The automatic protests sounded in my head and nearly erupted from my mouth before I stifled them.
Safer with you always. Everything is better when you’re there. I can sleep again. I can breathe. I can laugh.
That one night might’ve changed my outlook, darkened it permanently, had I not found peace—and so much more—with him. But he wasn’t the keeper of my sanity…or my safety. I had to stand on my own two feet and make better decisions.
I didn’t want to mindlessly rebel anymore. I didn’t want to wonder if the company I was keeping would find me wearing bulletholes for breakfast some morning.
I wanted to be a chef, and own my own café/bakery/whatever with my sister, and be a young woman who didn’t need to grow up any faster than she already was.
That was enough.
“If that’s all it is with us, safety and this,” I gestured to his mouth on my ear, and his hand at my throat, “then yeah, I’m safer away from you. You’re worried about protecting my body, and in here, I’m a mess.” I rubbed my fist over my chest. “I don’t want to be a mess over you, Giovanni Costas. It was one thing when all I had to think about was if you liked me back. Now I’m wondering if the company you keep will end up hurting you—or me. Or my sister.” His hand dropped from my neck yet the pressure there only grew. “I don’t want to care about you, if I’m only going to lose you. Can’t you understand that?”
He shut his eyes and stepped away, and the withdrawal of his body heat made me shiver. There were only a few days left in October, and the chilly nights were setting in. Soon, it would be winter.
Soon, I’d be back to being alone.
“I understand, tesoro. What do you think made me stay away from you all those months?” When I swiveled on my stool to face him, he shook his head and drove his fingers though his hair, ripping apart the stubby ponytail at his nape. “Not only that. There’s so much you don’t know about me. Things that would change your view of me, of who you think I am.”
“Like your attempted murder rap? You saw how that dissuaded me, right?”
“You see the best in me. Why, I don’t know. If you knew—”
I rose and went to him, because I couldn’t stand to see him in pain and not attempt to alleviate it. Anyone but him, this man who made me feel so much. From the first, he’d been capable of arousing such strong emotions in me.
Lust. Anger. Arousal. Fear.
More.
God, more.
“Then tell me.” I gripped the front of his jersey and realized it was soaked through. From a shower? From sweating during the fight? Perhaps it was raining again. It didn’t matter. His sweat put me off about as much as all the rest. “Trust me to hear the truth and stick around, just like you’ve expected me to trust you.”
A vein throbbed in his temple. For a moment, just one, I thought maybe he might tell me something. Not everything. But some-damn-thing that might explain why he was spending so much time with men he clearly felt contempt toward.
As quickly as it came, that instant of openness in his eyes shut down.
“I can’t.”
“Won’t,” I corrected. I turned back to the dressing table and dug another lipstick out of my stash. The other was lost to the perils of a grungy floor.
“Won’t,” he agreed softly, coming closer again. Somehow I didn’t bristle as he set his hands on my shoulders. Not because I wanted him to let go, but because I ached to beg him to hold on. “Give me a few more days. Please. I need… It’s selfish, baby, but I can’t let you go like this. I need you too much.”
I leaned forward to apply my lipstick, then capped the tube with shaking hands. “You need me for what, exactly? To get your dick wet? That’s not enough anymore. I thought it was. But as insane as it is, I’m already halfway—”
“No.” O
ur gazes connected in the glass. “You’re not halfway anything. What we are is what we agreed to.” His hands on my shoulders felt like clamps, desperately holding me still. “A few more days. If it’s going to end, let me give you what I wish I could for real.”
Looking into his painfully direct eyes hurt, so I glanced away. If only it was so easy to deny my emotions.
I knew the crazy situation probably had something to do with my sudden onslaught of feelings. Throw in some danger, a healthy dash of hormones, toss in a bit of illicit behavior, and pow, you had the recipe for a hell of a problem. But it wasn’t just that. I’d had feelings for him all along. Ones I couldn’t entirely explain. Probably a lot of it had to do with the whole forbidden aspect. At least that was what I told myself when I sneaked home at night, frustrated and lonely at the prospect of crawling into my bed alone.
Scratch that. Crawling into my sleeping bag. On the floor.
Oh, yeah, I was having an adult affair, all right, in the center of a very high school-equivalent life.
“What is that?” I had to ask. Had to know. “What do you wish?”