Love thy Enemies

Baby Bang

Valentino helps me down from the counter and goes to Katlego.

"I'll go wake my brother up and we'll be down soon. Bellezza, take my sister down to the car please." He says running and grabbing a pair of keys for an SUV.

He has a brother? Antonio is his brother??

"Start the car. Hurry!" He says and he picks up Katlego with ease as we run barefoot to the cars. He sets her inside and I start the car before he dashed inside to fetch her baby bag and the husband. We sit down and I turn to the backseat of the Porsche Cayenne SUV.

"Kat, how are you holding up?"

"Uh, p-pretty good, just get Antonio here please." She says through heavy breaths. Before we know it, heavy footsteps approach and the car doors slam.

"Mia bellezza, drive!" He yells and I panic and move out of the driver's seat and he takes the wheel. He notices my instant panic and touches my shoulder. I flinch under his once comforting touch.

"I'm sorry it's just my first time dealing with a coming baby." I nod and sink into my seat. I don't mean to be a baby about it; I mean there is one on the way right now; but something about it hit a nerve how he just switched from caring and gentle to vicious monster in three seconds flat. He zips through the Italian roads and safely delivers us to the hospital. The couple is sent off into the delivery room whilst we wait for the baby to be born. My feet touch the cool hospital floors and I'm constantly hopping from one foot to the other to avoid the cold. Valentino sees this and tells me to hold still. He sweeps me off my feet in bridal style and I hold onto him.

"Aren't your feet cold?" I ask as he just stands there barefooted whilst he takes us to the chairs in the waiting rooms.

"I don't get cold feet. I'm sorry about earlier. I shouldn't have yelled at you like that." He says noting that I've been looking skyward to push the tears back in and sighing heavily to stop myself from heaving and actually breaking out into a full cry. I'm being ridiculous by being this emotional over him just raising his voice at me. When we arrived at the waiting rooms he sets me down on one of the chairs and goes to purchase two cups of coffee for us both. We sat in silence drinking our coffee before it dawned on me the reason I'd abandoned coffee was due to it spiking up my anxiety. It's an actual thing, believe me, I too was shocked to find it was a real phenomenon. So before I knew it I began panicking. My mind ran twice as fast as my heart and it felt like I was going to pass out. I looked over to a calm and collected Valentino who's casually sipping on his coffee, looking like a GQ cover page star. He turns his head and looks at me. I must look a mess according to him.

A brown skin girl, with dreadlocks up to her shoulders and a durag covering her head but leaving some of her hair out to see. Dressed in a golden spaghetti strapped silk nightie, with a matching lace gown with fluffy trims. Her manicure is en pointe and she's got the cutest toes ever. Now over to him. His royal pain-in-the-ass highness. I don't care if he did or didn't know the half of my fragility, he's crossed a line by merely just yelling at me and that's more than enough that I can take. I guess he's out. I know I should give people chances but it's a one strike and you're out, not three. That's way to nice of me, not two, cause I'm done being anybody's fool just one and you're done.

His royal highness next to me looks fresh out of a sports magazine. He's shirtless his checkered and scotch charcoal grey and ash pyjama bottoms actually surprisingly look quite amazing on him. In all of his basic premise he still manages to look like he's worth millions, of which he's worth much more but the point still stands. His eyes look at me and he takes hold of my hand.

"Are you okay?" I shake my head.

"Do you want to talk about it?" I'm about to answer when Antonio rushes in and calls us to see the new baby. We follow him down the sterile and pale whitewashed hallways to a single room. Inside is a tired and pleased looking Katlego. Her eyes meet ours and I go congratulate my friend.

"I'm never doing that again." She says and we both snickered as we looked at the cute bundles of joy. Turns out she was having twins. She looks at her two baby girls and named one Rosalia and the other is Rosalina. In short it's Lia and Lina. Valentino puts his hand on my shoulder and pulls me into his frame and whispers in my ear.

"I can't wait to have my own with the right one." he says from behind me. His arm loosely drapes around my waist.

"Let's finish our talk when we get back." He says and I'm caught off guard. My jaw drops in complete shock but I quickly resolve realising he'd look at me like I've grown a second head. What shook me wasn't the first part where he professed his aspirations and looked at me whilst saying it, but the second part where he; completely unprovoked; remembered that we were talking. I was more than ready to pretend it never happened and that I wasn't about to regale my tragic love story to him in a span of just meeting him hours ago. He just simply remembered that I was supposed to say something. He didn't just shrug it off like it never happened. No this man pressed on to find out what makes me so tense and easy to get with but an enigma all at once with her walls so high but a fragile exterior that's broken by brash mannerisms. Now it's all become crystal clear.

He's not who the world says he is.

The plan tonight was to go back home and the owners of the house stay at the hospital. They're coming back tomorrow and as Valentino says to me when he puts me in the passenger seat, ‘whilst the cats are away, the mice will play!’. He puts on some music in the car and we drive around the city in the dead of the night.

Play “Unthinkable ” by Alicia Keys

In a sense we're practically naked. In our pyjamas. He's shirtless and I'm pants less. Our eyes locked before we turned away from each other. The deep vibes coming from the radio playing give me ideas I don't want to fulfill because I'm scared. I'm scared that my broken and jaded state is going to hurt him. I'm paralyzed by a crippling fear of me being hurt again. I'm paranoid at the high possibility of him hurting me. I clutch the seat belt in my hands as I shut my eyes tightly. He cannot see me having a panic attack. If I close my eyes for just long enough, everything will disappear. I'll wake up in my bed, in my parent's house and I'll go downstairs for breakfast. All of this is a just a bad dream. I don't want him to see me like this. Hell would freeze over before I even allow it. The air in the car is becoming thinner by the second, the space in the car is getting smaller and I can't hear a single word he's saying. I hadn't even noticed the car had long stopped, I hadn't noticed that he's infront of me, fanning air in my face with his hands, turning the warm tears that slide down my face cool against the burning flesh of my cheeks. I couldn't get it, why am I such a mess. I begin sniffling and releasing a weird mixture of laughter and crying at how pathetic I am. It's barely even been twenty four hours and here I am. Now I've officially earned my title of a hot mess.

Worst part of it was how compassionate he was in that moment. He didn't just stare at me crying and awkwardly pat my back. He didn't lie and say it'll get better when it didn't feel like it was going to get better at all. Here I am about to break apart before a man who doesn't even know me. A handsome, compassionate and sweet man. Someone who didn't know I existed until a few hours ago. His hands hold mine and I'm trembling in my seat.

"I-I I'm s-so-sorry." I say as I break.

"You're sorry? For what? Being human? Baby I'm not judging you. I'm surprised you even trusted me to see this."

After about an hour I finally let him in on my crazy life and how my ex is a socialite and though I am a rich girl, daughter of the Carmichael car brand I never wanted to be in the spotlight. In fact none of the five of my dad's children wanted to be in the spotlight, so he attended all the events alone or with his wife, who's an amazing step mother. Life was fine at first. Being the last born of a billionaire really makes you live a soft life but it also came with a lot of nonsense as fake friends. He understood me wholeheartedly. He didn't even judge the fact that I never wanted to be famous. We never wanted to be famous.

When we arrived back in the house he carried me to my room and even layed me down in my bed. We stared at each other for a bit longer then his lips touched mine. He was above me in seconds and interlinking his fingers with mine, pinning my hands above my head. He pulls away when we're both breathless and his eyes stare into mine.

"Tell me if you want to stop." he whispers.