“No, it’s not okay,” Corrado replied. “This entire time I’ve been cutting you slack because you can’t get over whatever you shared with Haven, and now that she’s here, this is how you act? What’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong is she shouldn’t be here,” he gasped, still trying to catch his breath. “She’s going to get hurt. They’re all going to get hurt.”
“You’re avoiding them to keep them safe?” Corrado laughed bitterly. “Well, that’s . . . honorable, I suppose, but it’s also insulting. Do you honestly believe I won’t protect them? That I can’t? They’re my responsibility. Keeping them safe is my job. If I didn’t know Haven would be perfectly fine in your presence, she wouldn’t be here right now. If I thought you posed some danger to my wife, I wouldn’t let you within a hundred feet of her.”
Corrado paused as his phone rang again, to silence it once more. “Do you understand what I’m telling you?” he asked, continuing as if it never interrupted. “The odds of Haven dying in an accident are far greater than the odds of her being killed because of someone as trivial as you. Because that’s exactly what you are—insignificant. Do you get that? You’re nothing.”
He paused once more as his phone rang again, anger clouding his face at the sound, but this time he didn’t even bother to look at who was calling. “I have things to take care of. Go be with people who actually care about you. Don’t waste the chance. You never know when you might only have a few hours left to enjoy them.”
A chill ran the length of Carmine’s spine at his words. He stood there for a moment after Corrado left, trying to calm down, and bummed a cigarette from the first person that happened to stroll by. The smoke burned his lungs as he inhaled, the nicotine instantly soothing his frazzled nerves. He took a few quick puffs of the cheap generic menthol before tossing it onto the sidewalk and stamping it out.
The house was still noisy when he reentered, but the crowd from the living room had disbursed. He wandered through the downstairs and found Celia in the kitchen, surprise flickering across her face when she spotted him. “Hey, kiddo.”
“Hey,” he mumbled, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge. He desperately wanted a real drink, something hard and straight from a glass bottle, but he knew better than to pull out the alcohol there. “Is, uh . . . I mean, where . . . ?”
“She’s out back,” Celia said, knowing what he wanted without Carmine even getting it out.
“Thanks.” He headed for the back door, spotting them lounging on the old wicker lawn furniture as soon as he stepped outside. He strolled in their direction, suddenly nervous again, but it all faded away when Haven looked at him. A radiant smile lit up her face as her eyes sparkled. His heart nearly stilled at the sight.
It took everything Carmine had in him not to fall to his knees right then and there and beg her to always look at him that way. He wanted to plead with her to never stop loving him, for her to forgive him for everything he ever did wrong, even the shit she didn’t know about and never would. He wanted her to grant him absolution, to be his saving grace, to swear he was worthy of being saved. He never wanted her to be ashamed, and he sure as hell never wanted to see disappointment in her eyes. He wanted her to be proud, and at that moment, he wanted to swear he would do anything she ever asked of him to make it so.
But instead, he choked back the flood of emotion and kept his mouth shut as he grabbed a chair from the patio and joined them out on the lawn. He sat beside Dominic and directly across from Haven, his eyes fixated solely on her.
“Hey, bro,” Dominic said, slapping Carmine on the back. “Back already?”
He shrugged. ”I never left. I just went out for some air.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you went out for air,” Tess said sarcastically. “You smell like smoke. Go sit downwind from me. It reeks.”
“The wind isn’t even blowing, Tess,” he said. “Shut the fuck up.”
Haven’s soft voice captured his attention, an inquisitive look on her face. “You smoke?”
“Every now and then I’ll have one, but I don’t make a habit of it.”
“Speaking of habits . . .” Dominic motioned toward the bottle in Carmine’s hand. “Is that really water, bro? It’s not usually your beverage of choice.”
Carmine narrowed his eyes. “Yes, it’s water. Is it that hard to believe?”
“Well, yeah. The only clear liquid you’ve had to drink in a year is vodka.”
“Bullshit. You can’t say that when you haven’t even seen me much.”
“That’s because you’ve been drunk the entire time,” Tess chimed in, laughing humorlessly. “You probably wouldn’t even remember seeing us.”
“I don’t drink that much,” he retorted, knowing it was a lie the moment the words came out. He’d drunk himself unconscious more times than he could count. There were definite blank spots in his memory, entire days he couldn’t remember.
“Did you drink at all today?” Dia asked from her seat beside Haven.
“Yeah, where’s your flask?” Dominic asked. “Do you have it with you?”
Carmine dropped his gaze. The subject made him want a drink even worse than he already had. He started rubbing his neck absentmindedly, his anxiety growing. “What is this, an intervention?”
ook a deep breath and glanced at Carmine, their eyes connecting. “He probably thought he’d have to break his promise, but he didn’t, because he did exactly what he said he would. Now that I’m ready, he helped me find my way home. I just wish it hadn’t really been the last thing he did.”
A tear slid down her cheek as she stared into swirling deep green eyes that seemed to beckon to her. He opened his mouth like he was going to speak, but no sound escaped as he moved his lips. It didn’t matter, though, because she knew what he was trying to say.
Welcome home.