by Lucia Black
On silent feet, I made my way to the door and pressed my eye to the peephole. It wasn’t the new bodyguard.
I unlocked and opened the door and Preston walked right in like he owned the place before I could speak. I cursed myself under my breath for telling the doorman and concierge he was on an approved list of visitors.
Preston’s face moved and contoured like a stream going from determination to anger to hurt all in one sweeping gaze of his blue eyes. He still wore his tuxedo from the fundraiser, and I had no way of knowing if he’d stayed or left after I did.
“We have to have this out right now. I can’t live in this limbo anymore, and I can’t take any more surprises from you. One minute I think we’ll be together, and the next I find out you’ve been dating Cal. Neither of us talks to each other, then we can’t keep our hands off each other in a bathroom before I see your underwear in his jacket. This is killing me, and we need to talk like adults instead of one of us always running off,” he said, pacing the room.
“I know. I couldn’t agree more.” I made sure to keep my head down, my hair covering most of my face.
“No, we’re having it out and . . . what? You agree?”
“Yes.” I nodded and tied the strap of my robe more securely around my waist. “But not now. It’s been a rough day, to say the least, and I have no energy . . . I just can’t.”
I brushed past him, leaving him standing in the entryway to punctuate my point. I went to the kitchen for my drink, feeling like I needed it more than ever. I kept my back to him and took a slow, long sip.
“No one has ever hurt me like this before.” Preston stopped talking, but his quiet footsteps on the tiled floors let me know he was getting closer. “And it’s not because I’ve never been in a relationship before, or had girlfriends disappoint me before, but because I never let anyone in the way I did with you.”
He’d stopped yelling, but he hadn’t taken my request seriously. I took a shaky breath, feeling too many things at once and thankful he couldn’t see my face. “Preston—”
“No, wait. Just let me get this out before you say anything and then you can talk all you want.” He came to stand right behind me. “I can’t just walk away from you. I know, because I’ve tried—twice. I want to be with you, but I can’t make that happen unless you want it to. I’ll give up everything—Cal, the White House, name it—if you just say you want to be with me too.”
The guilt. Oh god the guilt. And my own feelings. No one had ever been willing to give up anything for me before, let alone the magnitude of what Preston was offering to do. I wanted to turn around and tell him I felt the same and kiss him and make love to him and let him make everything better.
But I couldn’t.
I’d fucked up from the beginning not telling him the truth and there was nothing I could do about it. Sobs racked my shoulders as I cried into the collar of my robe. He didn’t know what he was saying. He didn’t know the half of the obstacles we’d have to overcome. He didn’t understand that it could never happen.
“Okay,” he said, impatience coloring his voice when I still hadn’t responded after several long minutes. “You can say something now.” There was another long pause where I couldn’t do anything but stand there with my back to him and cry. “I need you to say something. Anything.”
When I didn’t, he grasped me by the arm and turned me around. I shrieked in a mixture of fear and pain. He wasn’t rough, but my arms were bruised, and the night had left me scared.
“Jesus, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
His gaze swept over my face. He took in the swelling of my cheek, the bump on my forehead, and my red-rimmed eyes.
Before he could comment on it, I said, “I can’t do this anymore.”
“What happened to you?” The veins in his neck protruded out from under the collar of his shirt and he clenched his fists. “Did Cal find out about us? Did he do this to you after I left?”
“What? No!” I sobbed. “It was Jimmy. He was my bodyguard. And he hit me. And it’s a lot to process right now, and I’m fine, but I’m just upset.” The words came out as a jumble. I wasn’t sure Preston even understood a word I’d just said.
“Are you really okay?” Preston cupped my non-bruised cheek.
I nodded; my vision blurred by the tears.
“Did he do anything else to you?”
I averted my gaze. “He tried,” I whispered.
“Where is he?” The threat in Preston’s voice made my blood run cold. He wasn’t messing around. I did not doubt that he’d find Jimmy and kill him. If my family hadn’t already done that.
“My brothers took care of it. He won’t bother me anymore. And my father is sending me a new bodyguard.”
That answer must’ve satisfied Preston because he loosened his stance and softened his face. “I’m sorry. If I would’ve known, I wouldn’t have come in here yelling at you like that. I don’t want to make you feel any worse than you already do. I just wanted to tell you that I want to be with you.”
“I want to be with you too—”
Preston crushed me into a hug, stopping me from speaking. He tangled his fingers in my hair and held my head to his chest while I wrapped my arms around his back and pulled myself even closer. The comfort his embrace gave me was immeasurable. And for a few quick seconds, I felt as if everything really could be okay. That it would work out between us and it could be us against the world.
I shook my head against his chest. I didn’t want the moment to end. I didn’t want to have to say the truth out loud to him, because after I did, I knew there was a chance he’d never look at me the same way again. I kept things from him. I was a liar.
I pulled away from the embrace and leaned back into the counter. With the weight of what I had to tell him crushing my chest, I reached back and braced myself on the edge of the marble.
“There’s something I have to tell you.”
“I don’t care what has happened between you and Cal.”
