She Promised a Crying Girl Her Dying Puppy Would Live — Then Her Mafia Boss Father Kept Returning at Midnight and Stole Her Heart

Chapter 7

The dinner was at a small Italian place Matteo swore had the best gnocchi in the city, and it did, and he watched her eat it with a fondness that made her blush into her wineglass.

“The gnocchi is very good,” she said, for the fourth time.

“You’ve said that,” he said, and his eyes were laughing.

“Because it keeps being true.”

He told her about his grandmother, who still called him by a childhood nickname that made his face soften. He told her about the year he’d spent in Sicily as a boy, about the olive trees and the sea and the feeling of being somewhere the world’s weight didn’t reach. And she told him about the stray cat she’d adopted in veterinary school, about the first dog she’d ever saved, about the night she’d opened Haven and sat alone in the dark waiting room, terrified no one would ever come through the door.

“I was right to be terrified,” she said. “No one came for a week. Then a woman brought in a hamster with a broken leg, and I nearly cried with relief.”

“You cried?”

“I may have shed a single tear into the hamster’s water dish.”

Matteo laughed — a real, full sound that lit up the whole dangerous architecture of his face. June decided then that she wanted to make him laugh for the rest of her life.

They walked after dinner. The city was soft and gold, and he took her hand, and it fit there like it had always been meant to. “Giulia asked me about you tonight,” he said. “She wanted to know if you were going to be her new mommy.”

June’s step faltered. “What did you tell her?”

“I told her that’s a big question for a man to answer.” He stopped, turned to face her. “And then I told her the truth: that I hope so. Someday. If her new mommy will have us.”

June stood in the middle of the sidewalk, the city flowing around them like a river around a stone, and she felt something enormous and inevitable rise in her chest.

“I will,” she said. “I’ll have you. Both of you.” She laughed, a little wild, a lot terrified. “I don’t know how your life works, Matteo. I don’t know how to be the woman who lives next to all those wolves. But I know I don’t want to spend another night wondering what it would be like to be loved by a man who brings coffee to a vet at three in the morning.”

He kissed her then, on the sidewalk, with the city watching — a kiss that tasted like olive oil and sea air and the beginning of something that would not, could not, end.