“Come here, beautiful,” I say, pulling Layla down for another kiss just as Milo’s needle starts to pinch. “I’m going to need you to help me bear this pain too.”
Chapter Eighteen
Layla
It’s late by the time we get back to my apartment. After grabbing some food by the tattoo shop, we meander in a quiet daze, hand in hand down Second until it morphs from the hipster crowd of the East Village past Houston, where the street sign turns to Chrystie, and the tattoo parlors turn to laundromats and kitchen supplies. As we approach Delancey, we pass an open basement door that seems to be housing some kind of banquet. Shouts in an Eastern European language tumble into the night.
New York gets a reputation for loneliness, for being one of the most cutthroat cities in the world. People come here, and they get chewed up and spit out; I know that better than anyone. Places like this force you to find your tribe, because if you don’t, you might not last. You’ll become cold, bitter, jaded. Maybe you don’t even survive. Nico wraps a big arm around me and I smile up at him, grateful that he’s adopted me into his tribe. If he hadn’t…I might not have survived.
We cross Delancey and eventually come to a stop in front of my building.
“You want to go up?” Nico asks. “Or do you want to keep walking?”
I hesitate, staring through the thick glass door toward the vacant stairwell. Most of the apartments are still empty, since the landlord’s only just finished remodeling them. They’ll be rented soon, but for now, the building is big and silent.
“Baby?”
“I don’t want you to leave.” The words fall out of my mouth, quick and heavy.
When I look at him, Nico’s brows are lifted in surprise. “Well, I kind of assumed I’d be staying the night, if that’s cool with you. I have to get up early to get things done tomorrow, but I don’t mind.”
I blink, shaking my head. “No, I mean I don’t want you to leave at all.” I rub my face. This day has been exhausting, and I’m screwing this up. “Nico, I—”
Nico gently pulls my hand from my face. “Baby, it’s okay. Let’s just go upstairs. We’ll watch a movie or something and crash on the couch.” He rubs my shoulder and cocks his head. “You look like you’re about to fall over.”
I shake my head again, causing my hair to toss around my face. There’s still one more thing I want to do. Say. A thought that’s been swirling around my mind since Nico kissed me in the shop. If I’m being honest, it’s probably been there since I stepped off the plane. But for some reason I can’t quite get it out.
So instead of trying to speak, I pull out the key that’s been in my back pocket since Shama handed it to me this morning. Wordlessly, I hold it out. The brass gleams under the streetlight.
Slowly Nico takes it. “What’s this?” he asks, although cautious understanding is already spreading over his face as he examines the small piece of metal.
“It’s Shama’s key. Well…maybe your key. If you want it.”
Nico looks back up, but I can’t quite read the expression on his face. For a few moments, we just blink at each other like a pair of owls, and I’m struck again, like always, by just how handsome he really is. His beat-up Yankees cap is turned backward, allowing the lights above us to cast shadows under his chiseled jawbones, dusted slightly with black stubble. When he blinks, his eyelashes, a thick fringe, sweep across his cheeks. But it’s always his eyes that really transfix. Almond-shaped and so dark brown they almost look black, they are fathomless.
I was lost in them from the start.
“Just to be clear,” he says slowly. “When you say mine…do you mean the key? Or…the apartment?”
I tug on the ends of my hair. “It’s…” Just say it, you chicken. “Look, I don’t want another roommate. I want…I want you. You’re living on a couch right now. You should come live on my bed. Um, our bed. If you want it to be ours, I mean. Shit.”
Nico’s eyes widen as I trail off.
“You just…Nico, when I come home at night, I want to come home to you.” Finally, I force myself to look back at him, terrified of what I might find. “Is that—is that crazy?”
He’s still, a statue on this empty street corner. Beside us, cars are racing up and down Delancey, but we might as well be in a vacuum, the way the noise is rushing out of my head. Nico’s full mouth is open. Still, he doesn’t move.
“It’s too soon,” I murmur, more to myself than to him.
