Every time I close my eyes, I see my apartment ripped to pieces.
It’s like a compulsion. I try to will myself to sleep, but by trying hard to pass out, I keep spiraling back to that moment when I realized someone had violated my world and gone through my things. The pain and terror of that moment sends a spike of anxiety deep into my body, and I wake up all over again and have to start the process from the beginning.
It’s not fun.
Minutes turn to hours.
I’m safe. I know I’m safe. Angelo’s in the other room, probably dreaming about robbing banks or doing drugs or stealing from old ladies or whatever mobsters like to dream about, and here I am wrapped in luxurious sheets listening to the soft drone of the hotel air conditioning and can’t manage to close my eyes for longer than a minute because I’m terrified.
The sickest part of this whole thing is I keep thinking about what my parents would say. My mother, drunk, would grin at me over the edge of a martini glass and cluck her tongue and say something like, I told you, sweetie, you should’ve married rich like I did and stayed far away from this mess, or my father, he would stand there scowling and eventually shove a broom and a dustpan into my hands and say, well, are you going to fix it or are you going to cry all night, and no matter how hard I work to get away from them I still have my parents in my head. Chastising, telling me I’m not good enough.
I can’t take it anymore.
Around two in the morning, I get up and pace back and forth. Maybe I just won’t sleep, but if I don’t sleep, I’ll be a mess tomorrow and I can’t afford to be a mess right now. I need to be able to think if I’m going to solve this case. The longer it takes, the longer Nicolas sits in jail, and the thought of leaving him in there with whoever gave him that black eye is really bothering me.
I want to rip my hair out until I hear something in the other room.
It’s a soft sound. I barely catch it. But it’s the sound of someone moving around.
Angelo’s still awake.
My stomach does a flip. The memory of his kiss comes back like lightning in my core. No matter how hard I try, I keep coming back to that night—probably because it left me with more than a bruise on my ass where he spanked me. I put a hand to my belly and tighten my jaw.
I’m doing this for my baby. Not his baby, but my baby. All this danger, all this stress, if it means I can move ahead at the firm and give my baby a better life then it’ll all have been worth it. But if I’m going to get there at all, I need to survive.
I yank the door open and step out into the living room.
Angelo looks surprised. He’s sitting on the couch shirtless wearing only a pair of long, black joggers. Tattoos are etched into his chest, a tiger over his heart, flowers along his collarbone, and more spiraling down and disappearing into his waistband. I stare at him and he stares back, and the TV light flickers, making him both ghostly and beautiful. I glance over—he’s watching a black and white Western.
“I didn’t know you were into old movies,” I say stupidly like that somehow explains why I’m standing here looking at him.
“They’re easy to follow without sound.” He sits forward. “Something I can help you with? You should be sleeping right now, princess.”
I close my eyes and take a deep breath before leveling my gaze at him. “I’m going to ask you to do something and I don’t want to hear any bullshit from you, okay?”
He tilts his head. “Go ahead.”
“Come sleep in bed with me.”
I expect him to make a joke. I expect something lewd—can’t keep your hands to yourself, can you, frigid princess, or something along those lines—but instead he only nods slowly.
“I can do that.”
“Good.” I turn away, already mortified, and storm back into the bedroom. I get under the sheets and I’m regretting this by the time the door shuts and he climbs into the other side.
I hate letting myself be vulnerable, and it’s even worse that I’m doing it around him. My walls are high and made of six-inch-thick steel, and the idea of letting someone like Angelo through makes my skin crawl.
And yet here we are.
In bed together.
We lie there in silence.
I’m intensely away of his big body only a few inches away. Angelo’s hot, like a furnace, and I feel like I need to kick a layer away. But I can’t risk letting him get any ideas. Instead, I stare at the ceiling, trying to relax.
Having him in here helps.
I’m surprised that it’s actually working, but I’m too busy obsessing about him to be afraid.
It’s stupid and embarrassing but I’m too anxious to be alone. Angelo lying in bed with me takes some of that edge off, and I hate myself for being so weak and pathetic, and I hate myself for letting Angelo see this side of me, but I don’t see any other options.
“It’s okay, you know,” he says softly.
I turn slightly. He’s staring at the ceiling too. “What’s okay?”
“Needing some help.”
I narrow my eyes. It’s like he can read my mind. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not.” He doesn’t sound like he’s accusing me of anything though. “You went through something tonight. That’s why I was still awake out there. I thought you might want to talk. It’s okay to be a little fucked up from what happened.”
“I’m not—” I clear my throat. “I’m fine, okay? You don’t need to stay awake for me. Let’s just go to sleep.”
