I shouldn’t love it like I do, I’m not even on birth control anymore. I stopped taking my pills after the incident at the winery. I probably won’t get pregnant… probably.
But if I did… I’d be happy. I already know I would. I love them. I want this with them.
I take in a deep breath, knowing I need to say the words and admit it to them. Not tonight. Instead I close my eyes as they lie down on each side of me, feeling well used and well loved. I know damn well when I say the words to them, they may not say them back. It’s easier to pretend for now. To hold the words in and just live in the moment.
Chapter 21
Maddox
The water from the shower is almost white noise. Bianca’s cleaning up. My sweet, sweet honey bee. I lean back for a moment on the bed, realizing just how fucked I am. This isn't normal, it's not something that everyone else is going to accept.
I wonder what my mom would think of her. Not that it matters. I don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks. I've decided she's mine. I'm not letting her go.
I only have one picture of my mom. She’s real young in it. I think it was taken before she had me, but I don’t know for sure though.
I get up off the bed, the mattress creaking as I set my feet on the floor and reach over to the dresser for my wallet.
Her picture’s inside, right where it always is, tucked away behind the old expired cards. She doesn't look a thing like Bianca. Bianca has that olive skin and dark Italian features. My ma was a blonde with fair skin. Complete opposites in every way, and that’s a good fucking thing.
It took me a long time to realize that not all women are like my mother. They don’t all leave you.
I look away from the photo at the thought.
I know why my mother left. Or at least I can imagine it was because of my father. I'll never make Bianca want to leave. Not now. Damon was right, I was pushing her away.
I think about my mom, and I don't think I ever pushed her away. But I don’t know why she didn’t take me with her. That’s all I wanna know. My finger brushes against the smooth surface of the photo and over her face. I have her green eyes. But the rest of me is all him. I look just like my father.
I’d like to think that’s why. That I reminded her too much of him, just because of how I looked. And that it wasn’t 'cause I was such a bad kid that I made her want to leave me.
For her I wasn’t. I tried to be good. I know I did. I took the hits for her when I could, but I guess that wasn't enough. I wish I could tell her I don’t want to look like him. If I could change it, I would. And if it was something I did or said that night, I would take it back.
I honestly don’t remember much of her. I remember the night before she left though. It was a good night. We all ate dinner in the living room together. Which wasn’t something that happened often. I even did my sixth grade math homework from Mrs. Parker on the floor. It’s weird the things that stay so vivid in your memory. I remember how careful I had to be with the pencil so it didn’t go through the paper since I was doing it against the carpet. I didn’t care enough to get something hard underneath of it.
She was in the kitchen, doing the dishes. I felt normal. I thought that’s how families were supposed to be. I stayed up that night, watching something on TV until the late hours. Mom was pissed when she came out of the bedroom. She never cared before, but that night when I saw her face I knew to get my ass up and go to my room.
I didn’t realize until long after that she was still dressed. She wasn’t in her sweats or pajamas. It didn’t click till years after she'd left. She was leaving, and the last thing she did was to tell me to go to my room.
Back then, I thought the tears in her eyes as she clenched her jaw were from anger. If only I knew.
I shove the photo back into my wallet and toss it onto the dresser, eager to get it the fuck away from me and push these bitch emotions down.
The palms of my hands feel cold against my hot eyes as I try to ignore it all. I can’t change it. And I’ll never know why.
Footsteps in the hall catch my attention. They’re fast and heavy. I reach for my gun, instincts taking over, but it’s only one set of footsteps and before I even get a grip on the gun, Damon’s in the doorway.
My heart’s beating so fucking fast. I’m losing it. I release a breath I didn’t know I was holding and drop the gun back down.
Damon doesn’t see at least. I get up quick to play it off and meet him halfway across the room.
Lack of sleep and knowing how much I want Bianca, but not knowing how this is going to end is really fucking up my head.
“What’s going on?” I ask him.
“We gotta talk,” he says, looking over my shoulder at the door to the master suite where Bianca’s still taking a shower.
Every hair on my body stands on end. The way he’s carrying himself, the tone in his voice. It's clear he’s ready for a fight.
It’s finally happening. I knew it would. He's taking her away from me.
“You don’t want her like I do.” Damon looks me in the eyes as he tells me what I want. As if he has any idea.
“Is that right?” My voice is low, heated and on edge.
For a moment, the conviction in the air around him wavers. But then his eyes harden. “The way you treat her and talk about her, it’s over for you when this is done. But I still want her.”
I breathe in deep, realizing he’s not gonna let me have her. He’s going to make me fight for her.
She had a thing going with him before last night. But the way I took her last night, the look in her eyes… I know she wants me. I know there’s something there between us, too. I don't know if she wants me without him, but I'm ready to fight for her.
I may have a chance. And I’m not going down easy.
“You think I don’t deserve her?” I ask him.
His eyes move from me to the door behind me and then he searches my eyes. “I didn’t say that, Maddox.”
“I can make her smile too,” I tell him, that jealousy creeping up on me, “I can make her happy.” My voice hardens as I add, “You have no idea what I think of her. And now that you think she might give me a chance, you want to take her away from me.” He looks like I struck him in the face, but he keeps at it. Pushing me.
