I closed my eyes to absorb the beauty of having a home, a man and a family for the first time in my life before I looked down at Cosima. She was staring up at me with pride and satisfaction.
“You just successfully distracted me,” I admitted.
She smiled. “Good. You deserve this, Elle. Mama will come around, especially when she hears that you are pregnant. Her first grandbaby? She will be at the door in a second.”
“I would rather you didn’t tell her,” I said.
Sinclair and I had talked about it and I didn’t want the world to know yet. We weren’t that far along and more, I didn’t want to take Mama away from Elena. She needed someone in her corner that was assuredly not in mine, and I wasn’t ready to take that away from her yet.
“You are too good to her,” Cosima said, understanding.
I flinched. “I don’t know how you can say that, knowing that I cheated with Sinclair.”
Her eyes glazed over with painful memories as she tipped her head up slightly to look at Alexander who sat with her feet in his lap at the end of the couch. He had picked up one of the baby books that littered our new glass coffee table and he seemed completely absorbed in it.
“I encouraged you to go for it when you asked for my advice back in Cabo and even knowing that it was my other sister you were hurting, I wouldn’t have advised you any other way. I’ve known Sinclair longer than both of you and I have never seen him like that,” she said, pointing over at my Frenchman as he laughed loudly with Richard and Candy.
He caught my eye and winked.
I beamed back at him.
“See?” she said softly. “That is exactly why I do not begrudge you the affair or the secrets you kept from us for so long. Not only because you have that unspeakably epic kind of love with Sin, but also because, as you now know, I’ve kept my own secrets too.”
She sighed deeply and bit her lip before continuing, “I have to go away for a while now, bambina, and I cannot say where I am going or for how long. I need you to be okay with that.”
“I’m not,” I said immediately.
“Well, then, I’ll just disappear.”
“That’s what you are saying that you are going to do anyway,” I pointed out.
She stared at me with those beautifully intense golden eyes until I was lulled by them. “You need to trust that I’m doing what I need to do to be happy, to be better.”
I slid a glance over at Alexander. “Does it have anything to do with him?”
“Yes. I know you don’t understand but Xan is a huge part of my life. I would do anything for him just as you would do anything for Sin.”
I closed my eyes, overcome with worry. “What do you want me to say to that Cosi? That I am okay with you disappearing with a man that I don’t know anything about except maybe for the fact that he likes to seriously cause you pain?”
“I know that you and Sin don’t exactly have a normal relationship,” she pointed out with flashing eyes.
“He would never leave deep purple welts on my wrists,” I countered.
Cosima lay stiff as a board in my lap but her voice was soft, pleading as she said, “You won’t see me again after tonight for a while. I’m not even telling Sebastian.”
“He wouldn’t let you go,” I interjected.
“No, he wouldn’t because he can’t understand. I thought, hoped, that you would at least try to,” she said.
I sighed heavily because there was nothing else I could do. Cosima was her own woman and she would do what she wanted.
“Okay,” I said. “As long as you can promise me that you’ll be happy wherever you go and that eventually at least, you’ll come back to us.”
“I promise,” she said solemnly, turning her cheek so that she could kiss that hand that I rested at her hairline. “Thank you, Gigi.”
I leaned down to press a kiss to her forehead, as there was a knock on the door. Sinclair and I locked eyes before he got up to answer it but we both had a bad feeling about who may be on the other side.
We were right.
“You fucking adulterer,” Elena screamed as soon as the door was open.
I closed my eyes for a brief second to gather my wits before I gently pushed Cosima’s head off my lap and scurried to the door to be by Sinclair’s side.
Elena’s red face turned to me and she shrieked so fiercely that spittle flew across my face. “You are the biggest bitch I have ever met! I cannot believe you are my sister, you spiteful, hateful shrew. You think that you can just take whatever you want, don’t you? First you take all of Mama and the twin’s affection because you are so fucking fragile and pathetic that they need to waste all their time taking care of you.”