I told Angelo to go on to breakfast without me. I needed to take a shower and wake up some, I explained.

I also needed to shake off the horrible visions that just rampaged my mind.

It wasn’t like they were anything new, really. Just another repeat of the day my parents were murdered. But this time had I not only not known it was a dream, I was also frozen solid behind the false wall, unable to move, unable to breathe. I just stood there, a deer in headlights as one of the men slowly turned in my direction and walked towards me.

I woke up the second before the man ripped away the false wall and discovered me.

But even in a bed in Chicago, hundreds of miles away and ten years later, I still saw my parents laying in a pool of blood.

I turned on the shower as hot as I could stand and immersed myself in the spray. Angelo was right. I needed to be in therapy. No one could live like this. Not only was I cheating myself of a chance at happiness, I was hurting him. How could he be really satisfied with a girlfriend always twenty seconds away from completely losing her shit?

He deserved better than that.

I turned off the shower head and grabbed my towel from the top of the rod. After ringing water from my hair, I wrapped the fluffy towel around me and stepped onto the mat.

“Nice ass.”

I yelped and jumped. “Sophia! Jesus… You scared me.”

She grinned from her perch on the long sink. “Sorry.”

I grabbed a second towel and rubbed it on my head. “And you can’t even see my ass.”

“I know, but that was the line I had prepared. I didn’t expect you to come out of there with a towel on.”

“Why are you creeping into my room?”

Her face grew serious. “I had to talk to you alone. You know who it’s about.”

“Uh oh.”

“Yeah.”

“She’s practically family.”

“She may be practically family, but you and I are real family. The only real family we have, and...”

“I get the idea.”

I went into the bedroom to pull some clothes from my suitcase.

Sophia followed. “Dominic told me about Lia.” She plopped down on the unmade bed.

I pulled on some jeans and a V-neck shirt. “Yeah, she basically thinks I’m a golddigger.”

Sophia threw her hands up. “That doesn’t even make sense! You have your own money.”

I looked pointedly at her. “Please just leave it alone. I’ve already had to tell Angelo to drop it.”

Sophia crossed her arms. “So what, then? You’re just going to take this shit from her?”

I froze, my hands halfway finished zipping up my pants.

Good question.

I couldn’t to resign myself to bad blood between Lia and me. It wasn’t right. We had no history that I could remember. Plus, she was Angelo’s sister, and he and I would hopefully be connected for the rest of our lives.

If I didn’t make my own effort to fix things between us, family gatherings were only going to get more and more strained.

“I’ll take care of it,” I told Soph.

I cornered Lia after breakfast by following her to the basement game room, a place I hadn’t even known existed. She was following Tre and Franko down there for some air hockey when I caught her on the stairs.

“Hey Lia...”

She turned and coolly looked at me, her hair sweeping across her shoulder. Standing like that, one hip cocked and two eyes steely, she reminded me of the mean girls in high school.

For all I knew that stereotype could have actually been Lia, but I still didn’t remember high school too well so could only make guesses.

I gulped and took a couple steps towards her. My heart beat in my throat. There was no reason to be afraid of her, and yet I was.

Well, not really afraid of her… more like hurt by her. The fact that she thought I wasn’t good enough for Angelo stung horribly.

I wanted to show her I wasn’t who she thought I was, and I also hated that I so desperately felt a need to prove myself to her.

She turned her heart shaped face up at me in bored expectation.

I licked my lips and summoned the courage to go on. “I was thinking that you might like to go out for a bit… just the two of us.”

She kept staring at me, the only thing happening was the blinking of her eyes and the slipping away of my nerve.

Just when I was about to tell her to forget all about the offer, she responded. “Okay. Sure.”

“Oh… Uh, great.”

“I need to go pick something up for mom. At this coffee shop.” She stomped past me, not looking at me once. “Let’s go in my car.”

I followed after her, texting Angelo where I was headed on the way.