My heart drops in my chest, and I steady against the wave of disappointment that’s coming with the realization. I hadn’t known just how badly I wanted this until I actually said it out loud. Oh my God, what if I lose him because of this? What if he turns and runs from the crazy girl who’s given him nothing but grief and drama, and who now wants him to play house with her?
“God. I’m so sorry. Nico, I’m not trying to pressure you at all, I swear. I know it’s only been maybe a month since I got back, and we’ve been taking it kind of slow, and oh my God, I’m screwing this up, aren’t I—”
I’m cut off with a kiss as Nico yanks me close and covers my babbling mouth with his. It’s the same kiss from the tattoo shop, the one that burned deeper than any needle. The one that spurred me through the pain that’s still burning slightly on my side.
“Stop,” he says, breathless, his broad chest heaving, though he refuses to let me move away. “Just stop. Honest to God, baby. I thought you’d never fuckin’ ask.”
On this lonely corner, a golden halo of warmth surrounds us.
“Yeah?” I whisper, suddenly unsure. Did he really say what I think he said?
“What’s the word?” Nico asks after he kisses me again. “Home?” He tightens the arm around my waist, careful to avoid the tattoo, and lifts me so that only my toes graze the ground. “That’s what we are together, Layla. Home.” He kisses me again. “Now come on. Let’s christen our new place. Together.”
* * *
A few minutes later, we’re practically tearing down my door. Nico uses his new key to open it, and as soon as it’s shut, he’s dropped his bag to the floor and pulled me in for another kiss, the kind of kiss that might get us arrested if we ever did it in public. His hands are everywhere—up and down my arms, cupping my breasts, squeezing my ass, and without a thought, mine are flung around his shoulders, pulling him tight against me.
We just want to be close. As close as we can possibly get. For the first time, there are no ghosts threatening us from far away. It’s just him. It’s just me. Just…us.
Keeping his lips fused to mine, Nico guides us toward the bedroom, shedding clothing as we shuffle. His shirt. My shoes. His belt. My jacket. By the time we cross the threshold, there’s a trail of clothing from the front door through the living room, up to my bed, and we’re standing before each other in nothing but our underwear. Nico in those black boxer briefs that fit him like a second skin; me in plain black underwear and a bra, our matching white bandages skimming our sides.
Nico cups my face and kisses me again. In the blueish light that streams through my window—no, our window—his smooth skin glistens, and his black eyes shine with love.
I run my hands over his body, taking my time, just enjoying the feel of it when my fingers graze the frayed edge of athletic tape over a piece of gauze on his chest. I break away and look down.
“What is that?”
Nico looks down to where I’m staring at a small white bandage at the top of the hand-sized compass over his heart. He looks back at me.
“I, um, had Milo do one other thing while you were up front paying. You…you want to see it?”
I nod. Nico swallows heavily, then slowly peels the bandage off. He turns to toss the bandaging into the trash bin under my desk, but when he turns back, I can see the black script clearly: layla.
My name. Nothing more. In small, almost unintelligible letters, right where the missing North symbol should have been on his compass. But it’s there, for anyone to see.
“Why?” The wor
d slips out, even as tears start to cloud my vision.
“Because that’s what you are,” he says softly, pressing my hand firmly over the small, reddened words. It can’t feel good—it’s a fresh wound, just barely scabbed over. But he holds my hand firmly, and his gaze doesn’t waver as he speaks. “Layla, I knew it before I came back to New York. A part of me even knew it before I met you.”
I shake my head, unable to speak. This is…he is so utterly overwhelming.
“Do you remember your trip to New York with your dad? When you were, I don’t know, maybe in junior high?”
It was a long time ago. I was thirteen, almost fourteen. My dad took me to New York for a birthday present when he had to attend a conference. I spent most of the time in his hotel doing homework, but we went out at night to restaurants and shows. Even a Broadway musical.
“You went to see Phantom of the Opera, right?” Nico asks softly.
I frown. “How did you know that?”
