“I can’t find Willow,” I told him, slightly embarrassed at how truly desperate and lost I sounded.
“It’s all right, man. She’s with Stacy. We convinced her to give yoga a try.” He walked in and set his hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay, man. She’s fine. Stacy texted me about thirty minutes ago and said it’s going great.”
My heart was thundering in my chest like a stampede of horses. I had really and truly panicked when I couldn’t find her. Waking up and not knowing where she was in the world was a gut punch I wasn’t ready for. The terrible way I felt when she broke up with me and left for college came back. I was a wreck for months afterward, and never really got back to something normal until she came back to Philly and we got back together. How was I going to handle being split up from her for good, knowing there was no going back? My brain and stomach started to twist in on themselves at the thought.
“Jesus, Alessandro.” I looked up, and Gabriel was staring back at me wide-eyed. “It’s okay.” He rubbed my back. “Everything is fine. Do you think we’d let something happen to her? I mean, Stacy, Kelly, Molly—they’re one thing. They’re our wives, and we’d protect them with everything in us, but Willow, she grew up with us, man. She’s family. Dad would turn over if he thought we let something happen to her. Relax.”
I nodded, deciding that it was best to let Gabriel think that the total source of my anguish was not knowing where Willow was for that moment.
“Come on,” he said. “You need a beer. The guys and Molly are in the kitchen.”
He started to pull me, but I resisted. “They don’t want to see me.”
“Did I say I cared what they wanted?” He pulled. “Come on.”
I relented the second time, mostly because I didn’t have the energy to do anything else. All of the life my nap had given me was sapped from my body in the blink of an eye. We walked back through the foyer and into the kitchen, where, exactly as he’d said, Marco, Luca, and Molly were sitting around the birch kitchen table. Luca and Molly were working on beers, and it looked like Marco had a glass of tea.
Marco smiled when he noticed Gabriel pull me in. “Hey there, pal. Had a little freakout?”
I shook my head. “I don’t like it when she’s not here when I wake up.”
Luca opened his mouth, and Marco eyed him nervously.
“I get it,” Luca said. “Mol used to have to leave notes when she’d get up to deal with the kids and stuff. If I couldn’t find her immediately when I woke up, my mind shot to panic. It’s this life.”
“Some days, Kelly would get out of bed to pee or something, especially once she got into the pregnancy. I’d shoot up and grab my gun, convinced it was someone dragging her out.” He motioned to an open chair. “Come on in.”
I looked at Luca and Molly, but they both looked back at me with neither welcoming nor hateful stares, so I took it for as much an approval as I was gonna get and sat down. Gabriel went to the fridge and pulled out a couple of beers, popped them both open, and set one in front of me.
“Did you guys really convince her to go to yoga?” I asked.
“It was kind of a group effort, but I think Molly was the nail,” Gabriel replied, settling into a chair opposite me.
“That’s doubly shocking,” I admitted.
Molly shrugged. “I knew it’d do her some good.”
“She didn’t want to go,” Gabriel explained. “Said she didn’t want to leave without you, but we told her we’d look out for you.”
I took a sip of my beer before growling, “I don’t need a babysitter.”
Gabriel scoffed. “Because the last few times you were left alone, you were totally fine?” I rolled my eyes at him and opened my mouth to retort, but he cut me off. “Besides. It’s not about that for Willow. She’s just a good wife and doesn’t like not being by your side.”
I wondered if that was true. My family didn’t know the depth of our issues, certainly not that we weren’t technically together right now, so it was only fair that Gabriel thought that to be the case. I knew that Willow found me to be a chore, a difficult part of her life that she was ready to get over with and put behind her. She thought I had mental health issues that I couldn’t control, so mostly, she stayed by me for everyone else’s protection. Then there were times like earlier that day when she’d stood up to Luca for me that made me think she was just an until-the-end-of-the-world kind of woman. I honestly didn’t know what she was thinking half the time.
“Are you hungry?” Molly asked, and I didn’t respond. I assumed she wasn’t talking to me. “Sandro,” she growled. “Are you hungry?”
I looked over at her, slightly surprised. “Oh, yeah.”
“I made calzones.”
“They were so good,” Gabriel whined.
I nodded. “Sure, are they in the fridge?”
“I got it.” Molly started to stand, but Luca grabbed her arm.
Marco tapped his glass on the table a couple of t