Page 75 of Mafia Toy

My eyes widened. “Sage, I’m being serious.”

“Me too.”

“My art in the auction?” I said, shaking my head. “Nobody would buy it.”

“I would,” Sage and Constantino said at the same time.

Butterflies bubbled up in my stomach, my cheeks flushing red. Sage bit back a giggle and glanced at my husband, blushing. He looked over and smiled at her, and my heart fucking jumped in my chest.

I didn’t understand why my body reacted this way when they were together, but it made me so happy to see Constantino relaxed. When we were in New York, everything was always so tense. He barely smiled.

“So, why foster care?” Sage asked.

“What?”

“Why do you want to support children in foster care?”

I had never told anyone, except Constantino, the real reason I wanted a family and to support that kind of charity, not even Bethany. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her with the information, but I didn’t want the entire family to know that I had been in foster care, being handed off from one family to the next.

Never having a stable place to live or people who loved me.

But if she was going to be with us forever, if she was going to have our child, then … she would have to find out sooner or later. She would have to know why I acted the way I did sometimes around her and my friends. She would have to know the way I had grown up.

“I, um …” I glanced over at Constantino. “I was in foster care for a long time, growing up, and never had a family.” I paused and stared down at my food, not wanting to tell her everything, but all my problems fed into each other. “I hate the thought of anyone leaving me.”

We stared at each other for a long time, and then she placed down her fork and set her hand over mine.

“I’m not going to leave you,” she whispered.

But that was what everyone said before they left. That was what everyone said before they broke your heart. Every foster parent had crouched down in front of me as they picked me up and told me that they wouldn’t leave me. They put on a big show.

And then they had hurt me.

“Don’t say that,” I murmured.

Sage furrowed her brow and glanced at Constantino. I hadn’t meant the words literally, just the meaning behind them. But I felt like the biggest bitch after the words tumbled out of my mouth. I was sure Sage probably thought I was crazy, too, for asking her to stay with us and then telling her not to.

“I don’t mean it like that,” I said. “But everyone has said that to me before they walked away.”

She leaned forward. “As long as you want me around, I will stay.”

But did that mean forever? Would she stay forever, even after she asked if she could have a boyfriend the other day? I feared she was already getting tired of my craziness, of my indecisiveness.

“I never had a chance to apologize,” I said. “For the way I acted with Bethany that night.”

“Please leave her out of our dinner,” Constantino said, clenching his jaw.

I stared at Sage, feeling so utterly heartbroken and angry with myself for what I had done that night. I still thought about it nightly, how I had almost screwed something amazing up with Sage because of her.

“That’s why I left with Bethany that night,” I whispered, my chest tightening as I relived the moment. My stomach had been so tight that I felt like I would puke, my heart racing. “I didn’t want her to hate me, but I … I’m working on being better. So, please be patient with me.”

While I would try hard to be better, I couldn’t change myself overnight. Nobody could.

It had taken decades for me to find someone who loved me for me, searching and hoping that I would be loved, only to have my heart broken every single time. I couldn’t unlearn all that trauma within a day, not even a couple of weeks.

But I feared that if I didn’t tell her now, I would make a horrible mistake in the future while I tried to please everyone. I feared that I would do something stupid that Sage would never forgive me for, something so much worse than ditching her for dinner.

44

---