“Because I was there, baby. I was on my way to the subway with K.C. and Flaco. Flaco told me right then that I had gotten the job at FedEx. My first real job that wasn’t hustling at some nightclub or helping my mom clean houses.” He cocks his head and traces his thumb across my cheekbones. “We were going to celebrate, and the first stop was the tattoo shop, where Milo gave me my compass. I bumped into this girl. She was kind of awkward, and she had a mouthful of braces. But her eyes were like the bluest sky I’d ever seen. And even though she didn’t say a word, I knew she saw right through me.”
The memory rushes back with the force of a tidal wave. The trio of boys, maybe nineteen or twenty, laughing and joking loudly in the street with a mix of Spanish and English. “Ruffians,” my father had called them, mostly referring to their backward hats and low-slung jeans. One bumped into me, then grabbed my arm to steady my fall. He was thinner back then, without quite the same level of swagger, but still strong and solid. His deep-black eyes and bright white smile cut through me, and I was stuck there on the sidewalk, staring at him until my father pulled me into the theater.
I blink, suddenly unable to stop the tears that have been threatening since Nico started talking. How could I have forgotten that moment? Something had always called me back to New York since those first visits…but I had never been able to say exactly what it was. What if it was him? What if it was Nico from the start?
“Every good thing that’s ever happened to me has had you in it,” Nico says as he brushes hair from my face. His thumbs wipe away the tears that spill, one by one. “I knew that one day I would find my true north. I just never imagined that would be a woman. The she would be this beautiful, inside and out. I never imagined she would be you.”
“Nico,” I whisper as he pulls me close again. His skin is so warm. He practically glows.
“It’s you, Layla,” he whispers back before he fits his mouth over mine. “It’s always been you.”
My mouth opens naturally to his as he literally sweeps me off my feet and lays me down in the bed. Our tongues tangle, lips grapple, but his touch is soft, floating over my skin like a feather. His kisses drift down my body as he removes my bra and underwear, and I watch, lovesick, when he stands up to remove his boxers. I forget sometimes what a work of art he really is. The way years of training have sculpted his body into perfectly cut lines, marred slightly with a few scars here and there, accented by the tattoos on his chest and arm. And now, of course, the words on his side and my name over his heart.
“Come here,” he rumbles as he peppers my neck and chest with kisses. He sucks one nipple, then another into his mouth with vigor and just a little bite, but I don’t shy. I don’t need to. There is no one here but us.
“Fuck, you’re ready,” he groans as his hard, eager cock brushes against my entrance. “Always so goddamn ready for me.”
I hiss lightly as his hand tickles over my bandage. He pulls away, looking down with concern. In response, I push him to his back, rolling over so I’m straddling him.
When he looks up at me, his eyes are big and open. “I don’t want to be rough tonight,” he says softly as his hands grasp my thighs.
His thumbs come together over that most sensitive spot at the juncture of my legs, and he presses lightly, eliciting a moan from deep in my chest. I rock into his touch, my eyes closed.
“Layla.” His deep voice beckons. “Please tell me it doesn’t have to be rough.”
My chest tightens to the point where it almost hurts, but it’s not a pain I hate. It’s a pain I love. This is what it feels like to love someone so much you want to burst. The heart can only take so much, but what I feel for this man overflows any vessel.
I know that this time I won’t need him to grab my skin so hard it bruises or bite my neck, shoulder, breasts like a beast. I won’t need to claw at him or wrestle with him across the floor. We won’t need to be rough, because we already did it to ourselves. Today. Yesterday. Most of our lives. I float a finger over his chest, hovering down over the bandage still on his side, the one that matches mine. These are wounds we’ve given ourselves on purpose. Wounds that, like all the others, will make us stronger. Together.
“It doesn’t have to be rough,” I say as I lower, slowly, surely, taking him inside.
His other hand finds mine, entwining our fingers as he sucks in a breath. The words on my side—his words—burn slightly, but I don’t feel them. As I start to move, all I feel is him.
