The Promise

by Kristen Ashley

  I pressed my lips together to suppress my own “mm.”

  Even so, his mouth came to my ear and he whispered, “Like your touch, baby, but like it too much. This’s gotta end now.”

  I felt disappointment slide through me as his hand gave my ass a squeeze before it drifted up to the hollow of my back and he lifted his head away from my ear. I opened my eyes and his caught mine.

  “Doctor gives the go-ahead, we’re all over that,” he told me quietly. “He doesn’t, we’ll wait. Findin’ the wait’s worth it, so know when we get there, it’ll still be worth it.”

  Still sleepy and slightly turned on, my hands encountering Benny’s skin for the first time, I didn’t have it in me not to blurt out, “You’re even awesome in the morning.”

  He grinned, his eyes warm, sexy, and full of promise when he said, “I’m awesome all the time, babe.”

  At his arrogance, I kept all the goodness of the last three minutes but still narrowed my eyes at him.

  “Seriously?” I asked.

  “Fuck yeah,” he answered, still grinning.

  Before I could retort, he dipped his head, touched his mouth to mine, and pulled back.

  “You snooze. I’m gonna hop in the shower. You’re not up, I’ll wake you when you gotta start getting ready.”

  After delivering that, he gave me another mouth touch, let me go, and rolled out of bed.

  But as he did all that, I thought there was no way I would be able to snooze with a naked Benny in the shower just a room away.

  Still, I snuggled up under the covers. Cautiously curling my knees closer to my belly and still feeling no pain, I settled in, closed my eyes, and listened for the shower.

  I felt a slow smile spread on my lips when it came.

  The smile died when my mind moved to other thoughts.

  I had not woken in a man’s arms in over seven years and the last man’s arms I woke in were Vinnie’s.

  Vinnie, like Benny, was a cuddler, even in sleep. He liked contact. He showed affection whenever he could—awake, asleep, physically, verbally, even going so far as to let me know he was thinking of me when he was going about his day. I knew this when I’d come home to flowers. Or a little sweet nothing gift. Or even a card that had a hokey love message. Vinnie would write in the card, making fun of it, but we both knew he meant those words and that’s what made it sweet.

  When he started to work for Sal, when he became whatever it was they were before they became a made man, those little gestures started dwindling. Not the physical affection. The verbal affection, the gifts, and the cards.

  Apparently, a wise guy in training (and definitely those out of it) didn’t do sweet things for his woman. Apparently, a wise guy showed no weakness, even for his woman. Apparently, a wise guy considered doing thoughtful things for the woman he loved a weakness, when the woman he loved thought it was the opposite.

  Knowing he had that in him, guessing why he took it away from me, the crack that had formed in our relationship when I tried to talk him out of approaching his father about franchising (and he didn’t listen)…

  The crack that cut deeper each time he did something reckless that I tried to explain was just that (and he didn’t listen)…

  The crack that split between us further when he took up with Sal…

  It tore us apart.

  I just wouldn’t admit to it or give up.

  I knew that now, forced to come to terms with it in Vinnie’s brother’s bed.

  And lying in that bed after having a hint of Benny Bianchi’s good morning for the first time, a hint that was sweet and sexy, a hint that I knew could only get bigger and better, the thing that hit me was that it wouldn’t matter whose bed I was in. I would think back to what I’d had and how it went bad. I would make the comparisons. Unless I continued to live my life as I was the seven years before I was shot, which I didn’t intend to do, I would find a man and as I adjusted to a new person in my life, those thoughts were bound to drift through my head. In order to get healthy mentally and get on with my life, I would eventually have to come to terms with it.

  Vinnie was dead. I was alive. He made his choices, I talked to him (and yelled at him) until I was blue in the face to try to get him to make different ones.

  He didn’t.

  Now he was gone.

  But I was not.

  And now I was moving on and, in doing so, finding another man.

  That man just happened to be his brother.

  That was it. That was where life led me. If I let it and quit fighting it, it could be as simple as that.

