by Bethany-Kris
Why?
Valeria cleared her throat, and stared down at the porch beneath her shoes. “This is coming from me, and not her … but no one ever wants to be second best in someone’s life, Andino. Especially not someone they love. It hurts too much.”
He blinked.
Haven wasn’t second best to him.
You did put her there, though. You did that—you had other shit to handle. You told her that again and again.
He couldn’t ignore his thoughts screaming at him, even though he wished he could.
“So, yeah,” Valeria added, turning to open the front door again, “she’s taking care of herself for a while, and maybe in the meantime, you can get your shit figured out. Either way, she’s going to be fine. I’m sure you know that about Haven. Everybody who knows her already does.”
Valeria’s final words hung heavily around Andino long after she went inside the house, and closed the door. He could hear Snaps barking behind him—still excited, and wanting to see his favorite person.
Andino didn’t know how long he stood there dazed, confused, and feeling heavy in his fucking heart—it was only the shrill ring of his phone in his hand that brought him back to reality with a bang. He checked the caller ID before picking up just in case it was someone he could ignore.
It was the boss.
No one could ignore the boss.
Andino didn’t even get the phone to his ear before he heard Dante bark, “Where the fuck is John?”
Fucking hell.
“I’m still looking for him,” Andino snapped back. “Relax, and give me time to work.”
“Time is up.”
“What?”
“Just what I said,” his uncle said darkly. “A warehouse was burned to the ground last night—a Calabrese warehouse. They’re blaming it on John, and threatening action against him unless one of us finds him first, and keeps him out of harm’s way. I’m trying to negotiate some kind of meeting right now. I need you to find John now, Andino.”
Fuck.
Why could nothing go right?
“Listen, I know John is a little messed up right now … but burning a Calabrese warehouse? He’s stuck on Siena Calabrese, Dante,” Andino pointed out. “In a big way. He loves the woman. He’s not purposely going to cause problems with her family that will force them to take her away from him. You know what I mean?”
“I don’t think John did anything—the Calabrese are a bunch of snakes. We know that, but the problem is, does John know that when he’s not seeing things clearly right now, Andino? You know as well as the rest of us do that when John is manic, he perceives everything differently. The last time he was like this, he almost fucking killed you. His best friend. Or did you forget about that?”
No, he had not forgotten.
Yeah, shit.
Good point.
“Find him,” Dante ordered, “and I will call you back when I have news.”
His uncle hung up.
That was that.
Andino looked back at Haven’s house—once again, it seemed, he was going to have to put his problems where she was concerned to the back burner so that he could deal with someone else’s shit.
Valeria was right.
He’d put Haven second one too many times. She probably wasn’t even going to let him apologize for it, either.
Andino didn’t blame her.
He deserved it.
Andino crossed the street quickly, and ducked into the restaurant that looked as though it was currently undergoing renovations. He ignored the murmurings of men all around him—waiting, and ready for bad shit to go down.
So was the way of their life.
The Calabrese waited on one side.
Marcellos on the other.
Andino didn’t know how his uncle managed to get all these men—men who despised one another—into the same space without some kind of violence breaking out between them, but here they were. Peaceful, at least, for now.
How long it would last was anyone’s guess.
He wasted no time finding his uncles and father. It was only once Andino was standing next to his uncle that he quietly explained what he knew at a level that no one but them could hear. “John is on his way—he sounds better.”
Dante’s expression gave nothing away when he asked, “How much better?”
Lucian and Andino’s father were listening then, too.
“Better,” Andino said. “Not as … out of it, or angry. Not like last night at the mansion, anyway. Better than he’s sounded in days.”
Dante let out a quiet sigh—relief.
Lucian, on the other hand, shook his head. “Don’t get comfortable in that, brother. That’s the thing about mania with John; it has crests and peaks. Ups and downs even when he’s in the middle of it. He can be lucid and good for a little bit, but then he can get thrown right back into the worst of it with nothing more than a comment from someone else. It’s fickle.”
“But he’s coming,” Gio said, giving Andino a look. “Here, right?”
Andino nodded.
Giovanni shrugged. “Then, we’ll get our hands on him. That’s what we need—what he needs. Once we’ve got him contained, then we’ll go from there and get him settled. He just needs some help. We’ll give him that.”
Andino tipped his head in the direction of the murmuring Calabrese men. “They were quick to show up here, weren’t they?”
Dante scowled, and his gaze narrowed slightly. “They did—fucking snakes.”
“They want something,” Lucian murmured.
Giovanni nodded. “The Calabrese always want something. It’s finding out what that becomes dangerous.”
“Do you think …” Andino trailed off, and passed his family a look. “Is it possible they’re the ones antagonizing John lately? Did they make this happen, or make it worse somehow?”
No one answered him.
Andino understood why.