Nico tips his head back and shudders as I sink lower, taking him further inside me. I rock back and forth, luxuriating in the friction between us, even as his thumbs continue to circle my clit in time with the movement. We watch each other as I move, letting the sounds of our bodies joining, our hitched breaths, skin meeting skin, fill the room. Black eyes meet blue. Dark hands meet light.
I wonder now why I’ve been so scared to do this, to open myself to him this way. But at the same time, it’s totally clear. Here, naked with him, body and soul, I am my most vulnerable. No one can hurt me like he can; maybe no one has. But I also know without a shadow of a doubt that he’ll protect me with everything he has. He shelters my heart. He’s more than just a lover. He’s a partner. And there’s nothing for me to fear in that.
“Come,” I murmur as the knowledge flows through me, a river of pleasure channeling straight to where we join. It’s fast. It’s furious. And it’s approaching faster than I anticipated. “I want you to come with me.”
“Already?” Nico wonders, though I’m already starting to shake.
“Y-yes,” I manage as I tip my head back, rocking my hips downward to take him even deeper. Oh God, he feels good.
Suddenly, Nico sits up like it’s nothing, the rows of hard abdominal muscles flexing until his chest meets mine.
“Ah!” I flinch as his arms encircle my waist, landing on the fresh tattoo.
He tries to pull away, but I keep his hands where they are,
“No.” I clasp his face between my hands. “I like it.”
And I do. I start to move again, rotating my hips slightly to take him deeper with every movement. Nico groans, pressing his face into my breasts as his hands drop to my hips to guide my movements.
“Layla,” he murmurs as I start to move faster. He tips his head up again, seeking my mouth like a drowning man.
“Nico,” I whisper in between long, torrid kisses.
Balanced on one hand while the other maintains its iron grip around my waist, he meets each movement, pounding into me from below while I take him deeper, from above. He penetrates me. My heart. My body. All of me, in ways no one else ever will.
“Layla,” he chokes out. “Fuck, baby. I’m…oh, God, I’m here!”
His teeth find my shoulder, and he bites down as he starts to shake. The slight sting is my undoing, and together we come apart in our own beautiful corona that banishes the cold glare of the city. It’s the knowledge of that warmth that keeps me going, and builds my strength.
If I am his true north, then he is mine. Together,
we’ll never lose our way again.
II
VALIÓ LA PENA
Chapter Nineteen
Layla
All week. All freaking week I’ve been waiting for this. It’s been five days since we saw each other at the airport, when I came home from a very long month in Pasadena for Christmas. It was…nice. Safe. Boring. Sure, it was perfectly pleasant to take a break once my semester was over and spend some quality time at my grandparents’ pool. My mom and I have continued to grow closer, and Dr. Parker agreed that I didn’t need another prescription for Valium. Apparently Nico is all I need to sleep well at night, even though no one in California is currently aware that he’s been acting as that cure for close to three months now.
But even after that month, it’s still been another five days since Nico had to take an extra forty-eight hour shift at the firehouse in order to get this weekend off. Five days since our first fumbled coupling at 7 a.m. after he picked me up from my red-eye flight. Five days since he left me in bed that morning, desperate for more of him, but drowsy in the knowledge that there would be more, so much more, for as long as I wanted it. Five days of tapping my pencil irritably on my desk and squeezing my legs together in anticipation. Five days of texting and talking here and there before another bell went off and he had to dash out to be a hero.
In other words, it’s been five days of pure torture.
Somehow, since October, this neighborhood, this tiny slice of New York that’s not quite Chinatown and not quite Little Italy, became more than just an apartment. Nico moved in the weekend after Giancarlo’s trial, and it was the perfect way to close that chapter of my life and start a new one based on us. We’ve celebrated multiple milestones there already: his twenty-eighth birthday with all of his friends and family crammed into the little two bedroom. Just before that, his graduation from the fire academy, which was much, much bigger.
Bad Idea: The Complete Collection Page 88