Another knock.
From the couch I blink at it, trying so hard to understand who it could be. Was I supposed to meet Mr. Donovan today? His guys are working on the patio I think. Wait… it doesn’t make sense he’d be here. Why would he come to my home? I’m not thinking right. But that’s understandable.
Another knock, more loudly this time. More determined. Definitely male.
Could it be Brendan?
I shoot upright, grab the remote and check the time on cable. It’s Brendan’s lunch hour! I fly off the couch, running for the door.
Without looking through the peephole, I swing it open, and say on a gasp, “Christiano!”
“Bella.” His face softens, happy I’m home, the worry vanishing.
“I can’t believe you’re here!” I’m so astounded to see him, and so hurting, that I fly into the arms of the man who has always comforted me. He squeezes me tightly and holds me awhile. We look into each other’s faces, soaking in the details. It’s been so long since I’ve seen his face. “You flew all this way! I can’t believe it!”
“How could I not? Look at you. Are you sick? You are still in your pajamas.”
I shake my head. “No. Not really, I guess. God, look at you! I can’t believe you’re here. It’s like you knew I needed…” I stop and push back a long, thick lock of hair off his tanned forehead. “You’ve grown your hair!”
“A little, sí,” he smiles.
He looks like he just walked off a Gucci billboard. “How do you manage to look this handsome after a flight like that?! And how did you get here? Did you take a cab? Why didn’t you call me?”
He laughs and takes my face in his hands. “My little Bella. So many questions. And look at you! How do you look so beautiful in sweat pants and tears?”
“It’s a skill.”
He laughs again, big and free, and pulls me in for another hug, rocking me from side to side, crushing me into his chest. Brendan’s words fly into my heart. He’d said he wished he could hug me like this.
Struggling to remove the memory, I pull away. “Let’s get your suitcase inside. And your coat! You threw it on the floor, and it’s so gorgeous. My floor’s a mess.”
He reaches for the coat, bending at the waist with one swift motion of masculine grace. “It is just a coat.” As he reaches for his brown leather bag and sets it beside my coatrack, he glances around my apartment for the first time. “This is your home.”
“Yep. This is it.” I close the door and watch him hang his coat as he glances to the T.V. and back to me. Guiltily, I see it’s Judge Judy on the screen. I didn’t even know I was watching her, but Christiano doesn’t have a T.V. so what must he be thinking about this nonsense? I run over and turn it off. “I wasn’t really watching it.”
He smiles, walking around, soaking everything in–the furniture, the bay window, the small dining table with an empty vase, the books I brought back with me from Italy that he must recognize. He walks to the poster of Tuscany, gazing at it. “It’s very nice, Annie. Your home.”
“Thank you. Tell me you didn’t get a hotel.”
“I did not get a hotel.”
“Good. You should stay here.” I smile, wringing my hands at the idea of sharing a bed with him.
“I have to ask…” He turns and looks at me from the side.
“Yes?” I’m not sure I can handle this now. I’m pretty sure I can’t.
“Why is a skull on your sofa?”
I exhale deeply and walk to pick it up. “This is Jaco. He’s Mayan. Found him at a garage sale.”
“Ah. I am not surprised you would buy him.” He smiles. “I know you. But why on the sofa?”
“It’s more comfortable than shelves,” I shrug, thinking of Brendan’s joke, a sharp pain twisting inside me as I walk to the shelves and set Jaco next to a picture of my mother, which would normally make me smile, because she’d hate it. “But I’ll put him back now that I have company.” I turn to find Christiano looking at me with love.
There is still a part of my heart with his name on it. I can’t deny it. He was everything to me, he can’t be nothing to me now. It’s not possible; the heart doesn’t work like that. But if he thinks he’s going to make love to me right now, I can’t. I look to the floor, to my bare feet where I wiggle my toes in awkward silence.
Understanding perfectly, he says, “How about you get dressed and I take you out for lunch?”
I glance up, looking at him from underneath my eyelashes. “That’d be nice.” I walk to lay my hand on his chest, look at one of the buttons on his shirt and finger it lightly for a second, so torn. I’m dying for another hug to ease the pain.
