by Bethany-Kris
“Just tell me, Michel.”
“One side wanted a war. The other side didn’t. I thought … if I forced their hands, then they both might be too busy to notice what I was doing. With you.”
Oh.
Her heart thundered.
Michel cleared his throat, and then quickly kissed her again. “If other people can do what they have to do, then why can’t I?”
He wasn’t wrong.
“But what about after?” Gabbie glanced out the windshield where the people were still blowing by their vehicle parked along the side of the street. No doubt, they were in a no parking zone, but she just didn’t care. “So we leave, and then what happens once things calm down here? You think my father won’t come after me? He will, and then what will happen? He won’t stop. You know that, don’t you?”
“We’ll deal with it when—”
“I want to be with you.”
Michel’s hands on her face tightened a bit. “I know. First this, though. We’ll figure out something else later.”
“I don’t want to worry about it at all.”
She loved her father.
She loved Michel more.
Gabbie’s gaze caught the building across the street from where they were parked, and a thought drifted through her mind. It was so quick, she almost laughed it off. It was absurd, in a way, but she’d heard the thought nonetheless.
Michel hadn’t missed her silence, either. “What’s going on in your head?”
“I just thought about something foolish, that’s all.”
“Nothing you think is foolish.”
He would say that.
“This probably is,” she muttered.
He kissed her again—desperate and hungry like that first time, but now, sure and strong, too. God, she loved this man.
She would love him forever.
“Tell me,” he uttered against her mouth.
Gabbie smiled. “But it is stupid, so don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Gab—”
“I thought we could get married.”
He stilled.
Her gaze drifted to his, and held strong. “See? Stupid. I just thought if I made it clear how I felt with something like that, then what could he really do? I would be somewhere else with you, and I couldn’t make my position any more obvious if I wasn’t even a Casey anymore. It’s … foolish, isn’t it?”
“Gabbie.”
“What?”
“Gabbie.”
“What?” she asked, sharper.
Michel laughed, but it was dark and beautiful. Like sin had come to coat her in all of its wickedness, and she just couldn’t get enough. “If you wanted to marry me today—like none of this was happening—it’s the first thing I would do.”
She blinked.
He just smirked.
“No, you wouldn’t,” she said.
“I would.”
“Michel, that’s crazy.”
“And either way, today or ten years from now, I am still going to be yours. You’re mine. That’s how this works—it’s how love works, Gabbie. So yeah, if you wanted to really marry me, I would do that in a heartbeat.”
She just blinked again.
Michel stayed quiet.
“Okay,” she whispered.
His stare darted away before coming back to her. “I don’t know what that—”
“It means okay. City hall is right there.”
Michel made a noise in the back of his throat.
“What was that for?”
“Three-day waiting period after getting a marriage license in Michigan.”
“How do you even know that?”
Michel shrugged. “Not important. New York, though … it’s a twenty-four hour waiting period, and since we’ll already be there, it’ll be safer for us.”
“You think?”
“Home is always safe. Even if they might kill me for doing this.”
Gabbie smiled. “Home, huh?”
“New York has always been home for me, but it’ll be better with you.”
“New York, then?”
“We have to get the hell out of here.”
Gabbie nodded. “Now.”
• • •
“You sure this is what you want to do, man?” John asked. “Because you two are up next.”
Gabbie looked over at Michel’s cousin—she didn’t know much about the guy, but he asked no questions when Michel called him the day before. All she knew was when they went in to get their marriage license, a day after arriving in New York, someone had pointed out to them that they were going to need a legal witness for the marriage. Michel swore up and down there was no damn way some random witness would work for this.
He needed family.
“You should call your mother or father,” John added.
Michel’s hand tightened around Gabbie’s leg. “After, John.”
“Yeah, that’s gonna fly over well.”
“I could have called Andino, you know.”
John scowled. “Low blow.”
“Yeah, well …”
The two cousins shared a look between one another, and then they grinned. Gabbie had no idea what in the hell she just missed, but she had a feeling Michel would eventually explain it. She didn’t mind waiting. There was a lot about Michel, and his life here that she didn’t know anything about.
She wanted to learn it all.
John cleared his throat, bringing their attention back to him again. He nodded at Gabbie as his gaze drifted to Michel. “So, are we going to pretend like the marriage license in her hand doesn’t have her last name down as Casey, because I’m pretty sure Detroit has been on the news for the last forty-eight hours since the city might as well be burning down from the shit happening there, and all. But you know, totally up to you if you don’t want to share and all.”
“You didn’t ask questions last night.”
The man shrugged. “I’m bored now, indulge me.”
“I really should have called Andino.”
John outright scoffed at that. “Right, fucking Andi, who follows the rules of this family even more than I do, Michel. I am sure that would have blown over exceptionally well for you. He’d have had your mother, father, and sister here. But sure, you can keep living in that delusion.”
