I want my mother's husband

"Your mother is dead, Nyx. You need to come home."The words were the last thing I expected to hear while elbow-deep in someone else's dirty espresso cups, my third shift of the day barely halfway done. I stood there in the back of the café, trying to process what my mother's lawyer had just said.Dead? My mother was dead? "Miss Torelio? Are you still there?"I realized I hadn't responded or even breathed. "When?" My voice came out flat. "Three days ago, it was a quick heart attack."Three days. She'd been dead for three days and I was just finding out now because I'd been too busy chasing a dream that was slowly starving me to death in this expensive city that didn't care if I lived or died. "The funeral is tomorrow," the lawyer continued. "And there's the matter of the restaurant. She left it to you." The restaurant was a tiny, rundown place in Sicily that barely made enough to keep the lights on. My mother had poured her life into that restaurant after my father died, and n

"Stop looking at me like that." Gus's words cut through the quiet of the restaurant kitchen where we'd been working side by side for the past hour, me prepping tomorrow's sauce while he replaced something else in the kitchen. It has been three weeks since I'd arrived in Sicily, three weeks of this dance we were doing, pretending the tension between us didn't exist. I looked up from the tomatoes I was crushing, meeting his eyes across the kitchen. "Like what?" "Like you're trying to figure out something about me." "Maybe I am." I went back to my work, my hands moving automatically. "You show up here every day, fix things and refuse to let me pay you. Normal people don't do that." "Who says I'm normal?" He shrugged "Exactly my point." He huffed something that might have been a laugh and returned to scraping grout. We fell into comfortable silence that should have felt wrong between a stepdaughter and her mother's husband but somehow didn't. I'd stopped trying to hate hi

"Nyx, baby, please just hear me out." The voice came from behind me while I was locking up the restaurant days later, I didn't need to turn around to know who it was. Sven. I turned slowly, keeping the door at my back. "What are you doing here?" "I came to apologize." He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender, flowers dangling from one. "I know showing up like this is crazy, but you weren't answering my calls or texts. I needed to see you face to face." "I wasn't answering because I have nothing to say to you." "But I have things to say to you." He took a step closer and I fought the urge to back into the door. "I've changed, Nyx. I've been seeing a therapist, working through my issues. I realize now how badly I treated you and I want to make it right." "How did you even find me?" I asked. "I have my ways." He smiled like this was charming instead of disturbing. "Anna posted a photo from that café the other day. You were in the background." The fact that he'd

Since that night, Gus made himself scarce. And gradually, whatever fragile fantasy I had built around him began to wane. Or at least, I told myself it did. Instead, I shifted my focus on Sven. Yes,Sven. After helping with my panic attack like he had done in the past. We smooth things over. I don't completely trust him but being with him was safer for me than my infatuation to Gus. I tossed a grape at Anne, when she wouldn't stop talking about my stepfather. "What!" She snapped and glared at me when the fruit plops on her nose then her top. "you're supposed to be helping me with these hire flyers not fangirling over the town's handyman." I shrugged popping a grape in my mouth. "It's not appropriate for you for you to talk about him like that." Marco says slowly taking a sip of his cola. "What's not appropriate," Anne defended stubbornly. "is Gus being so fine and you expect me to be blind not to appreciate it." I rolled my eyes. "I just want to know how his lips