The Promise

by Kristen Ashley

  “What, Ben?”

  “Come here.”

  “As you yourself pointed out, it’s cold. So just tell me…what?”

  “Come here.”

  I screwed up my eyes. “Seriously?”

  He grinned.

  “What, Ben?” I asked.

  “Francesca, come…here.”

  “Oh, all right,” I snapped and stomped around the car, stopping close. “What?” I asked shortly when I got there.

  “Come here,” he repeated, having not moved anything but his neck in order to be able to look up at me.

  “I am here, Ben,” I pointed out.

  “No, baby, you aren’t. You’re there and the here I want before you go back into the house is for you to be here so you can give me your mouth.”

  That caused a flutter along with a dip and my chest warming all at once.

  But I was me so it was full of attitude when I leaned into him and pressed my mouth to his.

  I intended only a lip brush, but without him even moving his hands, he kept me there by touching his tongue to my lips. Naturally, the promise of that was too much not to go after, so my lips opened and his tongue swept inside. I liked that so much my body reacted and I had to put my hand to his side to steady myself.

  He released my mouth and said softly, “I’ll finish up here soon and find your password.”

  “Thanks, honey,” I whispered, his kiss—the way he demanded it, the way he took it, leaning casually into my car but still managing to be all about me, something I thought was hot—causing all my attitude to leak out of me.

  I was still close so I only saw his eyes smile. Therefore, it was likely he only saw mine smile too.

  I lifted away and Ben turned back to my car.

  I walked to the house thinking that I’d spent weeks freaking out about this, the idea of Ben and me. Torturing myself about it. Wanting it and finding every excuse not to give it to myself.

  But having it—the ease of it, the naturalness of it, the excitement of it—now I was wondering why.

  * * * * *

  I stood in the hall of Benny’s house, watching him in the dining room and feeling him in the dining room.

  It was the feel of him that had me rooted to the spot.

  And the weird part of that was that the feel of him was calm, quiet.

  Benny.

  He’d come in from the garage forty-five minutes earlier, washed his hands, and went directly in search of wherever he wrote down the password.

  This began the deep state of shock I was currently experiencing.

  This was because it had been at least an hour after I’d gone out to the garage to ask for it. Yet he came back, remembered, and started looking right away without me even raising my eyebrows to give him a hint there was something I’d asked him to do and wanted him to do it.

  Then he couldn’t find it.

  It wasn’t anywhere in his “office,” not the desk, not in the mess of papers shoved what appeared to be randomly in an expanding file, not even in the piles that were definitely randomly piled against one wall.

  He then went to the kitchen where he had not one but three drawers that were shoved full of junk that included bits of paper, stubs of bills, even envelopes that should have been thrown out.

  It wasn’t there either.

  Now he was sorting through the shit in the dining room to find it, so much of it that it might take a year to go through all of it.

  I had offered to help, but he told me he remembered what it looked like and I probably wouldn’t be able to spot it, even if I had it in my hand.

  And I was in a deep state of shock because Benny was a Bianchi. I’d known him for years and this was not him. This was not any of the Bianchis. Not even Theresa.

  The reason why it wasn’t was because he was not pissed. He wasn’t even acting annoyed, frustrated, or the slightest bit impatient.

  He’d been searching for a slip of paper with a bunch of digits written on it for forty-five minutes. A slip of paper he, personally, didn’t give a shit about. It was a slip of paper that would help me. He probably wouldn’t need to use it unless his router got screwed up which, if it hadn’t after a year and he used it only for his TV, it probably wouldn’t.

  I expected him to give up, tell me to suck it up and use my phone or haul my ass to an Internet café. I even expected him to blow, taking the frustration of his seriously lacking filing system out on me.

  He didn’t do either.

  He just kept looking.

  I could not process this.

  I couldn’t because Vinnie Junior would have looked for fifteen minutes and given up. He’d be apologetic, but he’d move on and it would be me that would search for whatever was needed.