  For Benny, it was that simple.

  And for Benny, I could find my way to making it that simple.

  On that thought, my eyes drifted closed as the sounds of the shower came from the next room.

  By the time the water went off, I was snoozing.

  * * * * *

  I sat next to Ben as he did the parallel parking thing in front of my apartment complex.

  I did this pressing my lips together, and I was pressing my lips together because I was also watching Manny and a woman get out of a red Chevy Tahoe in front of us.

  It was after my doctor’s appointment where the doc pronounced my improvement “gratifying” and reiterated what he’d told me in the hospital: that the stitches inside were “absorbable” and would dissolve on their own, and the “glue” on the outside was used for cosmetic purposes so my scarring would hopefully be minimal. He then ordered me to titrate the pain meds by only taking them if I really needed them and gave me the go-ahead for “slightly more strenuous activity and light exercise.”

  I didn’t have the guts to ask if this included sexual intercourse because I was trying not to think of having sex with Benny.

  I wanted it. That was without a doubt.

  But I’d had one lover and that lover shared things with Benny, so he knew things about me. Therefore, if I let my mind go there, I’d probably freak out. So I didn’t let my mind go there.

  Now we were at my apartment to get my Z and I had another obstacle to face, and that was Manny, the last member of the Bianchi family who spent the last seven years firmly in the camp of Not My Biggest Fan. Unlike Benny (who had reason, considering what I did when I threw myself at him) and Theresa (who I could get, her not wanting to have bad thoughts about her son), Manny wasn’t ugly about it. He’d just cut me out of his life.

  I’d been tight with him—not like with Ben, but we were close—and like losing all the Bianchis, that hurt.

  Carmella, their sister, didn’t do any of that. She was the second oldest and she’d started her grown-up life early, getting married and popping out kids. Doing this, and being a girl, she matured a lot quicker. She saw how things were with Vinnie Junior and she was the first one to phone him and tell him, if he cast his lot with Sal, she’d put up with him when she came home, but outside of that, he was dead to her.

  Then he cast his lot with Sal and he was dead to her.

  She never blamed me. She knew what it was. So I never lost her.

  It wasn’t like we chatted on the phone daily. But, then again, we didn’t do that shit when Vinnie was alive. But she sent me Christmas and birthday cards, the occasional email update, and I did the same with her.

  I knew by the sheepish, hesitant look on Manny’s face as he peered into Benny’s SUV, that he wasn’t looking forward to facing me.

  It turned out not to be too hard to let any of the Bianchis off the hook. The thing was, it just kept bringing it back when I was already struggling to move on.

  Benny parked and I managed to hop out on my own, even in a pair of high-heeled, platform pumps. I tugged my jacket tighter around me, seeing as we’d hit October, and just that morning, Indian summer said sayonara.

  Benny met me on the sidewalk and took my hand in a firm grip as he moved us toward Manny and his woman.

  I decided to get it over with quickly and called, “Hey,” on a big smile when we were ten feet away.

  Manny blinke
d in surprise and I saw his woman’s head twitch.

  This made me focus on her.

  When I did, I noted she was pretty and petite, not a surprise with Manny. He liked them small but rounded, always did. She had dark hair that had a lot of curl, pretty blue eyes, and was wearing much the same as me in a way that told me it wasn’t her normal uniform—platform heels, jacket, sweater, and jeans.

  I also saw she seemed tense and I liked that. Not because she was tense, but because she obviously knew what was going down and, equally obviously, was anxious for her man.

  In other words, I had to let her off the hook too.

  So when we got close, I tugged my hand from Benny’s, moved right in, and gave Manny a hug.

  It took him a second, but then his arms closed around me loosely.

  They felt good there and there it was. It was done. Standing in Manny’s arms, I was officially back in the fold of the Bianchi family.

  This made my voice husky when I said in his ear, “Thanks for gettin’ my car from Hart’s.” Then I gave him a squeeze, leaned back, and gave him a big smile.

