Unfortunately, I was just too pissed off at her to ask her any more.
Lucky for me, she came looking for me. Otherwise, I might’ve held that grudge a lot longer than I had ever intended to.
***
Dear RP’s Biggest Fan,
I’m not sure this hole in my heart will ever heal. What I do know is that each and every day I wake up and he’s not here, the hole grows bigger and bigger and bigger. One day I’m afraid I’m going to wake up and the hole’s going to be so big that I’m not going to be able to pull myself up out of it and get out of bed.
I don’t know why I’m telling you this. Maybe I want you to tell me that it gets better, even though I know that there’s no way that it will ever be okay again.
I’m sorry this letter is so short and depressing. I haven’t found time or the desire to write lately…and now I remember why.
Hope you’re okay,
Rome.
Chapter 10
Life changes. Sometimes it’s easier to say ‘fuck you’ than to accept it.
-Izzy’s secret thoughts
Izzy
This walking everywhere bullshit had to stop.
One day, I’d get a car…but then again, a car would come in a lot handier if I knew how to drive the stupid thing.
New goal: one day, I’d learn how to drive. Then I’d get the car. The car that I could finally afford now that my mother and father had stopped getting my cut of the houses I cleaned.
At least walking kept me in shape—round was a shape, wasn’t it?
I looked down at my too tight clothes and realized rather quickly that Rome wasn’t the only one that was depressed. I was, too.
I hadn’t realized just how dependent I’d become on the letters that Rome wrote until he’d stopped.
It’d been six long, miserable months since Matias’ death.
Each day I missed the little boy, and I’d missed that little boy’s father.
And each day I realized how selfish I was.
There I was sad about not getting a letter, and Rome was missing his son.
There was no comparison. I had no right to be so upset about it…yet my brain didn’t care.
When I’d gotten that last letter from him, I realized that I had to do something.
If I wasn’t going to get the letters, then I’d have to talk to the actual man who wrote them. I had to bring him back, because what he didn’t realize was that he was my lifeline. He was the man who was the only constant in my life and had been for quite a long time.
The man who, despite the fact that I felt like complete and utter shit ninety-seven percent of my life, made that other three percent bearable.
Which was why I found myself once again at the door to said man’s house.
My legs were tired. I’d walked over eighteen miles today and hadn’t gotten a single bit of cleaning done, but I hadn’t had any scheduled. Today was my day off, and I’d used it wisely. If I hadn’t made two long ass walks clear across the damn town—twice—then I would’ve had a much more relaxing day off.
Admittedly, I would’ve just spent the day thinking of him.
And I would’ve just wound up in the same exact place that I was in right now.
Fidgeting at the stoop, wondering if this was a good idea, I decided “fuck it!” and knocked.
I didn’t expect him to answer the door, to be honest.
After everything I’d said and done, I hadn’t expected him to give me the time of day.
But there he was, moments after I’d knocked, staring at me with such a blank expression on his face that it physically hurt to look at him.
I felt this burning urge in my chest to throw myself at him, but I thought better of it once I saw the look on his face.
“I didn’t think you’d answer the door,” I murmured, looking at him with pleading desperation in my eyes.
Rome blinked, then looked away, studying the street at my back. “I’ll always open the door for you, Iz. If you need me, and come to me, I’ll swing this door open like you haven’t broken my heart into a million pieces and slammed the door on your way out.”
It probably wasn’t the best idea to point out that he hadn’t answered the door any of the other times that I’d come, but I did it anyway.
“I’ve knocked on your door fifteen times since your son’s funeral,” I pointed out. “And each time I had to walk four and a half miles each way to get here…”
Rome’s eyes narrowed, and his eyes went over my head as if he was searching for something.
“You walk here?” he asked incredulously.
I nodded. “I walk everywhere.” I shrugged. “My parents never saw fit to teach me how to drive. They said it was something I could learn later since they didn’t have the money to send me to the school or to get me a car.”
His eyes narrowed. “A lot of parents don’t have the money to do that, yet they find a way to do it. I think your parents are just assholes.”
There was no debating that. My parents were assholes. Always had been, and always would be. They looked out for themselves, and themselves only.
I snorted. “You’re not telling me anything that I haven’t thought of on a daily basis.”
He looked away and swallowed. “I’m still really fuckin’ mad at you, Iz.”
I looked down at my hands that were twisting around each other.
“I never meant to hurt you,” I whispered. “But seriously, how the hell was I supposed to tell you who I was? Think about it. You would’ve thought I was a crazy weirdo.”
He shrugged. “We’ll never know now, will we?”
No, I guess we never would.
But that didn’t mean that I wouldn’t try to fix what I’d broken. Try to mend the bridge that we’d formed through some very tough times.
I didn’t want to lose Rome. Not because I’d done something stupid that he couldn’t forgive me over.
“I told you things,” he said, shaking his head.
