He looked back in the gym, noting Ginevra’s pace hadn’t changed. She focused, working through whatever nonsense was in her mind by making her body tired, and pushing it to its limits.
“Because I don’t like that,” Alessio added quieter, “I don’t like it when she’s upset, even if she doesn’t say that.”
“That’s a step forward, ain’t it?”
Alessio scowled. “Could you not?”
“I’m just saying.”
“Well, don’t.” Alessio sighed, shaking his head. “It bothers me she’s—”
“Hurting,” Corrado interjected, handing his plate over to the man, which Alessio took with a question in his stare. “You figured out what my problem has been these last three weeks.”
“What?”
“With you. Excuse me.”
Corrado left Alessio in the doorway, and entered the gym, still hungry but willing to put it off for a little while. He crossed the space, and jumped onto the treadmill beside Ginevra’s, turning it on and starting a pace good for a warmup.
She peeked over at him.
“Faster?” he asked.
Ginevra grinned, faint as it was. “Yeah, sure.”
Five minutes later, Alessio joined them, too. On the opposite side of Ginevra, he started the treadmill he preferred because he’d pre-programmed paces into it, from a slow jog, to a sprint, and then to a full run before switching all the way back again.
She didn’t want to talk.
Fine.
They would still be there.
They would still do this.
• • •
A month was a blink in time for Corrado, but especially when he wasn’t doing anything. Days melted into one another, turning into weeks, and then changing into a month before he even realized what had happened.
An entire month with the three of them sharing the same space. And hey, nobody had ripped anybody’s head off yet. He took that as a win.
Corrado only realized the date because his father said it in his ear, and he checked the calendar on his desk to confirm that Gian was correct. Surprise, he was.
“How is everything over there?” his father asked on the call.
“Better.”
Gian chuckled. “You know, I never realized how nosy I was until one of you five boys had something ... interesting going on in your personal lives.”
Corrado wasn’t stupid—that was his father’s sly way of asking about their situation. Mostly, his father allowed all his children their privacy and space.
Sometimes, though, he didn’t.
Like now.
“It’s a complicated thing,” Corrado said quietly, eyeing the open doorway of his office. Ginevra had been playing a game in the sitting room, and Alessio was in the gym again, beating the hell out of a punching bag. “But then again, it was a complicated thing before she ever showed up, too.”
“And delicate, I imagine.”
Corrado cleared his throat. “Yeah, that, too.”
“I’m sure you’ll get it figured out. You got that message from your mother, oui?”
“I did. She’s like you—elle est trop curieuse.”
He only got to speak French with his father, and Corrado tried to sneak it because he could. None of his brothers, except for Marcus, had picked up French from their father like he did. Just bits and pieces, but not enough for him to hold a proper conversation. He liked to use it when he could.
“She is not too curious, Corrado. That is not why she asked for lunch.”
“Right,” Corrado said fast before his father could make up another excuse for Cara, “not at all.”
“Maybe that’s the case, but she also gets whatever she wants, and what she wants right now is to spend time with—”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
Corrado’s head snapped up, and he found Ginevra standing in the office’s doorway. Her gaze drifted from him to the bookshelves lining the wall at the left of his desk.
“I’ll just give you a minute,” she said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“It’s fine,” Corrado told her, and then back on the call, “I will call you back, Papa, and yes, tomorrow is a go. Tell Ma.”
“Will do, son.”
Once Corrado had ended the call, he gave Ginevra his attention. She continued standing in the doorway not coming further into the room or moving away.
“You need something?”
She pointed at the bookshelves. “I picked out a book yesterday, but I didn’t take it with me. I hadn’t finished my other one, so ...”
Corrado nodded and gestured at the shelves. “Go ahead. This space is as much yours as it is ours while you’re here.”
She passed him a curious glance, but Corrado didn’t bother to ask what for. He figured it was better he talked like Ginevra had to share the same spaces he and Alessio did daily because it was true.
She belonged here.
With them.
They needed to figure it out, too.
Ginevra moved into the office, and crossed the space with quick, quiet steps. She bent down to pull a book from the third shelf, like she had known where she left it, and straightened back up with it in her hand, ready to leave.
Before she did, she flipped it open to the title page, and a soft noise of surprise escaped her. That gained Corrado’s attention again, but she wasn’t even looking at him. Instead, her focus was on the book in her grasp.
“Something wrong?”
Ginevra glanced up, a soft smile curving her cheeks. “No, I ... there’s a note here, is all.”
“Pardon?”
She turned the book around so that Corrado could see what she meant by a note. There, a yellow sticky note with familiar handwriting scrawled across it stuck to the page. He was unable to read what Alessio had written on the note, but he still recognized the bold cursive lettering.
Corrado felt his smirk growing. “From Les.”
She shrugged. “Seems so.”
“What does it say?”
“That I will like the second half more, and to skip the first,” she said, laughing. “He gave me the page numbers of his favorites, too. It’s another book of poetry—that’s all.”
Not at all something Corrado enjoyed.
Or appreciated.
Yet, Ginevra and Alessio shared that, and he found it fascinating. “Did you show him that book when you picked it out yesterday?”
“No, I came in and looked it over before putting it back.”
Right.
But those shelves ...
All those books.
They were Alessio’s. He’d picked every single one and decided where they should go on the shelves. He recognized them front to back because not a single book went into his library if he didn’t read it cover to cover. If one of those books moved, Alessio would know about it.
Which meant ...
He’d been watching for which books Ginevra picked out on her own.
“I’m sure it seems silly,” Ginevra said, rolling her eyes, “But ... it’s nice.”
He didn’t think it to be silly. No, he didn’t appreciate books and words and poetry like the two of them did, but he grasped what Alessio had done here.
“It means he likes you,” Corrado murmured.