Then he leaves without waiting for her answer.
After exchanging a look with Aunt Mari, we end up following Talia out to the living room and we both gasp when we see Cami waiting there, with what looks like a black and white bulldog puppy in her arms.
“I been complaining about there not being enough testosterone in this house, so I went out and got some,” Stone tells Talia. “His name’s Stallone. But the thing is, I don’t know who’s going to walk him and take care of him when I’m out of town. Think you can help me with that?”
“Yes! Yes! Oh my god, yes!” Talia cries. She runs over to her sister and spends the rest of the night cooing over the puppy she somehow knows is her birthday present, even if she is just supposed to be helping Stone out.
I’m trying. God, I’m trying to keep a level head. Our marriage is just a matter of duty. The sex we’re having now, a meeting of basic needs. I remind myself and remind myself, but Stone’s thoughtful gift, it unnerves me. And even though I haven’t been to church in a minute, I send up a prayer. Please…please, God. Don’t let me fall. Don’t let me get hurt again.
“That’s a good man you got there,” Aunt Mari says as we watch him go over Stallone’s crate training with Talia while sipping rum and eating cake. “You are very, very lucky. My Miguel? Bless his heart, but he could not pick out gifts. You know, he gave me a candle for my first birthday after we were wed? For my birthday! I ask him, what kind of gift is this for your wife? And from then on, I made sure to tell him exactly what jewelry and finer things to get me at least a week before my big day, because I knew I could not trust him to pick out the jewelry I deserved himself. I hope you know how lucky you are to have a man like that.”
I fret my lip. Not because I disagree. Actually, just the opposite. The house, the ring, the patchwork family, and now the amazing sex…
I know this will eventually run its course, and I know I shouldn’t get too attached but…I wanted it. Deep inside where all the old hungers lurked, I feel the need for this thing between me and Stone swells, like a great big wave about to crest. The sensations are so intense my fingers tremble as I pick up Garnet from the living room floor and hold her tight.
Together we watch Stone be exactly the kind of father figure Talia needs in her life. And I try, I try not to make it mean anything.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Over the next few months, I don’t fall for Stone, but I do get used to him. I also discover the daily life changing magic of having someone who truly doesn’t give an eff-word in your corner.
My store returns all go into the back of Stone’s Cadillac for him to take care of while he’s doing whatever he does all day in his tailored suits. And guess who the phone gets passed to when a pushy telemarketer dials me up. I’ve also learned the hard way, not to complain to Stone about any of my cases.
He still doesn’t mess with capes, but one missing college student from my foster roster suddenly reappeared, complaining about how none of the local drug dealers would sell to him. It was almost as if he’d gotten blacklisted.
“More like Stonelisted,” I accuse Stone that night when we’re walking Stallone around the block. “Tell me the truth, it was you wasn’t it.”
He just half-smiled and said, “Got some ideas about how you could interrogate me. It involves a whole lot of you bouncing up and down on my dick.”
I ended up interrogating him all night. But I never do get a clear answer.
That’s okay, I guess. I enjoy the way we connect in bed. Over our crowded dinner table. During the nightly TV we watch on the couch. And during our daily dog walks with Stallone. After a lot of thought and contemplation, I allow myself this. Allow myself to enjoy him—the crazy, mishmash life I’ve mosaicked together with him, Garnet, Aunt Mari, Cami, and Talia.
Stone leaves the majority of the parenting to me, but I’m not going to lie, he is fantastic backup. He uses his unusually strong menacing power like a space heater. Often standing in Cami’s and Talia’s doorway behind me, when I tell them to clean up their room.
I refuse to put any expectations on him, but if he did stick around, I bet his version of, “You heard your mother,” would totally be on point.
He’s great with the discipline and occasionally with the feelings stuff, too. I find that out one Sunday morning, a few months into Cami’s last semester of college.