His arms slip around me, his thumb stroking my back in a gentle rhythm. I feel him grow against my hip. “Bella,” he says in a hoarse whisper.
“Don’t. Please,” I beg. I try to pull away. “It’s so confusing seeing you after all these months! It’s just I’ve missed you. I’m sorry, I’m being selfish. It’s just I’m used to touching you, but I can’t right now. I just can’t.”
He tries to make me look at him, but I can’t meet his eyes. The floor is so much safer. “Because of him?! It is because of him?”
“Not now…please…I need some time…to adjust to the surprise of seeing you, and of…” I stop myself from saying losing him. “Let me get dressed and we’ll talk about everything.”
With a short, determined nod, he releases me and watches me walk to the bedroom. I throw a self-conscious glance over my shoulder. I’ve never closed the door on him to get dressed before, but things are different now. He frowns until I can’t see him anymore.
Click.
Chapter Thirty-One
Tommy
Location Times Three: conference room. Coffee Cups: empty. Paper Take-Out Boxes: strewn haphazardly. Chopsticks: used as drumsticks. A dozen half-empty plastic ramekins of sauce.
Leaning back in the swivel chair, I watch Stephanie explain to us why our latest client is floundering and what we can do to help. It’s a dating app. They’ve just hired us, so we’re at square one. Steph’s got a chart of their sales and where they are in relation to the other more popular sites. “You can see there’s a huge dip where our guy is. We need to make their numbers rise to here.” She points to two above the middle guy on the chain of greatness to poor.
I’m irritated and spinning my ring on my finger. “Why not aim higher?” I glance to Brendan because he hasn’t said a word since we all sat down here an hour ago; he would have the exact same objection I just had, but he’s not listening. He’s not even looking at her. His jaw is pushed out, eyes distant. The box of fried rice is sitting in front of him, untouched.
Stephanie glances to me, her little mouth pursed up. The ego on this blonde would shame James Cameron. She’s wearing the entire, extremist feminist revolution on her shoulder and it’s a sight to see. If she’d stop being so fucking defensive, she’d know her idea is crap.
She sighs, long and exaggeratedly, saying to me as though I’m a child, “We’re telling them what’s feasible so when we beat their expectations, they’re impressed. They’re an underdog, and this account won’t be easy. We’ll be lucky if we get it to where I’m aiming for.”
Johnny, Laura, Mike and Gary all look from Steph to me with varying expressions, half of them indigestion, half curiosity about whether we’re going to start yelling soon, like last time. For some reason everyone’s wearing a shade of blue today except for Mike who’s got on a pink button-up. It looks good, but ribbing him was a must. He’s Mike, after all. He was born to be made fun of.
Flipping a chopstick lazily around in my fingers, I side-eyeball Steph. “Well, that’s the way you work, Steph. But I would have told them we’d aim past the highest guy and when we met that statement, they’d be even more impressed that we actually did what we said we would, and then some. You’re underestimating us. Again. If you’re going to aim low, I’ve got a target for you.”
Stephanie rolls her eyes. “What about
you?” She waits with all of us. “Brendan?”
He glances to her and mutters, “Tommy’s right. You’re wrong. Excuse me.” He gets up and exits through the glass door.
Stephanie calls after him, surprised, “Where are you going?”
I drop the chopstick. Gary’s eyebrows have flown up to his hairline. Laura’s bitten down on the pen she cuts her eyes to me. I stand, holding my hand up to tell them all that I’ve got it covered. Wait here.
Catching up to him as he strides determinedly past cubicles, I match the hasty fall of his steps. “How you doin’ B-man? Everything okay?”
