16
Iknew there was something off about him as soon as I got out of bed that morning. Maybe it was wifely intuition or maybe I was just getting to know him well enough that he couldn’t hide his feelings from me as efficiently as he used to be able to, but I could tell there was something amiss from the second I laid eyes on him that morning.
I had tried my best to ignore it as the day had gone on. I had so much to focus on, what with getting Jolene to the house and making sure I was gathered and ready for a whole day with his family. Hell, more than that, our families were really meeting each other for the first time. What little there was of mine was coming together with the enormity of his, and I couldn’t have been more excited. It would do Jolene so much good to have some other family around her, and when I saw that his grandmother had already put in a wheelchair ramp, I laid my hand on my chest and had to fight back tears, I was so touched at the gesture.
“Stop standing around,” Jolene had scolded me playfully when she spotted me getting misty-eyed over the ramp. “I want to see inside this place.”
Kristo hung back for a moment, but his grandmother chased him out of the van, and we all headed up into the house together. He touched his hand to the small of my back, a silent apology for how he’d been all day, but he didn’t get any better.
But it was easy to forget about that when we had the whole family to meet. Cleo wasn’t there, but there were some cousins and some in-laws and various other family members filling up the whole house, some of whom even I hadn’t met. I couldn’t help but feel this twinge of jealousy, knowing that Kristo had all this right here for the taking for himself, but I couldn’t get mad at him. I wouldn’t wish what Jolene and I had been through with the loss of our parents on anyone, and I was glad he had this solid support system around him. They clearly all adored him, and they treated us as though we were royalty, running to get anything Jolene even hinted at needing and wheeling her carefully around the whole house so she could see everything.
But the whole time, Kristo seemed reserved, up in his own head.
“What’s wrong?” I asked quietly as soon as we got a moment to ourselves, and he shook his head and waved his hand.
“Nothing,” he assured me. “Enjoy the day, really. Don’t let me distract you.”
And I took him at his word, even though that was hard. Despite everything I’d told myself about not getting feelings for this guy, I still wanted him to be happy, and I couldn’t figure out how in the hell I could make him happy right about now.
But then his father and Karen arrived, and I saw the way his shoulders drooped and his whole demeanor seemed to change in an instant. He looked as though he’d been punched in the gut. Fuck, did he really hate his father’s wife that much? Karen held her arms out to me and planted a kiss on each cheek, a big dramatic mwah-mwah.
“And I hear your sister is here today!” she exclaimed excitedly. She was a sweet woman, that much was clear, and even if I wasn’t certain what she saw in Kristo’s father, I appreciated the fact that she had always made me feel like part of the family.
“Yeah, that’s right.” I nodded as Jolene emerged back into the kitchen where Nonna had been conducting a full tour of the house for her.
I introduced them, and I glanced over as Kristo spoke to his father. I could see the way he’d tensed up as though he wanted to be anywhere but in that conversation. So I decided to do the wifely thing and intervene in the hopes of acting as a buffer between him and his father.
“Hi.” I grinned at my father-in-law and took Kristo’s hand. “I can’t have you stealing my husband away for the whole day, right?”
“Of course not,” he agreed, voice warm as soon as it was turned on me. “But I need to borrow him for a few minutes. We need to speak in private. Son?”
Kristo shot me a look that told me he knew what I was trying to do and appreciated it, but for the time being, he was going to have to take this bullet and spend some time alone with his father. I kissed him on the cheek, just briefly, inhaling the scent of his familiar aftershave and letting it soothe me.
I turned back to the rest of the room, and before I could say a word, Nonna clapped her hands together.
“I think it’s time we laid out lunch,” she announced, and like that, the room exploded into a flurry of activity as everyone did what they could to help out and lay the spread for the meal on the dining table. I found Jolene, and she squeezed my hand as we headed through to help out, letting me know she was doing fine. She always did in situations like this one. She was much better at socializing than me, sharp and funny and bold, and I could see that everyone loved her already.
We took our seats around the table, and the conversation picked up, people talking over each other and laughing and passing dishes around the table. I kept glancing at the door, aware that Kristo and his father hadn’t returned yet, but eventually, I had to focus my attention on what was happening right in front of me. Everyone here had gone to so much effort, and the least I could do was appreciate that. I could practically hear my own mother in my ear, scolding me for not being more sociable.
I focused in on the conversation, and before I knew it, I was caught up and enjoying myself. They were so friendly, a little crazy, sure, but then what family wasn’t? I would have taken any amount of wildness over dealing with the fact that my family was gone for good, that I would never be able to bring Kristo to meet them the way he had introduced me to the people close to him. I tried to ignore the sting in my stomach at the memory of that, and I glanced over at Jolene and saw her eyes misting slightly and wondered if the same thing was going through her mind.
We ate, and I enjoyed myself, and it really began to sink in that I would be doing this for the next year—well, ten months now, but there would be dozens of these Sunday afternoon lunches to contend with as long as I was married to him. And I already felt like part of the family for the first time in a long time. I was going to miss them when it came time to leave. Maybe they would like me enough that they would see reason to stick around? But then, that would defeat the whole point and go against everything Kristo had gotten into this arrangement for in the first place. This had all started because he didn’t want a real wife, and I had to keep reminding myself of that. I had fallen asleep next to him the night before, and I had found those feelings swelling once more, the ones that told me something was wrong, that my desire for him ran deeper than I wanted it to.
Soon enough, lunch was done, Kristo and his father joining us to scavenge the last of it and then help us clean up. Kristo barely said a word to anyone, and he seemed utterly and completely lost to whatever was going on in his head. Part of me wanted to shake that loose, but I knew I had to let him come to me on his own. If I had found out anything after being married to him for this long, it was that trying to get him to do what he didn’t want was only going to end badly.
“This has been amazing.” Jolene hugged Nonna as the day drew to a close. “I’m going to come back and visit soon.”
“We’re already looking forward to it.” She brushed Jolene’s hair back from her face and cupped her chin in a display of tenderness I would never have credited a woman of her nature to be capable of. Jolene grinned, and I felt my heart swell once more. It was good to see my sister so well-loved, so comfortable.
We said our goodbyes and put Jolene back into the van and drove back down to the home where we would be dropping her off. Kristo was still quiet, but I focused on spending a little more time with my sister and gave him some space. He probably just needed time to himself after that day with everything all at once. He was a solitary kind of guy, and that must have been something close to hell for him.
Jolene was back in her room after giving Kristo a big hug that made his face light up for a moment, and then we were back in the car as Kristo drove us back to the apartment. I watched him, the way the light played on his face as we made our way back to the city, but I couldn’t get a read on him. His jaw was set tight and his eyes focused on the road, and he didn’t seem to realize I was waiting for him to talk to me, to tell me what the hell had been going on all day.
We arrived back at the apartment, and I followed him back up there and tried not to think about that morning when he had helped me with the briki. He had been so sweet, so understanding, the way our hands had touched as he’d guided me making my heart sing with excitement. But now it was like someone had flipped a switch deep inside of him and turned him off, and I couldn’t figure out why.
I was planning on giving him some space and letting him catch his breath and get his head straight, but he made his way straight to the bedroom and half-turned his head to look at me.
“I’m going to bed,” he muttered, and he lingered for a moment longer as though something else was on his mind. Our eyes met briefly, and I saw a flash of pain in them that made my brain zing with upset. And then he turned and headed into the bedroom, leaving me standing there staring after him.