Aunt Mari always takes this day “off” and insists on bringing Garnet and Talia with her to church, since there’s “one generation in this house the Lord can still save.”
So Cami and I are rinsing the dishes after making our own breakfast, while Stone sits at the table. Fresh off his New York morning flight, he’s eating the plate of bacon and egg-in-a-hole toast I made for him, shortly after he came through the door.
Her phone vibrates right as she’s about to put the last plate into the dishwasher, and in typical college girl fashion she pulls it out to check it instead of completing her task.
Only to repocket it as soon as she reads the message. A little too quickly, if you ask me. “Everything okay?” I ask.
“No, it’s nothing.”
“It sounded like something,” I press, my social worker spidey sense totally going off when I see the way she’s looking everywhere but at me.
“Well, it isn’t,” she snaps back at me. “It isn’t anything.”
“Hey, watch that tone, Marino,” Stone says from the table. “She was only asking you a question.”
“If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to,” I say, reaching out to rub her shoulder. Good cop, to Stone’s bad.
“But you gotta be respectful,” he reminds her with a squint.
“I’m not trying to be disrespectful. I just don’t… don’t want to tell you,” she answers.
But then she starts fretting her hands, leading me to ask. “Are you safe? Do you feel threatened in any way by whatever was in that text?”
“Threatened?” Stone stands up from the table and demands, “Somebody fucking threatening you?”
“No, I guess not,” Cami says. “It’s more like I’m confused.”
“Maybe we could help with that confusion?” I suggest.
Cami, hesitates, her eyes darting between Stone and me. “I don’t know…”
“Just fucking tell her,” Stone says, pulling out a hundred from his billfold.
“You know she’s only going to gentle voice you til you do,” he says, dropping the Benjamin Franklin into the cuss jar I set up on the kitchen counter. “Remember how she broke Talia when she had pinworms?”
Stone clasps his hands and raises his voice about a thousand octaves, as he trills, “You sure you don’t want me to take a look? You seem really uncomfortable. And we all want to make sure you’re comfortable.”
Cami cracks up, but I glare at him, wondering if all the great sex is worth putting up with a man who makes me sound like the pushy version of Snow White.
“Anyway,” I say over her laughter. “I’m here for you. Whatever you need.”
“I don’t need anything,” Cami says, shaking her head. “It’s just a stupid boy…but kind of not a boy. He’s a teacher’s assistant from one of my classes last semester. And he was, like, hey, since you’re not in my class anymore, want to go see Weird Science on Friday night?”
“What’s Weird Science?” I ask.
“Some stupid shit only geeks like,” Stone answers, pulling out his wallet again. “Rock and his geeky Manhattan U friends made me watch it once.”
“So he’s asking you out on a date?” I say to Cami.
Cami pulls one arm into her side, grasping it nervously. “To hang, yeah. Whatever.”
“Do you want to hang out with this guy?” I ask her.
“I don’t know. I mean he’s cool. He stayed way past his office hours once to help me figure out an assignment problem. He’s nice. I think he is. I’m almost sure of it. But I’m…”
She trails off. And though, I’d never press on such a sensitive subject,
I can’t help but wonder about all the ways she’s finishing that sentence inside her head. Not accurately, I sense. She’s doing the work with her university therapist. But it’s going to be a long time before she learns to see herself outside the lens of what her father did to her.
So, I finish the sentence for her, “Wonderful. You’re wonderful. Also, funny and easy-to-talk-to…and so, so bright.”
“Double down on that,” Stone agrees. “And hey, yo, Cam, all guys ain’t like your old man. If they’re liking you right, it ain’t got conditions on it. You can go to the movies with this dude or whatever, but you don’t have to do anything else. Remember, you put that bastard father of yours in the ground. So, from now on, how far you go stays up to you.”
Not exactly how I would have put it, but Cami releases a breath I didn’t know she was holding until it audibly comes out. “Okay, okay, you’re right,” she says her voice going a little higher with excitement. “I think I’m going to say yes.”
