Page 43 of Falling for Mr. October

“I wouldn’t say you haven’t done anything. You’re here. That counts.”

There is that. And it looks like I’ll be sticking around awhile, so long as Nonna is agreeable.

Maybe Bianca didn’t intentionally take me out tonight to try to strong-arm me into staying, but that’s what’s happened. Because I can’t leave her now, not like this. Not if she needs me.

I swallow against a dry throat. “You wish Miles had told you.”

“Of course.”

“You know him. He wants to get it all sorted out on his own. He’d prefer to tell you after the fact. He doesn’t like it when things get too serious.”

“So he’s like you,” she says, layering her hand over my arm.

She probably didn’t mean it as a dig, but it feels like one. Didn’t Janine tell me the same thing, more or less?

“I don’t have a problem with serious,” I say, my voice tight.

“You use humor as deflection.”

“I take this situation very seriously, Bianca. I destroyed my life. My grandmother’s life. I hurt her.”

She shifts so her face is closer to mine. “You didn’t destroy anything. Our grandmothers are happy to be together, and maybe it never would have happened without all of this. Your life isn’t over, Giovanni. It’s only changing.”

I know she just said something worth listening to, something I’ll think through later, but I murmur, “So maybe I’m not so good with change.”

“But you do make very good eggplant parmigiana. I would have enjoyed watching you make it.”

“I kept my shirt on.”

She angles her head toward me, her bangs slipping loose again, which makes her scrunch her nose. “Too bad.”

I sweep the hair from her face, but I want to do more. I want to do a whole lot more.

Here’s the honest-to-God truth: I want to kiss my friend’s sister again, and I sure as shit would like to do a better job of it. I want to banish her memory of that other kiss, or maybe make it into something good.

We were each other’s first kiss, and now we have this…

But I also know it would feel like a mistake in the light of day. Another instance of me stirring up shit and making trouble where there was none. Besides, Bianca has never shown the slightest interest in me until tonight.

So instead of nesting my hand in her soft dark hair and leaning in to claim those lips that have been driving me crazy all night, I lift the white box containing my crown and the apple.

“Are you ready to eat this apple’s face?” I ask.

She must know I’m doing exactly what she accused me of—deflecting attention from a serious situation with humor.

Still, she throws me a bone. “Of course. We’re going to destroy the little bastard.”

I pull the apple out of the box and hold it out to her by the stick. She places her hand over mine and takes a bite, taking out one of Sir Gala-Head’s staring eyes. She releases me, and I watch her with fascination.

“Did it taste like victory?” I ask when she finishes chewing.

Her smile makes me wish I were the apple and she were taking a bite out of me. “It tastes like it’s been left under that counter for at least a week. Why don’t you give it a try?”

Laughing, I shake my head and lower the apple. “That’s a terrible sales pitch.”

“A bad candy apple is still pretty good.” She lifts my hand, which is still wrapped around the apple’s stick, and takes another bite, her eyes on me. Suddenly, all the blood in my body shifts south.

“Bianca…”