“It’s not that. Not in the way you mean.” I took a deep breath. Telling Preston might ruin everything, but not telling him was worse. I wanted to be honest with him. I wanted him to know why I was acting the way I was . . . I didn’t want to keep lying to him. He deserved the truth.
“Then what is it?”
There was a knock at the door. Preston and I shared speculative glances.
“That’s my new bodyguard. I have to talk to him.”
I silently thanked the new guy in my mind for giving me just a couple more minutes to think about what I wanted to say. He was saving me already.
Chapter 24
I opened the door wide and saw Cal standing there. I couldn’t speak. I quickly stepped back and he took stock of me immediately, the robe first and then my face.
“You’ve been crying. Your face. It looks like you’ve been slapped. What hap—” He stopped talking. I didn’t need to follow his gaze to know he’d spotted Preston. “What’re you doing here?” he asked him from across the room.
“Cal, just have a seat,” Preston said.
“No.” Cal moved past me and into my apartment, practically charging at Preston. He shoved at his chest. “You need to tell me why the hell her face looks like that.”
“Her bodyguard attacked her. I didn’t fucking hit her. What the fuck, Cal?”
That did almost nothing to calm him. My swollen face was only one of the many problems at the moment. I tried to wedge myself between them, but they both turned away from me in unison. I moved with them anyway.
“And what are you doing here? Why do you even know where Tessa lives?” He glanced from Preston to me and then back at his friend. He wanted the answer to come from him.
But Preston said nothing. Instead, he looked at me expectantly. Cal, being so damn smart, took it all in and moved from whatever kind of anger or betrayal he might have felt and slipped into business mode.
He turned to me, the calm cool demeanor I was used to slipping back into place. “W
hat is it that you need to tell me right now? What kind of cleanup is involved here?”
I bit at my bottom lip and fidgeted in his gaze. I didn’t know how he felt about me, but I did know something was blossoming between us, and that something felt real. And now I’d hurt him too, made worse by the fact it involved his best friend and presidential running mate.
“Cal, I . . .”
When I trailed off he cut in.
“No bullshit, Tessa. I need the whole truth. I can’t have my future wife keeping secrets from me that will affect the public’s perception of—”
“Your future wife?” Preston had turned to face me and edged Cal out. “Tessa, what the fuck is he talking about?”
“Yes, my future wife,” Cal answered even though he wasn’t being asked. “What does—”
“Preston, this is what I was trying to tell you.” I didn’t know what to do so I let my gut instincts take over. And my gut was telling me I couldn’t do this to Preston again. It told me he deserved to know the truth no matter what consequences I had to face. No matter if Cal was listening or not.
Cal took his jaw in his hand and shifted his weight clearly bothered that I cut him off but probably too stunned by what was happening to stop me from talking. He was getting one hell of an unexpected show.
Preston’s eyes glistened in the flickering candlelight. He was angry, I was sure of it, but he was hurt too. “Tell me when? When were you going to tell me you were engaged?”
Despite my best efforts, I did it again. I hurt him. “I’m so sorry, Preston, I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just—”
“When?” he demanded.
“I . . . I . . .”
Cal said nothing. Did nothing. He just stood there and watched. That made it worse.
“When?” he roared. His anger showed no signs of letting up. “Before or after we fucked?”
He said it to hurt me and it worked. It wasn’t just fucking to me and he knew that because it was more than that to him too. But did that even matter if I was technically engaged to someone else at the time? I broke our eye contact. He was too angry and too sad for me to answer. Tears poured from my eyes as I looked at the floor because the truth was entirely too painful.
“This whole time? All of it . . . you just lied about the panties. I shouldn’t be all that surprised.”
Just moments ago he was telling me he wanted to be with me. I knew he was angry, but it still hurt.
“I didn’t lie to you about that,” I whispered. “I told you what color they were . . . I just didn’t answer the rest of your questions.” The excuse felt flimsy on my lips, but it was all I had. He needed to know I didn’t do it maliciously, that I tried to tell him. “But I swear to you, I wanted to tell you. I didn’t—”
“You really should have been a politician.” Preston shook his head, a humorless smile on his face. “Lying through your teeth and only telling a sliver of the truth.” Preston turned to leave and headed for the door. I wanted to run to him, to beg him not to go, but between Cal and the look on his eye, I knew I couldn’t. “Congratulations on your engagement,” he hurled the words at me like an insult.
“Preston. Wait.” Cal hadn’t spoken in so long I jumped when he did.
Preston stopped and looked over his shoulder, one hand on the knob of my front door.
“We’re fine. Nothing has changed between us.” He didn’t sound fine or look it, and just minutes ago he was willing to ditch Cal.
“Okay,” Cal nodded.
Preston stormed out, slamming the door so hard behind him my teeth shook.
Cal picked up my scotch and polished off what was left. He set it back down on the counter with too much force, but the base didn’t crack. He gripped the countertop and wouldn’t look at me. “Talk. What is hell is going on?”
“I . . . I had sex with Preston. Twice.” When he didn’t wince or even react to my admission at all, I went on. “He pursued me since the first time we met, and I let him, because I wanted him too. And he wanted to be with me. That’s what he came over here to tell me. I was about to end it for good, and tell him about me and you—that I am more than your girlfriend—but that’s when you came in.”