It was hard to say—John’s disorder wasn’t widely known in their circles, and definitely not outside of their people. The thing was … the Calabrese family couldn’t be trusted. The Marcellos called them snakes for a reason.
Andino wouldn’t put doing something like this—manipulating or hurting John to get one over on the Marcellos—past them.
“Show time,” Giovanni murmured.
Andino’s attention went to the restaurant door where he could see John approaching. Well … John and someone else.
“He was with her,” Lucian said faintly.
Siena, that was.
Andino cleared his throat. “Yeah, shit … I forgot to mention that.”
Dante gave him a look. “You forget to mention a lot of things lately, it seems.”
“One thing at a time,” Giovanni said. “Right now, let’s worry about getting John somewhere safe, and then we’ll handle the rest.”
His father said that like it wasn’t a big deal.
No problem.
Right.
Because this wasn’t going to be easy at all.
Andino knew that first hand.
TWENTY
The ringing of the phone echoed in Haven’s ear like a backdrop to the beating rain pelting the window. She didn’t know if it was normal for Florida to have this much rain nearing the end of February, but that seemed to be all it had done since she got here. Rain made everything a little drab, and heavy.
It was appropriate for her mood, though.
Bleak.
Tired.
Dark.
Finally, the call clicked through on the other end. Haven lost the daze she’d been in waiting for her friend to pick up while she stared out the window of her parent’s Florida beach house. The voice on the other end of the call made her smile, even if her heart was all too heavy lately.
Funny how that worked.
One could smile through sadness.
“Still not using your phone, huh?”
Haven laughed. “I’ve just … left it turned off, Val. This is suppos
ed to be a vacation for me, remember? You practically threw me out the front door with my bag in hand, and told me to relax by taking time for me.”
“Hey, it wasn’t that bad.”
“Pretty close.”
Valeria let out a quiet sigh. “Are you at least enjoying yourself?”
“I’m enjoying visiting with my parents. I didn’t realize how much I missed them until I was walking through their door, you know?”
“I do know,” Valeria said quietly. “I miss my parents all the time, but I won’t ever get to see them again. Not like you and yours, anyway. I’m glad you get to see them. And I expected you to enjoy visiting with your parents, I meant … are you having a good time in general?”
Well, that question wasn’t as easy.
“Yes, and no,” Haven murmured. “I really needed a break from work. I’ve gone two years nonstop with barely even a regular day off every week. I like having a vacation from the club, and that whole thing.”
“But?” her friend pressed.
Yeah, there was always a but.
That but was the part that was not so easy to answer. After all, Haven had been in Florida for quite a few days, and she still hadn’t figured out what to do to fix this, or if she even wanted to at this point.
“I’m not the type to leave things unfinished, Val. You know that about me. I felt like I just left a lot of things hanging in the air back in New York, and it’s weighing me down.”
To say the least …
Mostly, Andino.
She didn’t want to say his name out loud, though. It would only leave her feeling even heavier than she already did because there was so much about that man that Haven loved and adored, and then there were things about him that left her feeling second-rate, and unwanted.
She had worked too hard, and she loved herself too damn much to be anyone’s second anything. At the same time, a part of her still wanted to try and give Andino the chance to fix what had gone wrong.
But would he want to?
Could he even try?
Those were the better questions.
“Well,” Valeria said slowly, “at least you can check one thing off your list of worries. You don’t have to worry about the club—Jackson has it all handled.”
Haven grinned. “Yeah, I figured. I should let him have a bit more leeway, I think.”
“You should; you could take more time off.”
Didn’t that just sound lovely?
And also, terrifying.
“A week or two is fine for now,” Haven said, “and only because I really needed it. But if I start taking too much time off—”
“The club isn’t going to fall into a pit of failure and despair, Haven.”
She rolled her eyes. “So you say.”
“So I know. And so do you.”
Maybe.
A little.
Haven just didn’t want to admit it, and also, maybe she was a bit of a workaholic. It was the only thing that kept her going a lot of the time, and it was the one thing in her life that gave her actual purpose.
That was part of the problem right now, too. She didn’t have anything to keep her busy, or out of her own head. She was spending way too much time inside the loneliness of her mind, and trying to figure out the way she felt.
It was too much.
“He came the other day,” Valeria said out of the blue.
Haven stiffened, and held a little tighter to the cordless phone. “Did he?”
“Showed up early in the morning asking for you.”
“Did you tell him—”
“Not where you went, or anything,” her friend was quick to say.
“Thanks.”
“No problem, but …”
Yeah, another but.
Surprise, surprise.
“What?” Haven asked.
“He did look really taken off guard by the fact you were gone, and then kind of … sad.”
Haven glanced out the window again—the rain had picked up, it seemed. Appropriate, considering her heart was heavier than ever, and her soul felt just as gray as the sky above. Love shouldn’t make a person feel like this; of that, she was most sure.
Yet, she still did.
