Page 189 of Cara & Gian: The Guzzi Duet

“Don’t look forward to doing that too much, Gian.”

“I love you. The rest doesn’t matter.”

“It matters,” she argued, “to me.”

“The details matter to you. The details aren’t us in the grand scheme.”

“We’re part of the details, whether you want to admit it or not.”

“Cara—”

“Yeah, I know,” she mumbled when he kissed her cheek. “You’re impossible.”

“I am,” he willfully, and happily, admitted. “More so when it comes to you.”

That didn’t mean that Gian was stupid, of course. He knew there was a lot that had been left unsaid between them. There were details of his life and his marriage that bothered Cara on a moral and ethical level. She didn’t want to be the other woman in his life, but his only woman. He knew these were all things that would somehow need to be dealt with, but he believed—stupidly, maybe—that because he loved her, and he knew that she loved him, it would work itself out.

It had to.

Gian only noticed the guard approaching when the man was just a few steps away from the table. “My apologies.”

The guard gave a short nod. “Hands in view, Guzzi.”

Gian put his hands on the table, and moved an inch or two away from Cara. She frowned at the guard, as the man walked back to his previous post.

Before either of them could talk again, Dom had stepped up to the table, and cleared his throat. “We’ve only got a few more minutes left, Gian.”

“Oh,” Cara said, looking to Gian. “Well, I’ll step out into the waiting area, and let your brother sit and chat for a minute.”

“You don’t have to do—”

“Sure I do, he’s your brother.”

Cara gave Gian another quick kiss before she left the table. Dom offered her a strained, awkward smile as she passed him by. Gian waited until Cara was gone completely before he turned his attention on his brother.

“You’re here every week,” Gian grumbled. “I get ten minutes with her and you interrupt me. Why?”

“I always have people with me,” Dom said like it was obvious. “I never get the chance to chat with you privately. Now seems like a good time.”

Gian grinded his teeth, irritated with Dom’s justification. “What do you want to chat about?”

“How do you know you can trust her?”

“Who?”

“That woman. Cara.”

“Because I just do, Dom. That’s how.”

“So, she says she’s pregnant, that it’s your child, and you just believe her, no questions asked?”

“I’m trying really hard right now not to get pissed off at you, but you’re making it difficult.”

“Why, because I’m asking you hard questions?” Dom asked.

“No, because you question her, asshole.” Gian looked back in the way Cara had gone, wishing she had stayed right where she was instead. “You question the motives and morals of a woman who you don’t know from a hole in the ground. You question her actions and her behavior with me because of me, Dom, because of the choices I made. You’re so easily willing to think ill of her because I love her, not because she’s done anything to deserve it. That’s why you’re pissing me off. It has fuck all to do with me, and everything to do with her.”

“You said yourself that it’d been three months since you two were together. Then what, one night does the trick?”