  Vinnie Senior would tell Theresa to look for it, even if she didn’t know what she was looking for. But while she was looking, she’d keep asking him if this was it or that was it, which would force him to start looking. And then he’d finally blow his stack, not at anyone, but it would blow all the same, because he hadn’t put an important piece of information in a place he could find it.

  And seven years ago, Ben was like his father.

  Now he was not.

  “Fuck, here it is.” I heard him mutter, and my focus went to him in the dining room.

  He was moving to me with a piece of paper in his hand. He got to me, handed it to me, and immediately wrapped his hand around the side of my neck, bending in to kiss me as I stood completely motionless, still in shock.

  He kissed the top of my head, let me go, and said as he moved to the stairs, “Check that, honey. I gotta get my shit sorted and get to the restaurant but wanna make sure you’re covered before I go.” I pivoted so I was standing facing the stairs. I saw him stop five up and look down at me. “If it’s still fucked up, I’ll go over to Tony’s. I can see his system on mine and he’ll probably be cool with you tappin’ into that.”

  I felt my lips part.

  Ben turned and jogged up the rest of the stairs.

  I stared up the stairs, looked down at the paper in my hand, then back up the stairs.

  He was late.

  He looked for that piece of paper and he did it until he was late.

  He also didn’t really have to look for it for me if neighbor Tony would let me use his Wi-Fi.

  But he did it.

  Patiently.

  For me.

  I didn’t know what to do with this and I knew why.

  It wasn’t just Vinnie Junior. It wasn’t Vinnie Senior. It wasn’t about how Benny used to be.

  It was my dad, who could be mellow but who could also have a short fuse. He never would have spent forty-five minutes looking for something, even if it was important, even if it was my dad who lost it.

  If he couldn’t find it in five minutes, he’d shout, “You need it, find it your-fuckin’-self,” and stalk away.

  And I knew this because, needless to say, in the way he lived his life, there were a lot of important things that were lost. He had kids and a lot of women who needed those important things, asked for them, he couldn’t find them, and he lost his mind because he lived his life the way he did and he didn’t want anything dragging on it.

  Like keeping track of important things.

  Like his women and kids.

  Thinking on my dad and the way he used to be (and probably still was), Benny’s behavior was so difficult to process, I was standing where he left me when he came back down the stairs. Of course, it appeared he only changed from his grease-stained tee to a new one, which probably took him about two minutes, but still.

  Seeing as I hadn’t moved, when Ben made it to me, his expression was set firm at concerned.

  He lifted a hand, again curled it around the side of my neck, and he asked, “Babe, you okay?”

  I looked right into his eyes and stated, “You searched forty-five minutes to find a password for me, makin’ yourself late, doin’ that shit for me.”

  A new expression moved over his fa
ce and his fingers dug in lightly when he replied, “I see I scored with that, so it’s a hit to share that I did it so you can get on your laptop, but I also did it ’cause it’d suck the router went down or some shit, and I’d need it to get my TVs back online and didn’t know the password. So I also did it for me.”

  He gave that to me straight-up honestly, not milking something he did for himself to score a point with me.

  Yet another expression shifted over his features as he watched whatever expression shift over mine before he murmured, “See I scored with that too.”

  “You grew up, Benny Bianchi,” I whispered, and that was when soft and sweet took over his expression, even as his hand at my neck pulled me closer.

  “Way you made things easy on Manny today, more proof added to a pile you’ve been givin’ me that you did too, Frankie Concetti,” he whispered back.

  “Yeah, but I like the way you did it.”

  At that, he gave me surprised satisfaction before his eyes went dark in a way that made my heart race. His hand at my neck pulled me even closer, this time while his head bent to mine.

  Then he kissed me. Not a sweep of the tongue, not a hot make out session where I ended up pressed to a wall. But it was deep, it was wet, it was long, and it was amazing.

