Love and Learn (Voretti Family Book 2)

by Ava Blackstone

  So he would show her. Not through some grand gesture, but by being there, every day, for the rest of their lives. By listening when she talked.

  She’d said she wanted to slow things down—to give them time to make sure they were really compatible. He could do that. And maybe he could even do it in a way that would keep her father from shooting him.

  After a quick shower, he headed to the closest jewelry store. Thirty minutes later, he had a ring. He drove to Annabelle’s apartment on autopilot.

  A light was visible through the blinds. Good. She was home.

  He made it from his truck to the door. Even managed to press the bell like a civilized human instead of banging on the wood panel, because he was calm and he was patient and he had all the time in the world.

  The door jerked open.

  “What are you doing here?” growled one of the Voretti twins.

  Calm—that elusive bastard—fled the premises.

  “Where’s Annabelle?” Ty pushed inside.

  The living room was empty. Ditto for the kitchen.

  He stalked down the hall. The bathroom was empty. He jerked open the bedroom door.

  Annabelle’s neatly made bed stared at him mockingly.

  She wasn’t here.

  He was honest-to-God shaking. He hung the dress in the closet before he dropped it.

  He had no idea where Annabelle was.

  Helplessness overwhelmed him, like he was back in the heat and dirt of Iraq, ears ringing, leg gushing blood. How was he supposed to fix things if he couldn’t find her?

  He turned, only to see the wrong Voretti coming up behind him. He thought this one was Matt. The twins looked too much alike—one more item at the end of a long list of things that were pissing him off.

  He stepped way into Matt’s personal space. “Where is she?”

  “Far away from you, asshole.”

  His vision went cloudy. He grabbed Matt by the collar. “Where the hell is—”

  His head snapped back. Pain shot through his jaw.

  He dropped low before Matt could sucker punch him again. Blood pounded in his ears. His vision narrowed onto his target—the latest obstacle between him and Annabelle.

  Matt was going to tell him where to find her. It wasn’t even a question.

  “Watch it, shitbag. You break my arm, and Annabelle’s gonna kick your ass herself.”

  Ty was only then aware that he’d taken Matt down.

  He breathed deep, letting the worst of his rage fade. The little shit was right. Annabelle would kick his ass if he caused any permanent damage. “I’m not gonna break your arm.”

  “Let me up.”

  Ty didn’t make the mistake of loosening his hold. It didn’t look like Matt was carrying today, but he wasn’t gonna chance it. “Stop fighting me, and I’ll think about it.”

  After a second, Matt stopped struggling. “All right. Let me up, asshole.”

  Ty eased to his feet.

  Matt followed, glaring the whole time. He had a red patch on his cheek from where his face had met the carpet, but otherwise he looked fine.

  Ty couldn’t say the same. Matt’s punch hadn’t been that hard, but the room kept tilting around him, like he was on a tiny patrol boat in the middle of a monsoon. Where was Annabelle?

  He forced a breath in. Breathing was good, because it meant his brain had enough oxygen to produce words. “I need to see Annabelle.”

  “You need to get out of here before I break you into tiny pieces.”

  “You already tried that.”

  “And you already got all the intel on my sister I’m gonna give you.”

  Ty faced off against the younger man. Adrenaline screamed through his system, but kicking Matt’s ass wasn’t going to get him any closer to Annabelle. He had to be smart. “She wants to see me.”

  “Then why isn’t she here?” Matt smirked. “If she wants to see you, she’ll let you know. In the meantime, stay the fuck away. You already made her cry once. I’m not gonna help you do it again.”

  All the fight drained out of Ty. He’d made Annabelle cry. He’d made her cry, and he couldn’t even find her to apologize. “I just want to talk to her.”

  “So talk.” The voice was soft, warm, and feminine, and Ty needed to hear it so badly, he was afraid he’d imagined it.

  But when he turned around, there she was. Everything he’d ever wanted. Annabelle.

  CHAPTER 15

  ANNABELLE TOOK IN the scene in one glance. Ty and Matt were squared off against each other like MMA fighters, and…was that blood on Ty’s cheek?

  She rushed forward. Wrapped her arms around him, because she needed to feel him, solid and real against her. “What happened? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. It’s barely a scratch.”

  He sounded normal, but as soon as she drew back, she got a close-up of the bright red fluid seeping down his jawline.

  Blood. Ty’s blood.

  “You’re bleeding!” She whirled around to confront the culprit. “Matteo Stefano Voretti, I leave you for one hour to comfort my hysterical best friend and this is what you do?“

  “He’s not the only one who’s injured, you know.” Matt pointed at a faint bruise on his cheek. “Besides, he’s had it coming for the past seven years.”

  Annabelle’s breath caught deep in her throat. She’d never told her family what had happened between her and Ty after prom. Then again, hiding in her bedroom for the entire summer probably hadn’t escaped their notice. They’d obviously come to their own conclusions about what had gone on and who was to blame.

  “Let’s not forget who had who pinned to the ground,” Ty muttered.

