
“He was saying I was a backstabber, and I told him that this was not what I wanted. I wanted us to move forward with this. I wanted us to be stronger. I told him I loved you because-”
“I’m pregnant,” I blurt out. The words escape before I can stop them, loud and clumsy.
Aldo freezes, his body going completely still. His eyes widen, his eyebrows twitching in disbelief. “What?”
“I’m pregnant,” I repeat, more slowly and a hell of a lot quieter.
“W-when did this happen? When did you find out? How?”