“Right.” He keeps looking at the ceiling like he’s pretending I’m not watching him. “I know what you’re feeling though. We all go through it.”
“What’s that mean?”
“When I was young, I saw something.” He glances at me. “You don’t need the details.”
“You’re right, I don’t.” My voice is quiet and my body feels pinned to the bed, but I can’t look away from him right now.
“It was ugly. Violent, bloody, not the sort of thing a seventeen-year-old kid should witness, and I was fucked up over it for days. When you do what I do, you get used to that sort of thing after a while, but back then I was still new to this life. I felt unsafe, and you know what’s funny about that? I was unsafe, every single day of my life, but I didn’t feel it until that moment.”
“What happened? I mean, what did you do?”
“I didn’t have any choice. I kept going. I woke up and I went out to the streets and I met my boys and I sold my drugs. I had no other options, but you know what? You do, Sara.”
I shake my head and put an arm across my face. “I wish I did.”
“No, you really do. You can turn around and walk away from this job any time you want. If it gets too hard, you can move on. Let me and Carmine figure this shit out with some other overpriced lawyer with a stupid degree that doesn’t give a fuck about Nicolas.”
“You make lawyers sound so lovely.”
“It’s the truth. You don’t need this. Walk away.”
I don’t say anything. He lapses into silence. Could I really do it? Could I leave him, forget about this case and this opportunity, give up on Nicolas and this whole mystery? Angelo’s right, I could do it—Brice would understand and she’d make Carmine forgive me.
I want to help them and I want to make my money and I need to get ahead at the firm—especially with a baby on the way—but do I need to kill myself over it?
“I just can’t,” I say, and he adjusts himself, leaning over toward me. I look at him and stare into his eyes. “You want to hear the worst part of all this?”
“Yeah. I do.”
“I believe Nicolas. I believe he’s innocent. Can I really walk away from him, knowing that?”
“It’s not on you.”
“It’s on me now.”
He nods slowly. His hand comes across the bed and I don’t flinch away when he brushes his knuckles gently across my cheek. An electric arc slices down into my core and he doesn’t let my eyes go, he keeps on looking as his palm moves back into my hair. I let out a soft breath, and a gentle whimper, and he comes closer with those lips and those eyes and that tongue, all of it coalescing into something I want to taste again, something I need to feel one more time.
I don’t stop him when he presses himself against me. I don’t say no when his grip tightens in my hair. And I don’t push him away when his mouth grazes mine and that tingle tears up from my middle and out into my limbs and my heart does a double beat and my eyelids flutter.
But I do moan when he kisses me.
His tongue slips past my lips and his taste floods me. Whiskey, dark chocolate, coffee. Something bitter and harsh and lovely.
He holds me back against the bed, half pinning me down, and he kisses me like he wants to devour me, like he’s been thinking about this kiss for weeks.
It’s the kind of kiss I’ll think about for the rest of my life, an all-consuming kiss, a kiss where I’m left different at the end of it.
I want more, so much more. I dive into that kiss. I fall into his taste, his lips, his hands in my hair, the smell of him.
I’m afraid, so fucking afraid, of whoever ripped apart my apartment, but I’m also terrified of Angelo and what it means having him back in my life, and terrified of this baby and what the baby’s going to mean for my life once they’re here. Most of all, I’m afraid that I won’t be the same person at the end of all this, that I’ll somehow lose myself in the twist of Angelo’s smirk, in his tongue brushing mine, in the frantic early months of raising an infant.
It’s all there, all this worry and horror, and I could ignore it and push it away, I could refuse to let it conquer me and stop myself from taking this further. Or I could give myself to Angelo and let him take away all my pain and all my worry, at least for a few hours, but one thing jolts me out of this sudden insanity.
He’s the father of my child.
I’m kissing my baby’s daddy.
I pull back suddenly. He blinks at me in surprise but he doesn’t move. He’s hovering above me, hand in my hair, eyes staring into mine, his expression hard like he’s half angry and half out of control.
“We can’t,” I whisper. “Please.”
Slowly, he releases me. It’s like a tide pulling back or a hurricane moving past. He recedes to his half of the bed, and I’m left there biting my lower lip to keep from screaming and dragging him back on top of me. I feel cold, empty, broken.
I feel afraid—but the sick part is, I’m less afraid than I was without him.
“Get some sleep,” he says and rolls onto his side. “We have a lot of work ahead of us.”
I want to touch him. I want to tell him that it’s not about him, it’s about this baby—but I can’t. When this case is over, he’s going back to Philly and I’m staying here and we’ll never cross paths again.
I’ll have my child. He’ll have his life.
“Goodnight.” I roll away from him and let exhaustion take me.
