Gabe

by Lagomarsino, Giulia

  He took a few steps toward me. “9-1-1 means emergency. I work for a security company. You don’t fucking text 9-1-1 unless you’re in danger.”

  “I was in danger,” I shrieked. “There was a massive, hairy beast guarding my door. I couldn’t get out!”

  “We didn’t see anything, Cazzo.” The man pulled off his helmet and I sighed. Why did all these men have to be so good looking? If I remembered correctly, this guy was Sinner, and damn did he make me want to sin. But then I blushed when another man took off his helmet and I saw it was Gabe. He was looking at me like he was ready to kill someone. Like he would go to war with anyone who dared hurt me.

  “Did you get a good look at him,” Sam grilled. “How big? Race? Hair color? Eyes?”

  “He was huge! And, yeah, I’m pretty sure he could take me in a race and he had brownish black hair and his eyes were beady.”

  “Did he attack you? Try to hurt you?” Gabe’s eyes roamed over my body, making me melt in a puddle where I stood.

  “He would have, but I took care of him.”

  “What do you mean?” Sam asked. “What did you do?”

  “I sucked him into the vacuum.”

  Sam looked at the vacuum and then back to me. “Say what?”

  “Well, you weren’t answering and neither was Gabe. I messaged Aurora and she told me to suck it up and take care of it. So I did. Believe me, I was freaking out.”

  The rest of the guys pulled off their helmets, some of them looking absolutely scary as hell. “Yeah, we kind of figured that when we heard screaming all the way by the street.”

  That was Sebastian, Sam’s boss. I recognized him from the barbecue.

  “Okay, well, I didn’t really need all of you to come over here. Just one of you would have been fine.”

  “Hold on,” Sam said irritably. “Who or what exactly was here that you sucked up into the vacuum?”

  “A spider,” I said in frustration. “It was huge! It could have killed me!”

  There was a round of curses and some of the guys walked out the door. I was left with Sebastian, Gabe, and Sam, still standing in my underwear, only covered by a blanket.

  “So, why are you naked?” Sebastian asked.

  “I’d like to know that too,” Gabe grumbled.

  “Well, after I sucked it up, it was like it was crawling all over me. I could feel his hairy legs creeping all over my skin,” I shuddered. “I had to make sure that it didn’t somehow get out of the vacuum and onto my clothes.”

  “You think that a spider crawled out of the vacuum two seconds after you sucked it up and crawled up your body, even though the vacuum was still running,” Sam said slowly.

  I glared at him, wanting to smack him over the head like I did when we were kids. “Hey, you don’t get to judge me. You know I’m terrified of spiders. It could have happened. You don’t know. You weren’t here.”

  “Thank God. If this spider could escape the suction of a vacuum cleaner, there’s no way a team of armed soldiers could take it down,” he said sarcastically.

  “You’d better watch it, buddy. You may be older, but I’ve always been scrappier.” I pulled the blanket tighter around me and stormed off to my bedroom.

  “You forgot your clothes,” he shouted from the other room.

  I stormed back into the living room and poked him in the chest. “If you think I’m wearing clothes that could have been potentially contaminated by a spider, you’re out of your mind.”

  I could see Gabe holding back his laughter and Sebastian was staring at the ceiling like he didn’t want to get involved. Sam opened his mouth, no doubt to make some ridiculous comment, but I held up my hand before he could.

  “Don’t. I don’t want to hear how crazy you think I am or how a spider couldn’t actually hurt me. It was huge and it had fangs. And you’re taking the vacuum out of this house and getting that spider as far away from me as possible, or I’m not stepping back in this house.”

  “I’m pretty sure the spider’s dead.”

  “You don’t know that. Take care of it or I’ll be sleeping on your couch for the next week.”

  His eyes widened and he quickly stepped over to the vacuum, taking it outside to get rid of the spider. Gabe stepped discretely over to me and smirked.

  “My money was on you all along.”

  I smiled and then turned to go back to my bedroom.

