“You were there with me. You were there,” I repeated, unable to explain it any better than that. “And if I twisted it all up in my head to try to pretend it was just one more exhibitionism game, to make it okay so I could survive it, you were the one who let me. You kept my eyes on yours, and I knew you’d never hurt me. From the first, I always knew.”
“But I did. I have.”
“We’ve hurt each other.” I gave him that out, because he’d given me so much in the last few minutes that I didn’t feel like I could ever repay him. Mitigating his concerns was the least I could do. “Now we won’t.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he nodded. He gripped my hands, bringing them to his mouth. “Now we won’t,” he agreed softly.
Twelve
She was gone when I woke.
I sat up and tried to orient myself. I was in my bed, in my own apartment, but the sheets were messier than I’d make them on my own, and they were fragranced with the scent of lemons. Lemons and vanilla, those were Carly’s scents. I’d never been able to decide if it was perfume or shampoo or if she baked so much that those particular scents had seeped into her skin.
Now they’d seeped into my bedding.
Into me.
Like a damn girl, I checked the nightstand for a note. Nothing. I glanced around, noting her boots and coat were gone. The rest of her clothes hadn’t fared so well.
I frowned. She’d had to leave in only her trenchcoat, thanks to me.
She’d dropped her purse by the front door, and I was sure that was long gone too. I was tempted to go check, just in case she was in the kitchen, but decided I wouldn’t complete the full circuit to pussy just yet.
What did I expect? For her to scramble the eggs I didn’t have for our breakfast? Maybe go buy a newspaper and we could feed each other melon slices over the sports section? Jesus. We weren’t a couple. The arrangement we’d made didn’t extend to cozy breakfasts the morning-after.
It wasn’t supposed to extend to heart-to-hearts after mind-melting sex either, but we’d had one last night. And she’d fallen asleep in my arms.
We’d slept together in every sense of the word.
My cell went off in the jeans still crumpled on the floor. I was expecting a call from Marco today. I’d set up a meeting tonight with a few of the higher-ups in the organization, intending to share the good news about my fight with Fox. I hadn’t told them right away, because I’d half expected him to back out. But now that he’d told Mia, clearly he was sticking.
I’d wanted to make the announcement with maximum fanfare, and Lorenzo needed to be present. He helmed the gambling side of the organization, and he’d be quite happy to hear what he’d be able to rake in from this fight. Rake in and shake down afterward, when those who’d bet too much couldn’t pay. A match like this would probably lead to more than a few broken legs…or worse.
Much worse.
I couldn’t think about that now, because it was my insurance. Fox had agreed to set the bout a month and a half from today, giving us plenty of time to ride the hype. In the meantime, I’d get as close to the top as I could to finally make my run at Roberto. If I couldn’t get near him while I was safely in the public eye, making a hit on me more unlikely, I’d have lost my best chance to come out the other side in one piece. This would likely be a suicide mission either way I cut it, but I’d prefer to slice it with Roberto dead too.
My phone stopped ringing, then immediately started again. Groaning, I rolled out of bed and dug my cell out of my pocket. The Caller I.D. made my skin turn to ice.
Dante Costas.
My older brother. The guy I’d looked up to since I was a toddler. I’d chased after him when he’d started playing with older kids up the block, walked with him every day to school, watched in wide-eyed fascination as he’d started collecting illegal firearms. In time, he’d stopped collecting and started selling. We’d been close, best friend close, until he’d started spending more time with my father than me and Mamma. Even as a child, I knew what that meant.
He’d been lost to the other side, the one opposite the wire-thin divide that existed in my family since I’d come into it. My mother and I on one side, my father and Dante on the other.
Now we were on opposite sides again, and the stakes were life or death.
I’d hoped word hadn’t reached my father yet that I’d joined the other side. Until I’d been made, I’d counted on my presence on the Andrettis turf going mostly unnoticed. Outside fighting, I didn’t make a spectacle of myself. I’d tried to snake up the chain as unobtrusively as possible, because I wasn’t only infiltrating one organization.
I was openly, defiantly rejecting another.
Steeling myself, I clicked to accept the call. “Dante. This is a surprise.”
A long pause, long enough to cause my fist to bunch against my thigh. “You sound the same,” he said finally. “How long has it been?”
He didn’t want to hear years, months, days. Hours. I could give them if he did. My life had split into two halves. Before that night in June, and after.
Dante was firmly part of the before.