The garage contained spaces for at least six cars. Lia took us to a black Chevy Suburban at the end. My nervousness still getting the best of me, I buckled in and waited as she drove the car out into the freshly fallen snow.

“Is this for a present?” I asked after a while, making my question the first thing spoken since we stood on the stairs.

“Yeah.”

“Oh, nice. What are you getting there?”

“Coffee,” came her clipped response.

Coffee at a coffee shop.

The small talk on the rest of the ride was incredibly forced. Though I kept reassembling new ways of raising the topic between us, in the end whenever I opened my mouth it was either to talk about snow, how great the Christmas tree was, or how much I liked that it had finally snowed—that last one being a poorly veiled re-hashing of the first conversation.

By the time we pulled up to a coffee shop in a house, I was wondering why Lia even agreed to hang out with me. She didn’t seem interested in talking or indirectly bashing me. It felt like she was mostly just putting up with me.

We unbuckled ourselves and stepped down into the still soft snow. The coffee shop, further away from the city than the Salvatore house, was nestled between a row of houses and a recreation center.

I shoved my hands into my coat pockets and followed Lia up the wooden steps.

Once we entered the door into the shop it became obvious why Lia wanted to come to this particular place. Long bins of coffee beans lined on wall, dozens and dozens of different kinds boasting differing roast levels, countries of origin, and taste factors.

Lia went right up to the paper bags, grabbed one, and started scooping beans into its depths. I eyed the rest of the open-air shop. What had once been a house with many rooms was now a shop with walls knocked down, one full of families sipping hot chocolates on couches and baristas busily steaming milk.

After another moment, I hurried after Lia. One more try. After that I would give up.

“Lia...”

She focused on closing up the coffee bag with the tab at its top. “Uh huh?” She didn’t look at me.

“I need to talk to you… about us.”

I swallowed hard. That sounded stupid… About us? What are we, dating?

She turned to look at me, her face hard. “Okay.”

I cleared my throat. “I heard you talking to Dominic. I know you think I’m into Angelo for his money.”

Her eyes fell into tiny slits. “You were spying on us?”

“No! You were in the foyer. I was just walking down the hall. I was...”

There was no use. Lia looked for a reason to be mad at me. It would be hard convincing her I was innocent of anything.

“Here’s the thing,” I said. “I love Angelo. That’s the truth. Plus, the idea of me being a gold digger doesn’t really fly anyway. I have...”

“You have your own money,” she snapped, a hand on her hip. “I’ve heard that excuse already. But here’s my thing. Angelo doesn’t have a lot of experience with… long term relationships. Got that? He doesn’t know what he’s in for with you. I don’t think that you having your own millions makes much of a difference. I grew up in a world of money, Paige. I know what people are like. Once you get a little, you need more. It never stops.”

“I’m not like that,” I sincerely said. “I haven’t even spent any of the money I inherited. Hell, I never even asked for it. Do you think I wanted anything from Moretti?”

Realizing my voice kept rising in volume, I paused and took in a shaky breath. No sense making a scene.

Lia’s lips pursed. She sighed and tossed her hair over her shoulder, looking away.

“I would never hurt Angelo,” I said. “He’s done so much for me. He saved me. He’s there for me… Always.” Tears sprang into my eyes as I spoke about the man I had come to love more than life itself. “I’d be a total mess if it weren’t for him.” I smiled ruefully. “Hell, who am I kidding? I am a mess. But at least I’m not in a mental institute somewhere… and that’s thanks to him.”

Lia looked back at me, her expression unreadable.

“I know how close your family is,” I said. “I get that you’re doing your job and watching out for him… I just hope that you and I can at least get along.”

Lia huffed and looked down at the floor. Over her shoulder a little boy walked by with his mom, a baby doll clutched firmly in one hand.

A picture hit me, fast as lightning and as real as the present moment. My mom. Me.

It was a Christmas morning. I don’t know how old I was, but I could still sit comfortably in her lap. We snuggled together on the couch, the small Christmas tree twinkling away next to us. The radio played in the kitchen, and underneath it Sophia’s and Dad’s voices.