“Okay.” He turned to face me, folded his arms across his chest, and rested his butt against the counter. “Go on.”
“But it’s over now. It’s done. I’d been trying to end it and now it is.” I tried my best to keep all the emotion out of my voice, but I knew some crept in. I was crushed and not even for myself, but for what I did to Preston.
“And what really happened to your face?”
“It was my bodyguard, Jimmy. He . . .” I started to choke up. The emotion and fear from it starting to claw its way back. I cleared my throat and tried to speak again. “He attacked me after he brought me back here.”
He watched me closely as I wrapped my arms tightly around myself, wishing my robe provided me more comfort. A flicker of something appeared on his face as his eyes traveled the length of my body.
“Did he—”
“No. He tried, but . . . no,” I whispered. How many times would I have to say this?
Cal’s eyes darkened. “Do I need to have a bullet put in his head or has Bruno already taken care of it?”
“My brothers came over and took care of it. Took him home, I mean. I think.” I was taken aback by the menace in his voice. It wasn’t directed at me, but that didn’t make it less scary.
I leaned into the counter; the floor cold on my bare feet. I couldn’t take much more. If another person knocked on my door I was going to lose it. There were no more secret confessions left in me. I couldn’t stand up to one more combative person.
“Good.” Cal filled the empty glass with scotch from the bottle I’d left on the counter. “We’ll work through everything else.”
“Right.” I considered his words. “We still have business together.”
“Of course we do, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Why do you think I came here in the first place, Tessa? You said you didn’t feel well. I wanted to check on you.”
I didn’t know what to say. Here I had just confessed everything to him, and he didn’t act like he was hurt at all. But I’d gone and hurt him too. He just didn’t show it the same way.
“Cal, I . . . I’m so sorry. For everything. I . . . it felt good to be with someone that didn’t think of me as a business deal, but that doesn’t make it—”
“I’m sorry.”
“What?” I asked, confused. “Why are you sorry?”
“If you think that is how I think of you, then I need to apologize. At first, yes, this was all a business deal. For both of us, really. But it isn’t just that anymore, or so I thought. I do care about you, and I want us to find that comfort in each other. I’m guarded, and you read that as I don’t feel something for you. It’s not the case. I do. And I am sorry that you still felt like you were nothing more than a business deal. That doesn’t change this, though. What happened with you and Preston.”
I could hear anger and hurt warring in his voice. “I’m sorry too. For not telling you anything about this. And for what I’ve done. I honestly didn’t want to hurt him, or you.”
“I know.” He left his glass on the counter and took a step closer to me. He gently ran a finger down my cheek. “I think we have a lot to work on.”
“Will you stay the night?” I blurted out the words. I didn’t know I was thinking I wanted him to stay, and I didn’t know I was going to say it, but once I did I was happy I asked him. “I just can’t be alone, and I can’t deal with a new bodyguard right now.”
“I can do that. I’ll sleep on the couch tonight.”
Chapter 25
The next morning Cal and I stood at the front door of the Moretti house like I was introducing my boyfriend to my parents for the first time. I would’ve laughed if anything about my situation was funny. I took a deep breath and tried to convince myself to knock on the door. When I didn’t, Cal did it for me.
; The last thing I wanted to do was discuss last night. I didn’t want to relive the Jimmy incident. I didn’t want Papa to yell at me about anything. I just wanted to sleep. But even with Cal sleeping on the couch, I still didn’t feel totally safe. And if I was wishing for things, maybe an early morning drink to calm my nerves would’ve been nice.
My father opened the door himself, my brothers flanking him.
He studied my face and his eyes turned black. It felt terrible, but it looked even worse. I tried every makeup trick I knew, but nothing helped. I washed it all off and didn’t bother hiding it.
“He’s going to pay for this.” Papa’s voice was low and menacing.
“He’s still alive?” I didn’t know if I was more shocked, relieved, or disappointed. Maybe all three.
“For now,” Alessandro quipped.
Cal knew enough not to question what they meant.
Papa moved aside and let us in. They shook hands, greeting each other with firm nods. It was like witnessing a meeting of gods, or something equally dramatic. And not because they had all this wisdom and grace— which if I were being honest, they did—but because they both controlled my fate.
“We have some things we need to talk about. Let’s move this to the library.”
My brothers scattered, each undoubtedly having some different task to take care of for our father. I only gave a fleeting thought to what was going to happen to Jimmy. He brought whatever punishment he was about to receive on himself.
Papa led the way while Cal followed, and I brought up the rear. I took note of the way Cal studied the family photos lining the long hall. He paused for just a second longer on a shot of me from my college graduation.
We each took a seat around the large mahogany table. The walls were lined with shelves, but that didn’t stop the massive collection of leather-bound legal books from spilling onto the tables and floors. Even though we were all grown now, Papa still kept the bottom shelf nearest the door dedicated to children’s books. It made me smile, thinking of all the time Luciana and I spent pouring through them together.