  “I can still see your ass,” he laughed. I hurried off before I could make an even bigger fool of myself.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Gabe

  “SO, YOU HAVE anything you want to tell me?” Cazzo asked as we stood at the outdoor gun range. I had a feeling it wasn’t a good idea to be out here with him today. I didn’t think I had given anything away when we went to Isa’s house earlier, but he had been acting funny ever since we got back.

  “Nope.”

  I watched as he loaded his gun slowly, taking his time like he was preparing for a gunfight at the OK Corral.

  “It sure is funny how Isa sent a group text to both you and me.”

  I shrugged, not giving anything away.

  “I wonder why she would do that,” he said, not really asking a question. “It seems to me that if you were only a one time fuck, she wouldn’t have thought about calling you.”

  “Except that I work with you and if she thought she could get a message to you through me, she wouldn’t hesitate.”

  “Huh, I suppose you’re right.” He hit the button to bring the dummy up downrange and put in his ear plugs. “Except that doesn’t explain why she has your number to begin with, seeing as how I beat your ass after I dragged your unconscious body out of her house the first time you fucked her.”

  He fired, not stopping until his clip was empty. He turned to me with a maniacal grin. “I think we should take a walk and see how good my aim is.”

  He grabbed onto my vest and yanked me behind him. I would have tried to wrestle out of his grip, but if I was in his shoes, things would be a hell of a lot worse. We made our way to the dummy and I smirked.

  “I think you need to work on your aim,” I said as I pointed to his torso that was still in tact.

  “Look a little lower.”

  My eyes trailed down the dummy’s body until I saw it. Cazzo had castrated the poor dummy. There was a tight grouping where all his shots landed. If he was trying to send a message, which I sure as fuck knew he was, the message was received. Stay the fuck away from his sister if I wanted to keep my dick.

  I slapped my hand down on his shoulder, giving him a tight squeeze. “Cazzo, you’ve got issues.” I slapped him on the back and walked away, wondering the whole time if he was going to shoot me in the back. I wouldn’t put it past him. The man had some serious issues about me seeing his sister.

  ✯✯✯✯✯

  “Hey, baby.” I kissed Isa as I walked through her front door. I was careful about not letting her kids see me kiss her. She didn’t think they were ready and I wasn’t about to push her boundaries. “How was work today?”

  “It’s getting better. I feel like I’m getting back into the swing of things. It’s so nice to be working again. I always felt so useless at home when I was with Matteo.”

  “You were raising your kids. That’s not useless. You were teaching them to be decent human beings. There’s not enough of that in the world anymore.”

  “Well, I’m glad you think so, but it was never what I wanted. I don’t regret staying home with them, but I never wanted to give up my job.”

  “Live and learn, right?” She wrapped her arms around me and pulled me in for a kiss. When we heard footsteps pounding down the hall, I reluctantly drew back from her delicious lips.

  “Gabe, you here?”

  “Yeah, buddy, I’m here.” I squatted down to Enzo’s level and gave him a high five.

  “You come for dinnuh?”

  “Yep, I hear your mommy made something really yummy.”

  Enzo looked up at his mom. “You make somefeen yummy?�
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  “I did. I made homemade Mac and Cheese.”

  “Wif cheese?” he said, his eyes growing wide.

  This went on for another minute or so, me laughing along as Enzo continued to repeat everything his mom and I said. I couldn’t stop staring at the kid that would one day be my kid. I knew it deep in my bones and every minute I got to spend with him until then made me the luckiest guy in the world.

  Vittoria walked into the room and quietly said hi. She was still a little wary around me. Sometimes she would open up and be totally cool with me, but other times, it was like she was trying to figure out what was going on. Unfortunately, I couldn’t say Hey, I’m going to marry your mother someday and we’re all going to be a family. I had to leave that conversation for Isa.

  “How’s school going, Vittoria?”

  “Good.”

  “Yeah? What are you learning about?”

  “Um, we’re learning to count to one hundred.”

  “One hundred? Wow, that’s pretty high.”