  He stared at me a second, surprise in his dark eyes, before he said quietly, “No problem, Frankie. Glad I could do somethin’.”

  I kept smiling at him as I pulled away and shoved a hand toward his woman. “Hey, I’m Frankie.”

  “Uh, Sela,” she replied, taking my hand, her eyes darting between Manny and me. I knew she didn’t want to be rude by not looking at me, but she wanted to take the pulse of her guy.

  Yes, I liked her.

  To afford her that opportunity, I quickly said, “Nice to meet you,” aiming my smile her way. Then I gave her hand a squeeze, let it go, and looked up to Ben.

  “Can we go up real quick so I can grab my laptop and some other shit?”

  He was smiling down at me, his eyes warm and happy, his approval of how I’d handled that clear on his face, and his lips moved to say, “Anything you want, honey.”

  I shot him a grin, then looked around the group. “We get this done, maybe we can all go to lunch.”

  Manny grinned slowly at me. Sela stared at me and shifted closer to Manny.

  Benny slid an arm around my shoulders and tucked me tight to his side, muttering, “Sounds like a plan.”

  “Right, I’m hungry, let’s go,” I said, moving toward the building, wrapping an arm around Benny, and taking him with me.

  I got two steps in before Manny rounded us at the back and stopped us by grabbing my hand.

  I looked to him.

  He spoke.

  “I gotta say—”

  “Don’t,” I whispered, curling my fingers tight around his. “Don’t. It’s over. Over for everybody. Just let it be over, Manny. Yeah?”

  He held my gaze as his hand squeezed mine hard before he said, “Yeah, Frankie.”

  I gave him another smile. He gave me one and let me go.

  Benny moved me to the building.

  I’d punched in the security code to open the door. We were in the lobby and he kept walking me to the elevators, but he did it dipping his head so he had my ear.

  “You know you’re the shit, right?” he said there.

  My chest warmed, my lips curled up, and I pulled my head back so he would lift his. When he did I caught his eyes. “Fuck yeah.”

  He pulled me closer and did it laughing.

  * * * * *

  “Fuck it,” I muttered, leaning forward and putting my laptop on Benny’s coffee table.

  I heaved myself out of his couch and moved through the house. Destination: garage, where Benny was working on my Z.

  Obviously, we collected the Z. We also had a quick bite with Manny and Sela. Man, like his brother, didn’t waste the opportunity my quick forgiveness afforded him. He slid back into the Manny of old, teasing, giving me shit, making a lot of jokes, and generally acting like the annoying little brother you adored for reasons that made no sense, mostly because you adored him because he was annoying.

  Sela thawed when she saw I wasn’t going to bust Manny’s chops, not even in a passive-aggressive way, and I was surprised to find she was sweet, kind of in the way Connie was sweet. Apparently, unlike his brother, Manny didn’t want a challenge. He wanted a woman to come there when she was told. Watching them together, I was glad he found what he wanted and a good one at that.

  On my way to the garage, I ignored my jacket that I’d slung on the back of one of Benny’s kitchen table chairs. I was thinking I wouldn’t be out in the chill too long, thus I wouldn’t need one. So I walked out, down the stoop and the cement pathway, and I hit the garage. I opened the side door and heard the music, though I’d heard it before I even opened the door. Metallica’s “Wherever I May Roam.”

  Another urge to smile hit me. There wasn’t a lot of music I didn’t like, but there was no denying I was a metal girl down to my soul. Ben was all about metal too. I knew this from high school. I’d liked it since then, and right at that moment, I liked the idea that if it happened for us, if this worked, there would probably not be a time when we’d fight about what was playing on the stereo.

  I moved between his SUV and my Z, which was backed into the garage, and found him under the hood.

  There were things a man could do that were normal things to him that he would have no idea would give a private happy flutter to girls like me.

  Working under the hood of a car was one of them.

  I controlled the flutter and called, “Hey.”