“I told you things, too,” I pointed out.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “But I thought I was talking to some virtual stranger over the last couple of months. There are things I said that I don’t want you to hold against me.”
That’s when I lost my temper.
“Do you honestly think that I would hold you being depressed that your son had just died against you?” I asked furiously. “Because let me tell you something, Rome. I’m not a bitch. I care about you. I’ve cared about you for a very long time, and you may think you know it, but you have no idea to the extent.”
He snorted. “You don’t…”
“I do care about you,” I told him. “I fucking care about you a lot. So much so that I lie awake at night thinking about you. I walked eighteen freakin’ miles today when it was hot as balls out here to make sure that you’re okay. I text you. I write you letters. I care about you—too much.”
He whirled, and my gut instinct was to protect myself.
In my experience, a man with a big body, moving that fast, usually meant bad things for me.
I didn’t think that he would ever hurt me, but because this was such a deeply ingrained reaction that I literally couldn’t stop myself.
I crouched and covered my face and head with both hands, catching what I’d done within seconds as the silence surrounding us became oppressive.
Coming out of the crouch with embarrassment written all over my face, it was to see him staring at me with horror in his eyes.
“I’d never hit you,” he whispered, sounding heartbroken at my reaction when he’d made threatening steps toward me.
“You can yell at me. You can take out your anger on me. You can do whatever you want to do to me…but that,” I whispered. “You’re a big man, Rome. Three times my size, and I don’t care how well I know you. Something that deeply ingrained isn’t something that I can just stop feeling.”
He didn’t say anything.
&
nbsp; I growled in frustration and then pushed past him…or tried to.
He didn’t move, and then before I could react, he had his arms around me and he was hugging the crap out of me.
“I’m a mess,” I told him.
He laughed. “You and me both, sweetheart. You and me both.”
“Have you eaten?” I asked his chest, trying not to get too comfortable.
But the appeal of wrapping my arms around him and getting lost in his scent was too appealing.
I couldn’t help myself.
Wrapping my arms around his trim waist, and trying not to pay attention to how hard his body was—holy abs, Batman!—I snuggled into the hug.
I hadn’t realized how much I’d needed it.
I’d had five men hug me in my lifetime that I could remember. Slate, Oscar, my father when I was a very young child, my ex-boyfriend, and Rome.
Rome had, by far, been the best one.
I’d give just about anything to give Slate a hug right now…but Rome’s hug? I’d give up the breath in my lungs. The ability to walk. The ability to see.
Rome’s hugs were that special to me.
And he likely had no idea what wrapping his arms around my shoulders meant for me. It meant trust. It meant forgiveness. It meant everything.
Rome took a deep breath, then blew it out. “No, I’m not hungry.”
“Liar.”
He grunted. “Someone left an entire bag full of tamales on the table from lunch today, and I ate every single friggin’ one of them.”
I laughed, rubbing my nose along his chest.
I wondered if he was as affected by my hugs as I was by his.
Probably not since he was able to speak in complete sentences, whereas I was thinking about how beautiful his stomach likely looked. Or how he probably had that V that drives all women wild.
Then he let me go, and I felt like my whole world shattered.
I held on for a few long seconds after he’d dropped his arms from around me, and I wondered idly how long was too long before it got to the weird department. Ten seconds? Fifteen? Sixty?
I let him go and felt like he’d stolen all my body heat when he’d pulled away.
“Come on in,” Rome said, pushing the door open wide.
I smiled and did as instructed, this time taking in all the sights there was to see.
Though there still wasn’t any décor on the walls, there was enough architectural character in the design of the house itself that it didn’t really need any.
The woodwork was damn near a work of art in and of itself.
“I love this house,” I told him as he walked past me to the living room.
“You’ve seen it before,” he pointed out sarcastically.
I rolled my eyes. “I know, but I had other things on my mind,” I answered honestly. “And I’ve had a crush on this house since we moved here years ago. I had hoped that my parents would buy it. It was one of the ones that we looked at…well, they looked at. Slate, Oscar and I weren’t allowed to get out of the car.”
“Who’s Slate?” he questioned, looking over his shoulder at me.
To keep myself from staring at his ass, I continued to study the house. It had high, vaulted ceilings. Rough cut lumber on the walls. Huge windows that had to be a bitch to keep clean since you couldn’t reach half of them, and cobwebs.
“Dear God, Rome,” I muttered, looking at the cobwebs. “Why are those up there?”
He followed my finger and snorted. “I can’t reach up there.”
I stopped at the fireplace and gave the mantle an evil eye. “What about this?” I asked as I took a swipe over the rough-cut cedar with one finger, then held it up for him to look at.
Rome had the decency to look embarrassed. “I…I don’t know.”
I rolled my eyes, then mentally went through my calendar to see when I’d have time to clean Rome’s house this week.
It wouldn’t be today…or tomorrow for that matter.