His hands are in his pockets, his face grim, mouth set. If he wanted me to leave him alone, he’d tell me. So I get on the elevator with him and watch him hit the button for the lobby. Mirroring him, I slide my hands into my pockets and stare ahead, wondering what he’s up to. The doors slide open with a speed achieved only by modern architecture, and we both head for the street. I jog a couple steps to get the door because it’s like he’s a locomotive that will barrel right through it if I don’t. He walks out without a word and I follow, curiosity killing me. My body is tensed under the possibility he suspects me, adrenaline pumping hard as we walk several blocks until we’re clipping across the pavement of busy Geary Street. Still he hasn’t said a word. Just as I can’t take it anymore and I’m about to ask where we’re headed, he turns into a bar. I look up at the sign and my heart thunderclaps: Whiskey Thieves. He opens the door and holds it for me to join him. This is the first sign he’s given that he knows I’m even here. Well, that can’t be a coincidence.
Fuck.
So this is it.
The reckoning.
I pass him into the dark dive bar as a calm overtakes me. Ever since the shooting, I’ve been haunted by a pervading agitation, fear of being caught slicing into every minute detail, action, step, and breath. And now, it’ll be over. I can finally rest.
Like I’m walking inside a thick drum, I head for a barstool and take a seat with Brendan following closely behind. Bottles of whiskey line the wall underneath signs that read Bourbon & Rye, and Scotch-Irish. It’s only 1:00 p.m. so the place is nearly empty save for people who should be at an AA meeting. The light from the small windows illuminates shafts of dust across the room. Through them, a bartender walks to us, his face jaded and tired from having seen years of men wasting their lives away on a seat like this one.
“What can I get you fellas?” He lays one gnarled, tatted hand on the counter, the other fiddling with an invisible something on his shirt, overgrown eyebrows curled together in skin that looks like he spent his boyhood summers on a oil rig.
Brendan is sitting to my right, hunched over with both forearms on the bar just like me. “Scotch. I don’t care which one.”
If this is going to be my last drink, I’ll be damned if it’s gonna be the well, so I correct him, “Two Lagavulin. One rock each.” The bartender steps away without facial comment and I pull out my wallet. Brendan raises a hand to object but I mutter, “I got it.” His hand drops back down. Fox News is on the T.V. above us and I glance up, pretending to look at it.
The bartender ambles back and smacks the full glasses on the counter without a napkin underneath them. Interesting choice. I hand him my Amex card and tell him with a jerk of my chin to keep it open. His nod is an eyelid-flicker, the way a lot of guys do when they’ve got too much testosterone to actually bow their heads. He taps the side of my card on the counter on his exit, and when he does that, Brendan stares at the guy’s hand. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch his reaction. Something really bothered him about that. Even after the bartender has walked away to join some regulars at the end of the bar near the wall, Brendan is still staring at where he tapped the card.
I pick up my glass. He picks up his. We clink them together and take a sip. The sting feels good against my tongue, heating my throat on the way down. The one cube of ice opens up the flavor, makes it even more layered and complex. This might be my last glass for a long time. I want to savor it. I take another slow sip, move my tongue around in my mouth as I swirl the glass around, watching the ice melt, the amber lightening. “This is the shit right here,” I mutter.
He’s staring at his glass, too, like he’s looking for answers in it.
I glance to him, and dive in. “Okay, let’s have it.”
“She lied to me.”
Like a car hitting the brakes, my blood shifts. He doesn’t know it was me. I’m not going to jail. This is about the chick he’s been banging, the one who took my gun. But he doesn’t know I know about her. Since I’m a professional liar, I don’t miss a beat. “Who? Rebecca?”
Brendan shakes his head and takes a big gulp of the single malt. His lips curl back and he sets the glass on the bar as he swallows the burn. “No. The owner of the bar, the one where I got shot.” He glances to me. “You know the place I invited you to, for the reopening?”
I look up at the T.V. “Oh yeah. I couldn’t make it. How’d it go? Wait – is that why you were helping them? You were banging the owner?”
He winces, but if I said anything other than banging, I wouldn’t have sounded like myself.
After a beat, he says, “Yeah,” and orders another. One drink after that, he finally opens up.
“Mark and I went into this new place–the place I told you about, Le Barré–and we met Annie. I don’t know. She got me, man. She dug in deeper than anyone has and you know me, I’m not the kind who gets locked in, but I was thinking things…” he stops, and slowly shakes his head, his mouth tight. “She went to college with us. Do you remember Annie O’Brien? She was a Goth chick.”