  He lifted up from what he was doing and rested his forearms on the filthy blanket he had draped over the side of the car. His hands were greasy, he held some tool in one of them, he turned his eyes to me, and the flutter became harder to control.

  “You need a jacket,” was his greeting.

  “I’m not gonna be out here that long,” I shared.

  “You need a jacket,” he repeated.

  Suddenly, the flutter became a whole lot easier to control.

  “Or I wasn’t gonna be out here that long. Since you obviously need to make a point Benny-style, I might be out here a year.”

  His eyes smiled as his mouth muttered, “Benny-style.”

  I amused him.

  That made me happy and mildly ticked—a contradiction of emotions that I was finding Benny was skilled at evoking.

  “I will point out you’re in a t-shirt,” I stated for reasons that were beyond me, since it was chilly and I didn’t need to start squabbling with Benny. That’d mean I’d be out there a lot longer than I expected, which would make him right about me needing a jacket.

  “I’m a guy.”

  At his words, I blinked, then stared, forgetting about getting to the point, mostly because he was annoying, and when he was, I had all the time in the world to squabble.

  “A woman needs a jacket, but a guy is immune to cold?” I asked.

  “No. My woman needs a jacket ’cause I don’t want her uncomfortable or to catch a cold. I don’t give a shit about other women. They can run around when it’s fifty degrees and do it naked for all I care. But you need a jacket.”

  “There you go, making protective annoying again.”

  His lips quirked. “Told you it was a gift.”

  I lifted my brows. “Do you think if I threw down a challenge and the person who fails to get in the last word loses, we’d be out here an eternity?”

  “Probably.”

  “Let’s not do that,” I suggested.

  “I’d be up for it, if you went in and put on a jacket.”

  Now I wasn’t happy, I was just ticked.

  That was why I tipped my head back to look at the garage door rolled up on the rail and cried, “Arrrr!”

  “Babe,” he called.

  I looked back to him.

  “Let’s get to the part about why you’re out here,” he suggested.

  I took in a deep breath and asked, “You need a drink or something?”

  He grinned and answered, “Nope.”

  I nodded. Offer to do something nic
e for him while he was doing something nice for me extended and declined. Now it was time to move on to why I was really out there.

  “Your Wi-Fi password isn’t working.”

  He looked perplexed for a second before he asked, “What?”

  “Your Wi-Fi password isn’t working. I’m trying to get my laptop connected so I can check my email. The password you gave me to do that isn’t working.”

  “You type it in right?”

  “Seein’ as I typed it in forty-five thousand times, I’m guessin’ one of those times I got it right.”

  “Forty-five thousand?” he asked, eyebrows going up right along with the tips of his lips. “I been out here for twenty minutes, babe. You must type fast.”

  I rolled my eyes before rolling them back to him and saying, “Ben, if I can get on my email, I can sort some shit out, do some work, get back into the swing of things, feel like my life is back in my control. I can do that on my phone, but it’d be a whole lot easier on my laptop. It’d help out if you could scan your brain to let me know if you gave me the correct password.”

  “Honestly, I have no clue,” he replied. “Only got Internet for the TVs and set that up at least a year ago. But the password I gave you is what I remember the password to the router bein’.”

  Since his password was 13579000BB, although this would be hard to forget, and although I put in one less 0, two more 0s, and left out the 0s altogether, something was not right.

  “Did you write it down somewhere?” I asked.

  “Yep,” he answered.

  “Where?”

  “No clue about that either,” he said on a grin.

  I looked down to my car, then back to him, beginning to feel the chill seep through my thin sweater. I needed to get this done before I shivered noticeably, giving Ben the opportunity to pounce right on that, something to be avoided.

  “Okay, well, you’re already doin’ somethin’ for me so I’ll just ask when you’re done, you do somethin’ else for me and find wherever you wrote down that password?”

  “Sure.”

  “Thanks,” I muttered, making a move to leave.

  “Babe?” he called, and I looked back at him.

  “What?”

  “Come here,” he ordered, still leaning into his arms on the side of my car.