“It’s not about what you could do, it’s about what you’re doing now.” He doesn’t back down. “It’s about what you think of her,” he says the last words with anger, like it offends him. He has no fucking idea what I think of her.
I shove my fists into his shoulders, knocking him back some, but his feet stay in place.
“It’s none of your fucking business,” I tell him as my breathing picks up. The man standing in front of me is no longer my ally, my best friend. He’s not the boy I grew up with and fought beside.
The sound of the shower in the background continues as he looks me dead in the eyes and shoves his hands into my chest as he states, “She’s my business.”
He’s my fucking enemy. The only thing standing between me and my Bianca. My honey bee.
And he’s a fucking dead man.
“You’re not going to keep me from her,” the words feel as though they rake up my throat as they come out. “She’s not yours.”
For the first time in my life, I see the shift in Damon, the flip of the light switch that sets him off.
For the first time since I’ve met him, I’m his enemy, just as much as he’s mine.
I don’t even see it coming, he’s faster than me. So fast that he lands his punch square on my jaw before I can blink. The pain radiates up my jaw and to the back of my skull. My teeth crack against one another and my mouth fills with a metallic taste as I take an unsteady step back.
I cup my jaw for a moment, realizing a woman’s come between us and it’s the end for us. I look up at him, seeing his shoulders squared and his stance ready to take me out, and everything goes red.
Chapter 22
Damon
From the look in Maddox�
�s eyes, it’s all come down to this moment. Well, I’m not going down easy. In fact, I come out swinging, completely blindsiding him, but now that I’ve grabbed him by the throat and shoved him against the the chest of drawers, I know he’s ready.
I hope I am, too. From the look in his eyes right now, he won’t be easy on me. I didn't think it would go down like this. It's not what I wanted. I just know she's the one for me, and she deserves respect.
“You aren't taking her from me!” he shouts in between gasps for air.
This time he charges at me. He gives me one sharp push that sends me sprawling backward. One of my shoulders hits the bed and I ricochet right into the drywall, face first. My legs land badly, causing me to go down hard, but the adrenaline’s pumping.
In no time, I spring back up on two feet and face off with him again. I’m so fucking pissed, I almost don’t care about how bad this must sound to the woman in the next room, if she can hear us over the sound of the shower. We’re supposed to be protecting her, not acting reckless and unprofessional. But fuck, we’re too far gone for that. Maddox loves a fight, and since I’m the one who started it, he’s not backing down until he finishes it.
If I'd known he was going to act like this... fuck. Maybe I was wrong. I didn't think he'd fight for her. I didn't anticipate this.
Shit! He gets into battle stance, with feet apart and legs slightly bent at the knee. Like a predator, he trains his eyes on me and without skipping a beat, his fists rise to chin height. The swift right hook that he doles out gets me square in the jaw. Then he unleashes blow after punishing blow, pounding on my chest, face and sides. One punch to my jaw is so forceful that it spins me around at a dizzying speed. He grabs one of my wrists from behind then, wrenching my forearm up my back at a painfully precarious angle, rendering me completely useless to fight back.
Maddox’s skill level gives him an advantage. My only defense is to free myself. It means that I need to fight dirty. Leaning my head forward at the neck, I snap my head back hard, crashing into the lower half of his face. The crunch of bone on bone and the ear-piercing yelp he lets out give me a strange sense of satisfaction, but the feeling is only temporarily. I barely have time to push him off me, shake my head and adjust to my own dizziness, but I make do. Maddox comes at me hard again, but that’s the thing about being lifelong friends. We’ve fought countless times before. I know his moves, his preferences, his strengths, and his weaknesses. Just as he knows mine. One small adjustment to my footing allows me to sidestep his high-speed approach. As he pivots to turn, I smash a right uppercut into his chin, which whips his head back and gives me time to add one swift left punch against his cheek. I put my weight into the move, sending him off balance, but he takes advantage of the backward motion and drags me to the ground with him.
Maddox lands on his back, with me halfway on top of him. One of the bedside lamps crashes down to the floor beside me, shattering glass, porcelain and brittle plastic that fly up around us.
“Are you done yet?” I bark.
“I’m just getting started,” he snarls after dragging in a breath.
With a slight movement, he tucks in one elbow and the opposite knee. Next thing I know, I’m flying sideways. The corner of the nightstand arrests my toss while Maddox jumps back up to his feet.
“Get up!” Maddox shouts, returning to his fighter stance as he runs the back of one hand under the spot on his cheek where I hit him.
When he finds a satisfactory opportunity, he swings at me again, but this move is his trademark. With a sharp tilt to one side, I nail him in the eye with an overhand left, causing him to stagger to his right. As I look toward him, I catch a glimpse of my bruised, bloody face in the mirror above the chest of drawers. Fuck. Behind me, the room is trashed. Even the mirror has one massive crack down the middle. Bending forward, I rest my hands on my knees to catch my breath.