Love him, that was.
“I needed time,” Haven murmured. “I couldn’t just call him when I knew the first thing he would do was cloud up my thoughts and feelings.”
Because hearts were traitorous like that.
They needed love to live.
Haven needed for love to not feel like a game, or worse, an afterthought to someone else. She couldn’t have her love be something that Andino could do with, or without, depending on the day or his mood. She needed it to be more to him.
Something worth having, and keeping.
She didn’t know if it was.
She didn’t even know if he loved her back.
“Yeah, I know,” Valeria eventually replied. “Well, Maria is just waking up. Call me when your flight lands today?”
“I will.”
She’d been here long enough.
It was time to go home.
Haven still didn’t know how she felt about that, either.
Yeah, she really was a mess.
Or a coward, her mind taunted.
That, too.
“All right, I’ll talk to you when I land,” Haven said.
“Sounds good.”
A quick goodbye later, and Haven cradled the cordless phone on its base. Even though her conversation was done, it continued echoing through her mind for minutes after. Hindsight was always twenty-twenty, right? Wasn’t that how the saying went?
Haven was seeing a hell of a lot clearer, now.
Instead of dealing with her problems, and giving Andino the chance to fix what had gone wrong between them time and time again, Haven chose to run. She wasn’t so stupid or caught up in her feelings that she didn’t recognize that little fact.
She had good reasons, though.
At least, that’s what she thought.
Or maybe … just maybe … this had been Haven’s shitty way of protecting herself from getting hurt again. There was a part of her that simply didn’t want to be hurt by that man again, even if it wasn’t directly. She didn’t want to give him the chance to reject her, or shove her away.
So instead, she had done this.
Yeah.
Turning a bit, she stared at her cell phone that had remained dead for her entire stay in Florida. Not once had she turned it on—not even to check the voicemail, or something. She just knew there would be calls or texts from Andino, and she was trying to keep a clear head.
Maybe it was finally time.
Before Haven could overthink her next choice, she grabbed the cell phone, and turned it on. It took all of a minute for the phone to boot up, and then sync to all her unanswered notifications spread between emails, texts, calls, and voice messages.
Sure enough, there were about a dozen from Andino between calls and texts. He’d left two voice messages, too, it seemed. And then anything from him stopped after a certain date—likely when he’d gone looking for her, and was told she left.
She checked his last text message.
I really just need to see you—you home?
Haven stared at the words, and felt her chest grow tighter. He’d told her once that he believed she was the person in his life who was supposed to be looking out for him, but she hadn’t really believed him at the time.
If it was true, then she’d fucked up.
Left him hanging.
Didn’t even apologize for it, either.
She was going home now, though. She wouldn’t be able to hide from him forever. Frankly, she didn’t want to, either.
Haven hit the call button next to Andino’s name, and put the phone to her ear. It took him less than a ring and a half to pick up.
“Haven.”
Pain colored his voice.
The relief was thick, too.
“Hey, Andino,” she sai
d, trying to keep a level tone. “Uh … I’m coming home today. I thought maybe we could meet up.”
He didn’t even hesitate. He didn’t ask questions, or make demands. It only served to take away the heaviness resting on her heart, and crushing it.
“Anytime,” he replied.
“I won’t get in until late.”
“That’s fine.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t call.”
Andino was quiet for a hell of a lot longer than Haven liked on the other end of the call, but she figured … well, she gave him silence for weeks. This was only fair, wasn’t it?
“I never expected you to be a doormat, Haven,” he finally said, “and certainly not mine. Don’t apologize for needing space, or time.”
Yeah, okay.
“Where are you going to be tonight?”
“The office at my restaurant—until at least one, anyway. There’s a lot of shit going on.”
“I can come to you, then.”
“Please,” he murmured. “I miss you.”
Her heart hurt again.
The guilt compounded.
“I just …”
“What?” Andino asked. “Tell me anything.”
“If I matter to you—”
“You matter to me more than anything.”
Haven let out a shaky exhale. “Then it shouldn’t be a big deal to make me a priority. More often than not, I’ve felt like an afterthought, Andino.”
“I can only apologize.”
Apologize, she thought.
But not promise it wouldn’t happen again.
Haven heard what wasn’t said.
Haven listened to the cabbie chatter on from the driver’s seat as he navigated the city streets. She was only half listening, and occasionally offered him a nod or hum to make it seem like she was conversing back. It wasn’t his fault, really. Her distraction was her own.
Talking was likely the only thing that got him through the work day on a regular basis. It was going to be a late night for him, likely. It always was for cabbies in the city.
The phone in her pocket rang just as they turned onto the block for Andino’s resturant. She hadn’t even gone home to see Valeria or Maria yet. Pulling the phone out, she didn’t bother to check the ID before answering.
“Hello?”
“Haven?”
Andino’s voice made her smile.