  He lifted his head and looked into my eyes. “Would kill to take that further, but I gotta get to work.”

  Yes.

  He grew up.

  And I liked the way he did.

  “You got someone comin’ to keep you company?” he asked.

  “Yeah. My girl, Jamie.”

  “Good. You two need dinner, call my cell. I’ll send one of the kids with a pie or some rigatoni casserole or whatever.”

  The Bianchi rigatoni casserole. Second best to a Bianchi pizza pie, and there were some who (wrongly) would argue it was better.

  Jamie needed some of that.

  So did I.

  “Thanks, Ben,” I whispered.

  “Anytime, baby,” he whispered back.

  It was me who went up to my toes to touch my mouth to his.

  When I rocked back to my heels, he was grinning.

  I returned it.

  He took that in, his eyes dropping to my mouth to do it, before they came back to mine and he remarked, “I take it you didn’t test the password.”

  I shook my head.

  His hand swayed me slightly toward the living room when he ordered, “Get on that, honey. I gotta go, but if I gotta talk to Tony, I gotta go.”

  “Right,” I murmured and broke from his hold to go to the living room.

  The password written on the paper was one digit off the one Benny gave to me. It didn’t end in BB but in BAB, all of his initials. Benito Alessandro Bianchi.

  And it worked.

  * * * * *

  I felt arms tighten around me and the haze of sleep lifted, slightly.

  When it did, I felt a whole lot more, that being Benny’s body shifting into mine as he shifted mine to his.

  I tilted my head back, opening my eyes, and through the dark I saw Benny.

  Half asleep, my belly still did a dip.

  “Go back to sleep, baby,” he whispered.

  “The night good?” I muttered sleepily.

  “The usual insane. Now it’s over. Go back to sleep.”

  “Thanks for sending the casserole. Jamie loved it,” I told him, my voice fading.

  “You need food anytime, I’ll feed you. Now go back to sleep, honey.”

  I dipped my chin, pressed my face into his throat, and mumbled, “Okay, Benny.”

  He gave me a squeeze.

  I moved to drape an arm over his waist and I gave him one back.

  Then I did as told and went back to sleep.

  Chapter Nine

  You Aren’t Easy

  My hands on the steering wheel of my Z, I was aiming her toward Vinnie and Benny’s Pizzeria.

  And I was freaking out.

  It was the first time I was behind the wheel of my car since I’d driven it to Hart’s house, following the car Hart’s goons had Vi in.

  But that wasn’t the reason I was freaking out.

  It had been three days since the first day Benny and me tried on the idea of Benny and me to see how it fit.

  Since it fit really well, the last three days had been good.

  I was definitely healing. I was getting around more, getting exhausted less, and the pain had gone from occasionally sharp and sometimes aching to randomly nagging.

  This meant that I’d managed to get a lot done the last three days. Cleaning up my email and making arrangements with my clients to move them to new representatives. Gabbing with friends to let them know I was good and getting caught up with them.

  And the last two mornings I went out with Mrs. Zambino on her power walks, which she took the “power” out of in deference to me, but still, the walks felt good. Getting out, moving, getting fresh air in my lungs, and getting a kick out of Mrs. Zambino, who was good company in a crotchety, know-it-all, old lady kind of way.

  And the night before, I’d treated Asheeka to one of Benny’s pies at the pizzeria—another obstacle conquered, the first time I’d been there since we lost Vinnie. I’d asked Benny for Sela’s number and called her, asking her to join us, and she’d said yes.

  The only weird part was seeing the sign with Benny’s name on it, and the weird part about that was that seeing it felt good. Like I was proud of him and what he was doing but also proud to be the woman who was with him, walking into a restaurant that had his name over the door. Something tangible. Real. Benny didn’t create that pizzeria, but I knew he took over the kitchen what was now years ago and it had lost none of its popularity. Therefore, it was Benny who kept it going.

  No, kept it thriving.