I had a new doll. It came to me that morning, hidden in a box swathed in blue wrapping paper with snowflakes on it. She had red hair and brown eyes. When you tilted her backwards, her eyelids closed and opened.

I named her Emily.

With that doll in my hands and my Mom’s arm wrapped around me, the smell of cookies baking in the kitchen, I knew for sure that it was the happiest I’d ever been.

Maybe, I thought contently, the happiest I would ever be.

I snapped to, being yanked back to the present moment as if by a long rope tied to my waist.

The little boy’s mom looked down at him and smiled. He giggled and jumped up and down.

Air. I needed air.

I needed to get out of there.

I flew across the wooden floor and out the front door, throwing myself along the sidewalk and into the side of Lia’s car. I dug in my purse for a quick puff.

After taking a hit, my breathing steadied. I closed my eyes and turned around to rest my back against the car.

What just happened?

The freak out came out of nowhere. And all over the sight of a toy.

Angelo was right. I needed therapy. I needed someone to share these horrible episodes with, someone who might be able to help.

At least now I’d acknowledged the truth.

When I opened my eyes, Lia stood there staring at me.

I looked away, choosing to focus on the snow covered metal bench in front of the coffee shop instead.

Out of the corner of my eye, Lia slowly walked up to me. “Are you all right?”

I licked my lips and looked at her square on. “I’m fine. It was just an anxiety attack. It happens sometimes.” I stared her down, daring her to make fun of me.

“Shit,” she breathed. “That’s awful. I’m sorry.”

I could barely believe my ears. “Really?”

She tucked some hair behind an ear and shifted weight from one foot to the other. She looked… uncomfortable.

“I used to get anxiety attacks. I remember how much they suck.”

I blinked harshly, unable to stop staring at her. “Yeah,” I agreed with a thick tongue.

A heavy moment passed. My turn to pick up the baton.

“Do you know why?” I asked.

She lifted a shoulder. “Social anxieties? That’s what my shrink thought anyway. Eventually they went away. I haven’t had one for years.”

I gulped. “Angelo wants me to go see a therapist.”

“You should.”

I nodded and looked at the ground. It had finally stopped snowing. “I’m going to.”

Another uncomfortable moment stretched on.

“I need to go buy that coffee,” Lia said. “Do you… do you maybe want to come in? We can get a cup of coffee or something and hang out for a bit.”

Now she looked uneasy.

I cleared my throat. “Okay. Yeah.”

We filed back into the coffee shop where she picked up her abandoned bag of coffee. Getting into the line, we ordered two cups of dark roast. I tried to figure out what had just happened. Sometime in between my monologue about my undying love for Angelo and Lia coming out to find me at her car something changed.

We found two cushioned seats in the corner and settled in, my erratic emotional state doing anything but calming down. At least before I knew how Lia felt about me. Now I had no clue.

“I’m sorry,” she said to the window, before looking over at me. “I...” Her head shook. “I judged you too quickly.”

I wrapped my hands around my coffee mug and absorbed the warmth. “Thank you,” I slowly responded.

“What you said… about Angelo helping you...” She sighed and flipped her hair over her shoulder. “I get it. That’s what Angelo is good at. He pushes people to become their best.”

She finished with a tight smile.

It was good enough for me.

I nodded. “Yeah, that’s exactly what he does.”

“And about anxiety… maybe I could help you. I could, you know, share some tips. Stuff that I learned to help keep it under control.”

“That would be nice.”

“I’m sorry I was such a… you know what.” She ducked her head.

“Let’s just forget about it.”

Lia peeked up at me through her bangs. “I don’t know. Everyone knows what I said about you.”

“Yeah, but things are… good now… Right?”

She paused for a moment. “If they are with you...”

“They are,” I quickly said.

A slight chortle left her lips. I laughed out loud. Finally, the tension broke.

“Good,” she sighed. “Good.”