Wednesday, though…that could work.
Mentally penciling him in after the Troubadours, I came to a stop next to Rome.
“I’ll be here Wednesday to clean,” I told him.
Rome’s lips twitched. “I work on Wednesday.”
“You don’t need to be here for me to clean,” I pointed out, then narrowed my eyes. “Unless you don’t trust me in your house by myself. If that’s the case, I can come on Saturday. It’s the next day off that I have.”
Rome’s eyes studied me. “You can come on Wednesday.” He paused. “I just wanted to see you.”
I felt my lips twitch, and his eyes that had been on my face went to those lips and stayed there, studying them.
I couldn’t help darting my tongue out and licking said lips.
I felt something deep in my belly flutter, and I worried my lip with my teeth, causing his eyes to once again meet mine.
And what I saw there was definitely not the blank mask he’d been wearing for quite a long time.
This new face, with his expression-filled eyes, had something deep in my belly unfurling.
“What?” I asked softly.
He swallowed, and I watched his throat bob with the movement.
Then he blinked and the moment was lost…but definitely not forgotten. At least by me, anyway.
“I want you to have something.”
I frowned. “What?”
He handed me something that was sitting on his table, and I recognized the bag of letters that I’d left in my haste to leave earlier that morning.
I had never, not ever, wanted to leave those.
I read them over and over again when I had a bad day—and lately, there were more bad days than good days.
I was glad that he was giving them back.
“If they mean to you what yours mean to me, I don’t want you to be without them,” he said softly.
I took them up in my hands and hugged them to my chest.
“They do.”
Our eyes met, and something else—something powerful—passed between us. As if we were each other’s lifelines, and we both knew it.
“Do you want a ride home?” he asked softly.
Would I like a ride home on the back of Rome Pierce’s bike, or would I like to walk another four miles home? That was a stupid question.
And I told him so.
He laughed. The sound was rusty and husky, but it was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard.
“Let me get some boots on and find my keys.”
A shaft of sunlight shifted, spotlighting an object on the couch in its rays, and when I could make out that object, my stomach lurched at what I saw.
On the couch, illuminated by those rays of sun, was Matias’ dragon.
The big, black Night Fury from How to Train Your Dragon. It was about three feet tall and was the most ungainly large, stuffed animal in the world, but that had been how Matias had wanted it.
Stuffed to the brim so he could be ‘as big as he can be’ according to Matias.
Picking up the dragon, I tucked it underneath my arm and carried it up to Rome’s room. When he went to sleep tonight, he’d have it on the nightstand. Maybe if he woke up and saw it, he would remember the good and not the bad.
***
Rome,
I want to tell you a secret.
Today I saw my ex, and I didn’t turn around immediately and run away.
You have no idea how big of a deal that is for me.
If I’d have seen him six months ago, I’d have run away so fast that you’d have smelled burning rubber. He scares me that much.
Lucky for me, you’ve given me confidence that I never thought I’d have.
Today is the Fourth of July. I went to buy sparklers. The first thing I saw when I turned the corner was him. He had a basket full of crap, and his arm around a new girl.
It was the best feeling ever to know that he’s moved on and has shifted his focus
.
Thankfully, I was able to get my sparklers and go before he confronted me.
Because it was inevitable. He would’ve introduced the new girl, and he would’ve found a way to make me feel just as low as ever.
That’s what he always does, which is why I usually run.
The good news was that it didn’t happen.
And I was able to be strong enough to buy my favorite things in the world.
I took some extreme slow-motion shots. I printed them out and sent them with this letter.
Hope you like them!
Have a good week,
RP’s Biggest Fan
Chapter 11
Funny guys are dangerous. They’ll make you laugh and laugh and laugh, then BOOM. You’re naked.
-Rome to Izzy
Rome
I don’t know how she managed it, but the moment that Izzy forced her way back into my life, we became friends.
It was a week after she’d confronted me, and not a day had gone by that I hadn’t seen her.
At first, it was just for coffee.
Then, it was for dinner.
The night after that, she’d forced me to go to the movies—though at that point I wasn’t sure it was because she wanted to hang out with me or just because she needed a ride to the movie theater to see the newest superhero movie.
And so, it went.
Night after night, I spent it with her.
When she got off. When I got off. When we both had off. Even if it was for an hour a day, we still spent our free time together.
Which led us to today.
After waking up the morning after our encounter with a cold, she’d pushed the day that she was coming to clean my house back to Saturday—today.
I was just finishing up my workout at the twenty-four-hour gym when I got her text saying she was ready.
Grinning, I pulled the phone out of my pocket, ignoring the way that sweat dropped onto the screen, and called her.
She answered within moments.
“Hola, Romeo.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Very original,” I teased. “Are you ready to be picked up, or are you saying ‘you’re ready’ just to see if I’ll wait outside for you for ten minutes.”
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