  So I was proud of him and proud to have a man who could do that want to be with me. And that pride came with a strange sense of peace.

  It would have been easy to twist that, to think back to my time with Vinnie, who made all the wrong moves in life and paid for it in an ugly way in the end.

  But I didn’t twist it. I walked with the girls into that restaurant with my head held high, knowing my man would wow them with his pie, and knowing if I kept my shit together and didn’t twist things that didn’t need to be twisted, the real wow behind that man was all for me.

  The girls and I’d had fun, and with Benny working in the kitchen and not playing watchdog over me, I’d been able to down a couple of glasses of Chianti, which didn’t suck.

  Man, who worked the front of the house—sometimes with Theresa, sometimes she’d take the night off—came to our table often, mostly because Sela was there and it was cute how they’d been together for a while and he still took as much time as he could get with her.

  Vinnie Senior, like Theresa, had “retired,” but the retirement part was a loose interpretation of the word. Ben told me he came around, stuck his nose in, even worked in the kitchen, helping Ben, or came in so he could have the night off. But he mostly left it to Benny.

  Theresa, not one to kick back at night and watch games or cop shows, or kick back at all, had also retired loosely. This meant her form of retirement was still showing at the restaurant more than occasionally to work.

  Theresa wasn’t on last night, but with his girl there, Man found his times to come to our table to entertain us.

  Ben had also showed once to give me a kiss, the girls a welcome, and to ask Asheeka if she enjoyed the pie.

  Asheeka had.

  In fact, she told me, after eating the pie (and the fresh breadsticks, and partaking of her portion of the big salad with banana peppers, olives, homemade croutons, and a healthy dusting of freshly shaved parmesan cheese in a light oil-based dressing) that I didn’t owe her for shower duty. My marker was paid.

  I got that. The food was that good, and the warm and welcoming feel of the red-and-white-checkered-tablecloth-table-filled room, with pictures of family mounted all over the walls, couldn’t be beat.
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  Still, I was going to do something more for her. I had to. I was me.

  I’d woken up four mornings in a row in Benny’s arms to soft “heys,” nuzzles, and warm arm squeezes, but Benny didn’t push it any further. We kissed, often. No hot and heavy make out sessions, but he frequently laid one on me, either claiming my mouth in a sweet kiss, brushing his lips against mine, or taking his time to make it deeper, but there was no pressure. No pushing.

  With other displays of affection, like hand-holding, turning me in his arms every once in a while just to give me a hug and touch his mouth to my neck, I had the feeling he was giving me the chance to get used to him. It wasn’t about making certain I was fit and healthy. It was about making certain I was fit and healthy, mentally. Ready to go there with him, take the next step.

  It was like we were living together, but Benny was still giving me the dating-to-get-to-know-you-better part of the relationship and that was pure Benny. Thoughtful. Generous. Sweet.

  Awesome.

  So it had been a good three days.

  No, outside of my own issues that messed up the first part, it had been a good nine days, made good by Benny from the beginning.

  Minute by minute was working.

  Fabulously.

  Or it had been.

  Until ten minutes earlier.

  Now I was worried the minute-by-minute business was going to fail and do it miserably.

  This was on my mind when I hit the alley behind the pizzeria and parked next to Benny’s Explorer, the only car in a lot that was used only by employees.

  It was relatively early. The pizzeria didn’t open for lunch, dinner only. They started taking walk-ins at four thirty for orders of takeaway, but didn’t start seating until five.

  But Ben had gone in because he had sauce to make. I’d learned in the last three days that he had kids who could make the croutons, whip up the homemade Caesar dressing they used, toss the salads, prepare the homemade pasta, assemble the casseroles, and roll the meatballs.

  But the sauce and the pizza dough were made only by Vinnie or Benny.

  I parked and got out, walking swiftly to the back door. I prayed it was open because I needed to get to Benny and not do it after pounding on the door, hoping he’d hear me. I tried the door, and for once, my prayers were answered.