“I fucking hate you.”
“No, you don’t.” John smirked, asking, “And how is the whole … becoming a doctor thing going for you?”
Michel sucked air through his teeth, his frustration clear. “I’m probably going to fail my second year, but you know, shit happens.”
“Yikes.”
“What can you do?”
“Uh, not get involved with the idiots in Detroit who are apparently warring with that woman’s family … shit, is she like … the Gabbie Casey?” John raised a brow when Michel said nothing. “You know I’ve spent time in Detroit before, right? I know who people are there, Michel.”
“Michel Marcello and Gabbie Casey, you’re up!”
Michel passed his cousin a look, and Gabbie stayed quiet beside him. She was quite aware that there was more happening between these two men than she understood. A whole family dynamic that she had never been privy to, likely.
“I know I’m not doing it the right way,” Michel said to his cousin.
“As long as you understand that.”
“But it’s the only way, John.”
John grunted under his breath. “I’m just saying that if I came home married to a woman without telling my parents … but especially my ma, someone would have a great time pickling my balls for it. And my ma, Michel, she’s the sweetest thing on the block. She won’t hurt a moth when it gets into the house. You ever see Lucian running around the living room with a net to catch a moth because Ma won’t let him kill it? Yeah. That’s my ma. Yours, though … she’s going to cut your heart out for doing this, and then she’s going to wear it as a necklace for the rest of her life as a reminder of how you broke hers.”
/> “Wait,” Gabbie muttered, looking between the two. “That’s what this is?”
“Sorry?” John asked.
“It’s because he’s not told his parents?”
John’s gaze narrowed at the wall right beside Gabbie’s head. “I mean … yeah? You don’t know much about Italians, do you?”
Michel chuckled, but said nothing.
Gabbie smacked him with the back of her hand, right in his gut. “Stop it, I thought he was going on like that because of what is happening in Detroit. I was panicking here, Michel. And he’s going off like a feckin’ stook because of your family? Bollocks, all of it, and then you sit here and take the piss out of me by laughing. Shite, that is.”
John stared at Michel, then. “Did she insult me … or you?” His gaze darted around as he muttered, “What … because I don’t understand a thing she just said.”
Gabbie scowled.
Michel laughed harder. “This is going to be great, really.”
“Until your ma finds out,” John returned.
That quieted Michel.
“Still fucking hate you,” he told his cousin.
John smirked. “But you did pick me to be your witness.”
“Regretting that.”
“Liar.”
“Are we getting married today, or what?” the clerk’s receptionist snapped at them from the opened doorway. “Because there is a whole line behind you waiting. Someone else can go instead.”
Gabbie was the first to stand, and Michel quickly followed. Even with the idea that someone—mainly Michel’s mother—was going to be very unhappy that this had happened without her knowing beforehand, she didn’t feel any regret walking into the office with Michel’s hand woven with hers. Detroit was a background thought for her now … as silly as that might be. Mostly because they were moving forward, and leaving it behind.
This—getting married—was one more step forward. It might be a shite way to start a relationship with her mother-in-law, sure.
Some things couldn’t be helped.
NINETEEN
There wasn’t anything amazing about being married at the City Clerk’s office. If anything, it was very legal and final. Other than the clapping from the people in the office bearing witness to the weddings while doing their jobs, and John who stood in as the legal witness for Michel and Gabbie, it all happened rather quietly.
And quickly.
Michel thought … he liked it better that way. He never thought he would have said that. Being Italian, and growing up in such a large family, weddings were part of the culture. Loud, messy, and all night long. That was the typical Catholic, Italian wedding. He’d never given much thought to his wedding or how it might happen, but now that it had happened, there wasn’t any other way he cared to do it.
This had been perfect.
“… I now pronounce you man and wife,” the clerk said.
Michel blinked, losing his train of thought in the process. Not because of the clerk’s words, but because Gabbie’s sweet smile deepened at the woman’s proclamation.
It was done.
“You may kiss your wife,” the clerk added.
Michel’s hands tightened around Gabbie’s. It was the only warning he gave his wife before he tugged her closer to him in one fast, hard motion. He kept his fingers tangled with hers as his mouth crashed down on her own. He was pretty sure the clerk intended for them to have a quick kiss, and make their way out as fast as they came in.
Was that typical?
Michel didn’t know.
All he cared about in that moment was the way his wife’s lips worked against his. How her fingers tightened around his, and then a sweet smile curved her mouth because she knew it, too. It was such a primal urge, he thought, just to do this.
To kiss his wife.
Because that’s what Gabbie was now.
His wife.
A Marcello.
For life.
• • •
Gabbie sat in the rental as Michel leaned against the passenger side to talk to John. He decided they would take the evening to themselves before making the trip out of the city to visit his parents.