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Stone says, grabbing a bag of almonds from the cabinet above the cuss jar. “And hey, if this guy tries anything you don’t want, let him know you have somebody in your life who can make bodies disappear, real easy like.”
“Or…have a clear communication about boundaries before engaging in any mutually agreed upon acts of intimacy,” I suggest.
Stone pops an almond into his mouth. “If you want, I can show you how to snap a guy’s neck, using mostly your own body weight.”
“God, you are ridiculous,” I say, shaking my head at him.
But Cami’s face goes soft as she looks between us. “Seriously, thanks you two. For helping me figure this out, for everything. I don’t know how to really say this but living with you guys is like having a mom and dad. You make me feel safe and like I can do anything. I kind of wish I could stay here forever.”
My heart melts at her words. “You can stay here. As long as you like. I’m not ever kicking you out.”
“Thank you,” Cami whispers. Then she closes the distance between us and hugs me tight. Like I really am the mother she’s always needed.
“Why did you say ‘I’m’?’” Stone asks, later when we’re walking Stallone after breakfast. “Why did you say ‘I’m never going to kick you out,’ with Cami earlier?”
I startle. Over the last few months, I’ve gotten used to talking with Stone over our daily walks. Mostly about light things, like the kids, the latest episode of whatever contest show we’re watching with Talia and Cami after dinner, and the Knicks’ chances of making the playoffs this year. We never talk about his work, but he likes hearing about the older kids I’m helping. And sometimes we find ourselves in deeper conversations. About my childhood growing up with severely visually-impaired parents, and his childhood growing up as the next don of the Ferraro family.
“Do you ever wonder what if you were the head of the family instead of Luca?” I’d asked him on last night’s walk, remembering how often Rock had brought it up.
He’d shrugged. “Rock did, but I was all good. Enforcing seemed a more natural fit for my skillset anyway.”
I’d shivered and asked, “And how about now that you’re off the pills?”
He’d gone quiet, so long I’d wondered if he was going to answer. Then he quietly says, “I like how you do that.”
“Do what?”
“Dig deeper. You’re the only who’s ever done that with me. Assumed there was something underneath. Sometimes it feels like….I don’t know. Like I was living inside a huge piece of cotton. Then one day you came in and got me. Just got me and dragged me out.”
Last night, he’d looked down at me over Stallone with something akin to admiration in his eyes.
But today, he’s walking almost too fast for me to keep up, asking me questions, I don’t quite understand.
“Are you upset that I made Cami promises about never kicking her out, even though the house is in both our names?” I ask him.
“No, I’m upset because you made promises to Cami, like you weren’t married to me.”
I scrunch my forehead, so confused. “So what? You want me to kick her out at the end of the school year? Even if she doesn’t have a job?”
Stone shakes his head at me. “How do you fucking do that?”
“Do what?” I ask, my voice pitching high, because it feels like we’re speaking two different languages right now.
“Assume the best and the worst of me at the same damn time? It’s like I can’t figure out what you want from me.”
I stop dead in my tracks. “You’re trying to figure out what I want from you?”
“Yeah,” answers Stone, stopping as well. “Why is that a surprise?”
The answer to that question is too sad to say out loud. The thing is, sometimes it feels like I’ve been trying to figure out what other people want since the day I was born. But no one, not Rock, not Amber, not even my parents has ever trying to figure out what I want from them.
Don’t fall, don’t fall, don’t fall, I pray as I tell Stone the truth. “I don’t expect anything from you. Is there something you want from me? Something I’m not giving you?”
He looks at me for a long, tense moment. Then he starts walking again. No more intimate and/or pleasant conversation. Instead we’re back to silence, with me not understanding what’s got Stone so agitated.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Stone disappears after we return with Stallone and doesn’t reappear, even when Aunt Mari gets home from church with the girls.
“Where’s Stone?” Talia demands, used to finding him here when she gets home.
