Page 72 of Best Friend's Brother's Surprise Baby

I blink, surprised at everything that had gone down. “I’m awake now,” I tell her. “I’m okay, Aurora.”

“You’re not okay,” she sobs. “Your poor chest. Your poor heart.”

“It’s going to be okay,” I say with a smile. “You’ll take care of it.”

She sniffles. “What are you talking about?”

“I love you,” I burst out. I can’t hold it in any longer, not after what’s just happened. “I’m yours, Aurora. My heart and soul.”

Her brown eyes widen. “You...you don’t mean that. You’re just coming to, it’s the drugs—”

“It’s not the drugs,” I say, although they might be loosening my tongue, they’re not doing much for my pain. My chest feels like it’s been cracked open, and I guess it has.

“Just...save your strength, Nico. I’ll go get the doctor.”

She starts to get up and I grab her hand, wincing at the pain it causes me. She sits, staring at me, wide-eyed.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I’m sorry for everything.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” she insists.

“I have plenty to be sorry for,” I say firmly. “I didn’t want to change. I didn’t want to give up my playboy lifestyle, the wiseguy lifestyle, but when I found Marco Barone, I couldn’t stop.”

Aurora shushes me. “Don’t talk about that here,” she whispers.

I swallow, trying to clear my throat. It feels like something’s stuck in it, and I don’t know if it’s from the surgery or just from emotion.

I feel so much, now, when I’ve been pushing it down inside me my whole life. I feel so much that it hurts.

“I didn’t realize how much it was hurting you,” I say. “Not until Dante made me realize.”

“Dante?” she asks, as if she’s too curious for her own good, and I smile.

“Dante asked me what I would feel if you were with someone else,” I tell her. “I told him I wouldn’t care.”

Her face falls and I squeeze her hand.

“But that’s just it, don’t you see? I would caretoo much, Aurora. I lied to him. I lied to him because I couldn’t face my own feelings for you. I couldn’t face that things were changing within me.”

“You don’t have to say all this, Nico,” she warns.

“I want to,” I say. “I need to. I need to tell you that the only reason that I didn’t kiss you before I left to find Marco is because I thought If I did, I’d never leave you. I never want to leave you, Aurora. Not ever.”

“Nico, please,” she whispers. “I can’t have hope right now. I’m just happy that you’re alive. You don’t have to say all of this.”

I clutch at her hand, feeling myself lose consciousness. My vision keeps blurring.

The doctor comes in and I’m irritated, moving around.

“Mr. Andretti, you have to stay still,” the doctor pleads. “You have tubes in your chest and they can’t be moved.”

“He’s in pain,” Aurora says, seeing something on my face.

“No,” I say. “I don’t want any drugs.”

Aurora’s face is pleading with me. “Please, Nico. I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

I sigh heavily and then groan because it hurts in my chest so much.

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