  A small smile spread across her face. “Yeah, and guess what? I made the hundred’s list.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It means that I can count to one hundred.”

  “No way! That’s so cool. Are there a lot of kids on the hundred’s list?”

  She shook her head, getting more excited by the minute. “No, there are only four of us. The rest are all on the fifties list.”

  My eyes widened extra large just to show her how impressed I was. “That’s amazing. You must be really smart.”

  “Yeah.” She smiled, interlocking her fingers in front of her as she swayed back and forth.

  “Can you count to one hundred for me?”

  She started counting, getting so excited that she started jumping around the higher she got. When she finished, she started peppering me with more things she could do. Isa had to interrupt her so that we could go eat dinner. When we were finished, I tried to help clean up, but Isa wasn’t having it. I told Vittoria that I wanted her to read me a story and she ran off to get a Dr. Seuss book.

  I quickly made my way to the bathroom, shutting the door before I unzipped. Just as I started to take a leak, Enzo opened the door wide and walked right in.

  “Uh, hey buddy. You want to shut the door?”

  “Yep!” He turned around and shut the door, staying inside with me. I stopped myself and tried to figure out what to do. It was a little weird to be peeing in front of him, but we did have the same parts. “You go potty?”

  “Yep.”

  “I fee?”

  “Uh, sure.” I started going pee again and his eyes widened as he came closer to take a look. I was so fucking uncomfortable and I wasn’t sure how Isa would react to her kid watching me pee. Even worse, he pointed to my dick and started jumping up and down.

  “That yo wee wee?”

  Who the fuck called their dick a wee wee?

  “No, kid. That’s a penis.”

  “Penif?”

  “Yup.”

  “I twy?”

  I zipped up after tucking myself in and figured, why not? I could show the kid how to do this. I helped him pull down his pants and then took off his diaper. The kid was too short to hit the toilet and I wasn’t exactly sure how to do this, but then I saw the stool that Isa kept in the bathroom and dragged it over. Setting him on top, I stood behind him, holding him by the shoulders.

  “Let it rip, kid.”

  He stood there for a few minutes, not really doing anything, but then he looked up at me and smiled. “I do it!”

  “No, you’re not. You have to actually take a piss.”

  “Piff?”

  “Yeah, you have to pee in the toilet, like I did.”

  “I go potty?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay!” He stood there again and then all the sudden, piss shot out of his penis, spraying all over the toilet and on the floor. I didn’t know what to do. Did I grab his little dick and direct it into the toilet? No, that would be inappropriate, so I just let him piss. I could clean it up when he was done. When he finished, he pointed to the mess around the toilet with a big smile. “Look! I do it!”

  “Yeah, kid. You did it.”

  I set him on the ground, laying him down to put his diaper back on. “Okay, kid. Now I have to clean up this mess. You go play, okay?”

  He opened the door and ran out screaming, “I do it!”

  I looked under the sink and found a sponge that I could soak the piss up with. After getting all cleaned up, I sprayed it down with cleaner and washed the floor and toilet seat. Satisfied with my job, I went out to sit with Vittoria. She started reading Hop on Pop to me. She was pretty good at sounding out the words. It was taking a really long time, but I figured that was normal for someone just learning to read. When she finished, she ran off to her bedroom for another book. I didn’t particularly want to sit through another book, but I was finally connecting with her a little bit. We were about half way through the next book when I heard Enzo.

  “Look! I do it!”

  I glanced over at the wall where he was standing and then back to Vittoria. It took me a second to catch on that something was wrong. I whipped my head back over and saw him pissing on the wall.

  “Shit!” I jumped up and ran over to him about the same time that Isa walked into the room with a look of horror on her face.

  “Oh my gosh! Enzo, why are you peeing on the wall?”

  I snatched the kid up, running to the bathroom as he continued to piss all over my leg. Isa was right on my heels, but he had stopped pissing by the time I got him to the toilet.

  “Kid, you’re only supposed to piss in the toilet.”

  “Gabe, I piff!”