That should be fun.
Michel wasn’t really thinking about it right now. He had a million other things on his mind, and while he knew it was sure to be a shitshow with Dante and Catrina, in the end … they were going to be fine with what he did. They were his parents, and they loved him to the ends of the earth and back. That’s what counted.
So, he just pushed it out of his mind.
“I’m calling Andino as soon as I leave here,” John warned.
Michel chuckled. “Tell him not to be too offended. And make sure he doesn’t call my father first. I have to be the one to do that, John.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Seriously, make sure he knows.”
“He’s going to kick your ass.”
Michel nodded. “He can try.”
John barked out a laugh, and reached out to smack Michel hard on his shoulder. “We really fucking missed you, yeah? Detroit wasn’t made for you, man.”
Didn’t he know it?
Michel only shrugged as his response to his cousin, but John seemed to understand. Somethings were just better said without words. He didn’t need to confirm John’s statement verbally for it to still be true, and for both of them to know it.
New York was home.
It had always been.
In fact, he felt better already simply because he was on these streets. This was where he grew up, and these were his people. He’d wanted to get out of New York for medical school—despite there being perfectly fine medical schools in his home state—because he thought he needed to put as much distance between him and his surname as possible to become something other than just his surname.
Michel had been wrong.
He didn’t have so much pride that he couldn’t admit it, too.
“Better get back to that wife of yours,” John said, nodding at the car.
Michel had to smile at the way his cousin twisted the word wife like it was some sort of foreign concept to him. “Who’ll be next out of the three of us cousins? You maybe?”
John’s cheek twitched. “No woman can handle me, I think.”
“Right, right. You keep telling yourself that.”
“I will.”
“Until she knocks you on your ass,” Michel said, “because that’s how it’ll happen, John.”
Out of all the things Michel learned about love since finding Gabbie, that was the one thing he was most sure of. Love came when one was not expecting it because one could not plan for love. That wasn’t how it worked. Love was not meant to be a thing you went out and found for yourself, because it was the thing that found you.
John eyed Michel from the side. “As long as it was worth it, man.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Michel watched Gabbie in the rental. She toyed with a phone that rested in her lap, and then leaned over to fiddle with the radio station. She let her fingers drift through her hair to smooth back the wild, red curls he loved so much.
It was simple—even mundane—things for her to do, and nothing particularly special. He’d seen hundreds, if not thousands, of people do the same things throughout his life. Yet, watching her do those same things were not the same to him at all.
It was an experience.
It was her.
He could watch her do mundane, everyday things for the rest of their life, and he would never get bored with it. He wanted nothing more than to be the person watching her do those simple things, and apparently, she wanted the same things, too.
Like his wife knew he was looking at her, Gabbie turned in the seat to look out the window. Her green eyes met his, and a smile bloomed over her cheeks. It reached her eyes, and lit her whole face up.
She smiled for him all the time.
She smiled because of him.
What more could he want?
“More than worth it, Joh
n,” Michel murmured.
“I’ll take your word for it, man.”
He could.
For now.
Someday, John would know, too.
• • •
“I … should call him.”
Michel glanced over at his wife, but Gabbie was still staring at the phone in her lap. His cell phone, actually. She’d taken it from him at the City Clerk’s office to hold onto it while he signed some paperwork, but he didn’t think to ask for it back.
“Who?” he asked.
Gabbie’s tongue peeked out to wet her bottom lip. “My da.”
He’d be a fucking liar if he said he didn’t react to that statement by stiffening in the driver’s seat. Even his fingers flexed around the steering wheel tight enough that his knuckles turned white from the pressure. It wasn’t even Gabbie, or the fact that she wanted to speak with her father, but more …
The threat.
He felt the threat, and recognized it for what it was. Because that’s how he saw her father, now. Just one big fucking threat. To him, and to her. He wasn’t so stupid that he believed he had removed all the threats from their life, of course, but that was a big one he’d left behind.
What else could he do?
Michel wouldn’t have ever touched her father—and he wouldn’t now unless Charles Casey thought to do something that threatened Gabbie—because she didn’t want him to. She adored her father; she loved him entirely because for a long time, Charles was all she had. He didn’t think for one second that she would forgive him for something like that.
“Just to let him know,” Gabbie said, glancing up at him.
Michel raised a brow. “So, then do that.”
“But—”
“Babe, if you want to call him, then you should do that.”
She pressed her lips together, whispering, “But what if he comes here, or something?”
“He won’t.”
Of that, Michel was most sure. Charles was a lot of things, but stupid was not one of them. The man had to know he didn’t have any real allies in New York by way of major families to help him go against the Marcellos, if he wanted to try and take his daughter back. That was before they even factored into the fact that Gabbie was now Michel’s wife.
He just wouldn’t do it.
