When I’m just about to drift off to sleep, the sound of Mateo’s voice calls me back. “You’ll tell me if I’m wearing you down, right?”
Prying my eyes open, I look over at him. “You’re not going to wear me down.”
“But you’ll warn me if that changes.”
“Of course,” I assure him.
He nods, but I can see he’s not satisfied. Then he adds, “If you notice Mia is…”
I nod. “I’ll keep an eye out.”
“I don’t know if she’d tell me.”
“Probably not. But I don’t think she’ll get worn out. Like you said, it’s easier with both of us. I mean, not for me; I can handle you on my own, but for her. I can help both of you stabilize when your crazy-ass tornado love threatens to bring the house down. You guys just have to let me. Let me work my magic.”
“I’m not used to having an actual partner,” he tells me. “Beth and I didn’t have what you and I have. I’ve never had that before, not with anyone.”
I nod with feigned arrogance. “I’m one-of-a-kind.”
“You are,” he says seriously. “If you were anyone else, you wouldn’t have made it through this Mia thing.”
I shrug. “It’s a windy season. Not a big deal.”
“When everything settles, I’ll make it up to you.”
“No need,” I assure him. “I’m fine. Just do whatever you need to do and get this Mia shit straightened out so we can all settle in. That’s what I want.”
His gaze drifts toward the ceiling and he sighs. “I don’t know if I’m going to get what I want.”
Frowning slightly, I question, “The sister wife thing?”
“No.” He doesn’t go on right away, and it doesn’t seem like he’s going to, so I settle in to sleep. Baby Morelli is draining me, and now that I’ve finally had sex, I just want to sleep. So of course now, when I just want to sleep, he feels like sharing. “I wanted to know that I could fix it. No matter what I did to break it, I just wanted to know that she was wrong and I could put it back together.”
“Why? I mean, wouldn’t it be so much easier to just… not break it in the first place?”
“I don’t always know when I’m breaking something.” He turns his head to look at me, to meet my gaze. “I broke things with Beth. Not like this, not like I did with Mia, not on purpose, not by doing any one thing. I just wore on her. We were together for years, and she loved me in the beginning. She was completely in love with me the way Mia was.” Shaking his head slightly, he said, “And then one day she couldn’t anymore. I tried to make her fall back in love with me. I used every trick I had; I used sincerity, logic—you name it, I tried it. I exhausted my arsenal, and I couldn’t win her back. I failed so spectacularly that she tried to get me arrested. She was that desperate to leave me, and… I don’t know why.”
I curl up against him, wanting to offer comfort. I know how much it frustrates Mateo not to understand things. It’s his least favorite thing in the world. “Mia isn’t Beth. She’s just hurting right now, but she will love you again. I’ll make her.”
Smiling slightly, he says, “If I can’t, how can you?”
Rolling my eyes, I tease, “I got you, didn’t I? I’ve got game; I can reel her in.”
“I just really wanted her to be wrong.”
I consider his desire for a moment, cross-referencing it with what I know about Mia. After a minute, since sleep obviously isn’t happening until I solve this, I come up with something. “If you would’ve broken things with Mia by accident, the way you did with Beth, you could’ve won her back. Mia is made of love. It’s in the fabric of her DNA. She wants to forgive. She wants to accept and love and move on. But you didn’t just hurt her, and you definitely didn’t do it by accident. I can tell you from personal experience, it’s a hell of a lot harder to forgive you for something you do to someone else than something you do to me. If Mia would’ve fallen out of love with you over time or you would’ve hurt her by accident, she would’ve come back to you. But what you did to her was intentional and cruel. That’s a different thing. It made her feel unimportant to you.”
“That’s insane,” he replies. “Obviously she’s important to me or I wouldn’t have done all this in the first place. She knows who I am. She knows I play dirty.”
I nod, giving him that, but reframing it for him. “You’re right, she does. And I’m sure it’s part of what she likes about you. But even when you’re getting your villain on, you’re supposed to be her villain. You’re supposed to set the world on fire for her, not set her world on fire. She didn’t want Vince to die. She begged for your help, and you didn’t hear her. Women need to be heard.”