Put on the spot, I make the face people make when they’re trying to remember something. I opt for ignorance. “Nah, I didn’t pay much attention to those freaks.”
Brendan stares at me, processing this. He looks away and swirls his new glass. “I guess I didn’t either. But I met her right after college. Fucked her friend Corinne and from what I’m gathering from Corinne running into us the other night, and the things she said to me and Annie, Annie had a thing for me back then or something. I guess it ruined their friendship, but I don’t know the whole story. The thing is, she knew it was me this whole time we’ve been seeing each other. She didn’t tell me. And I asked her! I asked her I think a couple times that first night, the night we got shot.”
“She got shot, too?”
“What?” He looks at me. “Oh. No. I meant the night I got shot.” He takes a sip and licks his lips, asking himself more than me, “Why would she do that?”
“Women are fucking stupid, that’s why,” I scoff, remembering Rebecca trying to look under my shirt. If she’d have seen what I was hiding, my life would have been over. I was this close to losing my freedom just because she wouldn’t listen. “Trust me, never let them in and you’re golden.”
Grimly, Brendan says, “That’s what I’ve always told myself.”
“And you were right.”
I bring my glass up to tap his, but it takes him a second to meet me halfway. I need to hit the nail in deeper. Having that bitch around is only going to endanger me, because the hatred I feel for her is so palpable that who knows what I’ll do if I ever see her again? Brendan and I have been burying the hatchet and while I still hate his fucking guts, I’ve played it cool this many years, I think I can keep going if I’m not provoked.
“Wait, was Annie the one who had the long black hair and blue eyes? Like vampire-bright?” He turns to me. If he were a dog, his ears would be perked up high. He nods. I milk it for all it’s worth. “It’s no wonder she lied to you, man. If it’s the girl I’m thinking of, she hated us. She gave us the evil-eye all the time. She told me one night that we were going to pay for how we treated women, and I just laughed at her, because what’s she gonna do? So, she found a way, huh? Man, you must feel pretty dumb.”
His lips tighten. He downs his Scotch and stands up. “Let’s go.”
I down mine, too, and motion to the bart
ender to close us out. As the pen hits the paper, I say to Brendan over my shoulder, “Hey, sorry man. Didn’t mean to piss you off more.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He walks away and leaves me to follow him with a smirk on my face.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Annie
Golden Gate Park. Sun: annoyingly cheery.
Christiano’s quiet concentration is the calm before the storm. During lunch we talked about the people from back home in Tuscany, how I’ve found some new friends in Laura, Taryn, and Manny. I even told him about the girl I had to fire for stealing. We haven’t spoken about Brendan. Truthfully, I don’t know what to say, now that Brendan isn’t speaking to me. There is hope in my heart that that will change and it’s taking everything I have not to lean on Christiano for support. He’s always been a rock to hold onto in an ocean of uncharted territory. It was natural for him to fall into that role when I was so young and a foreigner who didn’t even speak the language and knew nothing about the customs. But now I’m swimming on my own. It’s just so hard to remember that with the familiarity of his presence so close, today. It’s extremely fucking hard.
As a little girl of about five runs by us on the path, Christiano quietly says, “Bella?”
I keep my eyes on the parents of the little girl. They’re talking to each other with smiles on their faces, a family. I want that. “Yes?”
About the family, he smiles, “They look happy,” and then reaches for my hand as he’s done a thousand times. But it’s not the hand I’m used to anymore. I shake my head against the growing knot in my throat. I’m not ready for this conversation. I don’t think I ever will be! “Christiano, I don’t know what to say.”
“You do not have to say it. Do you not think I know every expression you make?” He stops walking and takes my chin in hand. “I can see your confusion. That confusion gives me hope. Do not take that away from me. Let us enjoy each other.” He leans in to kiss me. I close my eyes and feel his kiss rush into my body like a wicked thing, so accustomed to his touch, my body trained to respond to it.
Tangling Hearts (Hearts Series Book 3) Page 11