  “Pee,” Isa corrected. She glared at me. “You can’t use that kind of language around him.”

  “Mommy! I go piff wif my penif!”

  I cringed, waiting for Isa to explode, but she never did. She was pissed alright. The look on her face would scare half the men at Reed Security and the other half would walk away, knowing what was coming. I couldn’t do that. I was the one that had created this monster.

  I scratched my head and chuckled nervously. “Surprise!”

  “You’re cleaning it up,” she said tersely.

  I nodded, figuring I was getting off easy. She wasn’t yelling and she wasn’t kicking me out. That was a positive sign, right?

  I was wrong. So fucking wrong. After I cleaned up the mess and shampooed the carpet because it smelled like piss, Isa put the kids to bed and then stood in the living room, arms crossed over her chest as she glared at me.

  I walked toward her, pulling her into my arms, but she didn’t uncross her arms and wrap them around me like I hoped she would. When I tried to kiss her, she looked away, giving me her cheek. She was cold as ice. I could actually feel my dick shriveling up into my body from the anger coming off her.

  Deciding not to push my luck, I took a step back, trying to come up with something intelligent to say. Anything at this moment would be better than saying nothing.

  “He was watching me piss,” I explained. Apparently, that wasn’t better than keeping my mouth shut, because her eyes widened and her scowl morphed into something I could only describe as the devil rising from the gates of hell to snatch his prey. I swallowed hard and cleared the lump from my throat.

  She just stared at me. There was nowhere for me to go, nowhere to run. I couldn’t think of a single fucking thing to say. Every time I thought something, I reminded myself that nothing I could say would fix the fuck up I just made. Five minutes passed and she was still staring at me. Finally, she opened her mouth, but then shut it just as fast. She started pacing the floor. What was I supposed to do in this situation? I felt like maybe I should slip out the door, but then I imagined her coming after me with a butcher knife. Not that she could do much, but there was no point in tempting the beast.

  “I just don’t understand…it’s just…why was he watching you pee?” she shrieked.r />
  “He just followed me into the bathroom. I asked him to shut the door, thinking he would leave, but he just came over and started asking questions.”

  “Was this the point where you thought it would be a good idea to tell him you were pissing?”

  “It was an accident. I swear. Sometimes I just forget that little kids are around and I have to watch my language.”

  “And telling him his wee wee is a penis?”

  “I’m not gonna apologize for that one. No self-respecting man calls his dick a wee wee.”

  “He’s not a man. He’s three. I don’t want him walking around saying penis!”

  “Why? It’s just a part of his body. Why teach him shit that isn’t real? Just tell it like it is.”

  “Because there are some things that kids don’t need to know until they’re older.”

  “Really? You want your kid to show up at school and say he has a wee wee? Or he has to go potty? The kid’s gonna get an atomic wedgie on the first day of school.”

  “And if he learns this stuff from you, he’s going to be the one giving the wedgies. I don’t want that to be my kid!”

  “You’d rather your kid be the one that gets picked on? That’s bullshit. He needs to learn to take care of himself so that he’s not crying in the corner of the classroom because kids are teasing him.”

  “What does that have to do with him calling his penis a wee wee?”

  “Because shit like that will make him a pussy.”

  Her eyes narrowed and her face turned a shade of red that could only be described as Christmas red. Oh. Shit. It was like I had dropped a fucking bomb in the middle of our relationship.

  “A pussy? So, you think he would be too much like a girl if he called his penis a wee wee?” she said as she stepped toward me, backing me toward the door. “Are girls that weak that you would refer to a boy as a pussy if he doesn’t act as manly as you want him to? Is that really the example you want to set for my son?” I kept backing up, waiting for the punch that I was sure was coming at my face. “Are you saying I’m raising my son the wrong way?” I swallowed and shuffled back some more. It was like she was stalking her prey. “Because the last time I checked, I’m the parent. I’m the one that’s been raising these kids. In fact, the last time I checked, my kids are the first ones you’ve ever been around frequently. What makes you think you know how to parent my children?”