“Do you hate me?” she said, looking straight at him so there was no confusion who he thought she was talking to.
Luca shook his head as if in shock. “Of course not. Why would you think that?”
“It’s okay if you do. I wouldn’t hold it against you, but I want to know before I decide to do this.”
“I don’t hate you, Sofia. How could I? You’ve never given me a reason to.”
The waiter brought over another vodka water for her without her even asking and she thanked him and took a drink while considering what to say next.
“I might hate me if I were you. When your dad had an affair with my mother, you were older than Micah. I know neither of us had anything to do with the decisions they made, but you seem to always have a chip on your shoulder when I’m around. What Bella and Jenny tell me about you doesn’t coincide with the person I see. They tell me you are kind and generous, that you would do anything to protect them and keep them happy, but you can barely look at me. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life being blamed for something I didn’t do, and I certainly don’t want to be in business with someone who doesn’t like me.”
He leaned forward and closed his eyes while he ran his fingers through his hair. When he looked back up at her, it was as if some wall he had in place had come down. “I’m sorry. This has been a lot harder for me than it has been for everyone else. But I don’t hate you, Sofia. I hate my father and what he did to both of our mothers. I hate everything that happened to you because of it. I can’t explain it, but I feel guilty about it all. What you went through growing up was awful, and yet no better or worse than our life. At least we had each other, though. Micah, Dante and his two best friends were my world when I was a kid. When shit went bad, I had them and you had no one. Now I’ve done a terrible job of welcoming you to the family. I don’t hate you. Whatever you see is just me dealing with my own shit.”
She could certainly relate to that. She spent most of her life pushing other people away because she couldn’t deal with her own shit. The only person she hadn’t wanted to push away was Ozzie. The same man who not only hopped on a plane to New York City with her, but he had rocked her world last night. She looked up because it seemed her thoughts caused him to materialize. He was there, standing by the hostess desk, giving her the space she needed to finish with her brothers. It was getting late, and they’d spent more time there than she had thought.
“Okay, I’ll sign.”
She began initialing and signing everywhere her name occurred. By the time she had finished, she could feel Ozzie’s presence behind her.
His warm hand fell to her shoulder as he asked, “Everything okay here?”
“Yeah, we were just finishing up,” she said, smiling up at him, then back at her brothers. For the first time in a while, she had hoped that maybe, just maybe, things were turning around for her.