Maddox covers his left eye with one hand and gives me a one-eyed squint. I straighten up to look him in the eye. Just when I think he’s about to call it quits, he rushes up and nails me in the gut, knocking the wind out of me. Motherfucker.
His arm goes around my neck, pulling me into a rough headlock that I swear must have caught me in the windpipe. My knee-jerk reaction to this chokehold is to swing my free arm up and back into his face. He lets out a howl, but I’m so dizzy from lack of air, I don’t bother to assess whether or not I’ve done any more damage. I feel my legs give way under me. Maddox doesn’t stop. He tightens his grip around my neck, but after a few seconds go by, he releases me and heaves me forward so hard, I hit the ground with a loud thud, bounce up, then land hard again. It’s only when I roll onto my back that I notice him squatting down. His nose is bleeding. A lot.
“I broke it, didn’t I?” I ask.
“Of course not,” he says, and sits on the ground a few feet from me, exhausted and grimacing.
I breathe out heavily, my chest heaving as I catch my breath. I stare at my best friend, wondering how I got this so wrong.
“What the fuck are we doing?” I ask from my sprawled-out spot on the ground after catching my breath. “It’s not like us to let a woman come between us.”
He tilts his face up to try and stop the bleeding. “I don’t know,” he says, gripping the edge of the bed to get to his feet. “I don't want to lose her. I'm not letting-”
“Are we done fighting?” I ask, cutting him off and rolling slowly to one side. I clutch my side with one hand and push off with the other.
Maddox wipes the blood dripping down from his nose but doesn’t answer.
“We both fell for her,” I tell him.
It’ll be a cold day in hell before Maddox utters the L word, so it’s no surprise to me that he won’t say a word.
“It’s too late now,” I continue. “I want her, Maddox.”
“I want her, too.” He finally tells me the words I need to hear. He may not know it, but that's all I needed to know. “I won't stop fighting for her,” he tells me. I stare into his gaze and nod my head. He's waiting for something, and I don't know what. Maybe he thinks I'm going to back down and step aside for him.
“Good, don't,” I tell him as I leave the room.
Maddox follows me into the living room. He’s gone silent, but at least he’s not readying himself to knock me out either. I need a drink. He probably does too, so I grab two clean whiskey glasses sitting in the dish rack and pour us a drink. I pull out the only ice pack in the freezer and pass it to him. “Here. Your face is more fucked up than mine.”
“Only because I went easy on you,” he finally says after gulping down the booze in two large swigs and slamming the glass on the counter.
We're both hurting and bruised. Still, it’s nothing compared to how bad it could be. Over the years, we’ve fought harder than this about much less important stuff.
After our drink, we take a seat in the living room. Bianca's gotta be getting out of the bathroom soon, and we need to talk to her. Neither of us have anything to say for a while on the issue to each other as we wait. We’ve been best friends for long years. We both love Bianca. Maybe that’s a good thing.
Maybe it's all we need.
I know Maddox doesn’t want to hear what I’m thinking. I don’t really care. He needs to listen.
“Maybe we can fix this,” I tell him.
“Fix what?” he asks, lifting the ice pack from one side of his face.
I nod toward the bedrooms. “I think you have to be the one to tell her.”
“So, what are you suggesting?” He clears his throat. “You gonna make her choose?” He's trying to play it off, and that's when I know for sure. He's just scared she doesn't want him. He's a fucking dumbass. How blind can he be?
“I'm not fighting you, and she doesn't have to choose. We can keep her.”
At first he's confused. Then the disbelief sets in. I ignore it all, holding his gaze and waiting for something from him that I can work with. “So what do we do?” he asks, and the look in his eyes shifts to
hope.
“I don’t know yet, but we’d better come up with something before Vittoro finds out. He'll be done with the Condottis soon. He'll have the territories and no enemies... but us. The longer we keep what’s going on with Bianca from him, the worse off we’ll be.”
The burner phone buzzes from its spot on the coffee table. It’s the number we forwarded from our main office cell so that no one can track us using GPS. Getting up, I check the number.
“Speak of the devil,” I tell Maddox before hitting the call answer button.
I just hope Vittoro can’t read people over the phone the way he does in person.
If he can, we’re fucked.
Chapter 23
Maddox
“Damon speaking.” Damon answers the phone calmly and straightens his back. I fucked him up pretty good, but that shot he got at my jaw is still radiating pain from just inside my ear all the way down my shoulder.
It’s fucked up, but I feel lighter, I feel whole. Like it needed to happen. But it’s not a done deal yet, because our honey bee needs to know where she stands with us. And realistically I don’t know how this is going to work.
Bianca slowly walks into the room from the bedroom with a towel wrapped around her hair and a simple short nightgown on that hugs her curves, and I’m quick to put my pointer finger to my lips, silencing her. Her mouth parts and her eyes widen as she walks toward me; it takes me a moment to realize it’s because of the fight we just had. I flex my jaw and move away from her touch as she raises a hand to cup my cheek.
Shit. The bedroom is trashed and we both look like we got into a brawl... which I guess we did.
She turns over her shoulder with her eyes narrowed and her lips pressed into a thin line, but the second she sees Damon’s face, her expression softens into one of worry.
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