“I’m not sure,” I answer.
I pull out my phone and type out a quick, “Where are you?”
But no answer, until later in the day, when Stone comes through the front door still wearing his dark mafia suit, even though he usually changes into something a little bit more comfortable for the Sunday dinner, Aunt Mari claims she has to host here every other week, because no one else’s house is big enough.
“Again, what did you do before we moved here?” I asked when it became clear to me that the Sunday dinners were going to be a bi-monthly thing, back in January.
“Oh, we were so sad and cramped,” Aunt Mari answered. “Thank God for Stone.”
But thank God isn’t what I’m thinking as I watch him half-listen to Talia tell him about how she tried to speak Spanish at Sunday School but nobody really understood her. He seems…off.
Despite the funny details of Talia’s story, his face remains a mask.
And by the time Yara rolls in with her three-kid crew, he’s nowhere to be found.
“I think I saw him go into the basement,” Aunt Mari tells me when I ask.
She’s right. I hear the treadmill whirring away as soon as I open the door. Is he working out? But he never works out on Sundays.
A bad feeling comes over me, as I make my way down the metal stairs, to find him running on the treadmill…in his dress shirt and tailored pants. Stone’s completely drenched, and his handwoven dress shirt clings to his skin, with huge sweat patches everywhere.
Brow scrunching, I come the rest of the way down the stairs to ask, “Stone? What are you doing?”
No answer.
“Getting a few miles in?” I ask. “In your wingtips?”
Stone still doesn’t answer. And I move closer to read the machine’s display. It says he’s been running for over an hour and a half.
This can’t be comfortable. Or sane. His entire face is red. It’s like he’s torturing himself, and I can’t watch.
So I make it stop, punching a finger into the big red button in the middle of the display.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Stone demands when the treadmill comes to a sudden halt.
Before he can turn it on again, I cover the display screen with my whole hand and ask, “Is this…is this about Cami going out on a date?”
“Hell, no. Already checked. Guy’s a total egghead. It’ll take me
less than an hour to bury him if anything goes wrong.”
I didn’t even bother to reply to that one. “Then why are you down here, running in your business clothes?”
“I don’t know, why are you here in North Carolina, living with some random aunt and a couple of kids you didn’t know from Adam a year ago, when you could be in New York?”
“You’re lashing out,” I say, trying to stay calm, even as my skin prickles with the truth of his words. “Seriously, Stone, what’s going on?”
“Blowing off steam.”
“By steam, do you mean emotions?” I ask, tilting my head. “And by blowing off, do you mean running away from them?”
He gets off the treadmill, looks at me, then practically mauls me, pushing me into the wall with an almost violent kiss.
“Stone,” I say, trying to pull back.
But he holds on to my waist, keeping me pinned between him and the wall. “I don’t want to talk about it. Don’t want to get gentle beasted by you. Don’t dig deeper. Right now, all I want to do is fuck you against the wall.” His words and breath are harsh against my lips. But his voice sounds desperate as he says. “I need…I need inside you. Can I get in there? Will you let me?”
I stare at him, all the questions piling up. Then I silently nod, wanting to help him more than I need to understand what’s going on.”
“Aw fuck, babe, thank you,” he says, lifting me up to his waist, like I don’t weigh anything, he carries me to the closest wall.
The panties I’m wearing under my Sunday dinner dress are just a barrier that disappear with a tug of his hand. Then he buries himself inside of me with a low groan. Driving deeper, then deeper still, filling me up with strokes that jerk my entire body as he claims me.
It’s a crazy, but good position. He has to half hold, half counter-balance me to keep my hips right where he needs them on the wall. That means my clit gets plenty of stimulation as he pumps into to me.
“Mmm, Stone, I’m coming,” I tell him just a few minutes into it. Even though this is supposed to be about what he needs, not me.
STONE: Her Ruthless Enforcer: 50 Loving States, North Carolina Page 13