Now that it had been, there was no way I was backing down. I didn’t care why they wanted me to fight. All I knew was that this was my way back in.
“It’s only one fight,” he said quietly, reading me as easily as he always was able to. From the beginning, he’d had an uncanny bead on me and my reactions. Our eight months together had only intensified that ability.
“One fight that will supposedly make them forget they want me dead.”
“They think it’ll bring in a lot of eyes and a lot of money.” He jerked a shoulder. “It sounded BS to me too. Gio thinks it’s legit, and he knows them.”
“And we’re sure Gio’s on our side and not theirs.”
His gaze took a while to meet mine. “The thought has crossed my mind that he could be fucking with us, yes.”
Blowing out a sigh, I rolled onto the mattress beside him and thumped him lightly on his damp stomach. His abs rippled and I nearly sighed again for a purely feminine reason. “We have to trust he’s on the up and up. It’s not like we have a ton of options. If they really want me dead—which hello, dramatic much?—and this is enough to appease them, then we roll with it. And if there’s more going on than we know, pretending to go along with what they want is our surest way in.”
“Yeah. About what I came up with too.” He paused. “I talked to Slater today. He invited us over for dinner tomorrow night, wants us to meet his new girl.”
“Another one? He changes them like underwear.”
“He doesn’t wear underwear.”
“Unnecessary info, thanks.”
He smiled faintly. “He seems really gone over this one, but yeah. I didn’t call him for a social call, he just turned it into one. I called him because I want him in your corner too. If something goes south and I’m not able to—”
I cut him off. “If something goes south and you’re not able to anything, even brush your fucking hair, someone’s going to end up in a body bag.”
“You know talk like that only gets me hard.”
He wasn’t lying.
“Again? You’re going for records here, champ.”
His only reply was to cover my hand on his torso with his own.
“You can wait on the meds until after?”
I swallowed. “You’re sure that’s the only reason you want me to wait?”
“I’m sure. If you think they’ll help, and your therapist agrees, then I’m onboard. Completely.”
“I don’t know if they’ll help. I just don’t want to lose control of myself again like I did last night.”
“Maybe you needed to,” he said softly. “Maybe instead of a step backward, it was actually a step forward. You’ve never felt safe enough to do something like that before. You won’t even take sleeping pills most of the time.”
“The timing was inconvenient, don’t you think?”
“I had you.” He laced his fingers with mine. “I always will.”
I let out a shuddery breath. It was getting easier for me to believe in that, to trust it. “Yeah.”
“See what Dr. Phelps says, then we’ll make the decision together. Okay?”
He made everything sound so reasonable. I wasn’t a few crackers short of a snack tray. I was just trying something new to deal with everyday life.
With him by my side. Always.
“Okay.”
Rising onto an elbow, he inclined his chin in the direction of our abandoned dinner. “Feel like trying that again?”