  Her stomach churned every time she caught sight of that angry red gash near his eye. How could he call it a scratch? But then, he’d been been through much worse with the IED.

  Her lungs cinched in, like she was the one who’d been caught in that black smoke, shrapnel impaling her skin, her blood—her life—draining into the hot sand.

  “Hey. You okay?” Ty caught her arm, bringing her back to the present.

  As she sucked in some much-needed oxygen, she let herself take comfort from his touch. He’s here. He’s all right.

  “Sit down, sweetheart.”

  “I’m fine.” She wasn’t about to let him take care of her while he was bleeding, so she forced her body to get with the program. “Come into the bathroom so I can clean that cut.”

  Ty followed her to the bathroom and sat down on the edge of the tub, surprisingly docile.

  “What about me?” Matt called.

  “Don’t be a baby. You’re not even bleeding.” She slammed the door before he could come inside.

  “I’ll be right here in case you need me.” Matt’s voice was filled with concern.

  She wasn’t sure if she wanted to hug him or smack him. Her family was filled with interfering busybodies, but they all loved her. “Go home, Matt.”

  “I’m not gonna leave you alone with that shitbag.”

  “I’m two years older than you, and I can take care of myself. Get out of my apartment before I throw you out.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to—”

  “Now!”

  She found antiseptic and cotton swabs in the medicine cabinet. Finally, Matt’s footsteps faded down the hall. The front door shut behind him. She clutched the cotton swabs and tried not to think about the obvious. She was alone with Ty.

  The already tiny room seemed to shrink, the oxygen disappearing along with the square footage. If testosterone had a scent, that’s what she was breathing—one hundred and seventy pounds of wired, aroused male. And yet, Ty made no move toward her.

  “You sure you’re all right?” His voice was a low, deep rumble.

  “Of course.” She extracted a cotton swab from the bag and doused it with antiseptic.

  Now for the hard part.

  She daubed the swab onto his cut.

  He sucked in a breath.

  “Sorry.” She lean
ed closer, trying to keep her touch light. “I want to make sure it’s clean. I don’t want you to get an infection.”

  “Thanks, sweetheart.” His breath whispered against her neck.

  She had a sudden vision of him—his gaze locked on to hers, fierce with pleasure as he surged into her.

  Pressure coiled low in her belly. She dropped the cotton swab. “Shoot!”

  “Hey.” Ty caught her hand before she could get another one. “No worries. It’s clean.”

  “I should… I think I have bandages—”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He stood in one smooth motion, pulling her toward him. “It’s not bleeding anymore.”

  Her body fit against his, exactly where it belonged. He leaned down to give her the kiss she so desperately wanted. Except—

  “No!” She pulled free. “I didn’t bring you here to… I only wanted to make sure you were all right.”

  He didn’t make another move toward her, just watched her with eyes that were so hot she felt feverish. “I’m not. Not even close.”

  “You…” Her voice came out low and husky even though she’d been trying for businesslike. She cleared her throat. “You said it wasn’t bleeding.”

  “Wasn’t talking about that little scratch your brother gave me.”

  Her whole body shivered. His nearness. His heat. The intensity in his voice. It was too much. If she didn’t get some distance, she was going to forget everything they needed to talk about and jump him. “We should sit down. Talk.”

  “We are talking.” He moved in toward her.

  Her heart forgot how to beat, going from a steady rhythm to a wild dance. She backed away. One single step, and she came up against the cold tile wall.

  “Sorry, sweetheart.” He stood in front of her, legs braced, eyes blazing. “I’m not going anywhere until we get a few things straight. I messed up that first proposal pretty bad, and I finally understand why. I forgot to tell you the most important thing—that I love you. And I do love you. More than I realized was possible.”

  “I love you too. But I don’t think either of us is ready for marriage.”

  His eyes went dangerously narrow, like he was reading the fine print under her statement and didn’t like what he saw. “You think I’m going to take off.”

  “No I—”

  “All that stuff yesterday about how marriage takes work was your way of telling me you don’t think I’m up to the task.”

  She swallowed. “You have to admit you tend to take the most convenient route through life.”

  “Does this look convenient?” He pointed under his eye, where the faint purple hue heralded an epic bruise. “Because it doesn’t feel that way. If I wanted convenient I’d pick up some chick at Hannigan’s who didn’t have three crazy brothers and a father who collects guns. And I wouldn’t ask her to marry me.”

  It was the moment of truth. She had to trust him with everything, or their relationship didn’t have a chance.

  She focused on the green and white hand towel over his shoulder, because there was no way she could do this while she was looking at him. “The thing is, I’ve liked you for a long time. Back in high school, I lived for Chemistry, because I knew I’d get to see you. I’d think about it all the time, planning what I was going to wear, what I would say to you. I was so shy, especially with guys, but you drew me out. You made me laugh and relax and stop taking every second of life so seriously. Still, asking you to prom was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I didn’t sleep the night before. I kept going over it in my head, trying to get the wording perfect and wondering how I’d go on living if you turned me down. I almost chickened out, but in the end, I had to do it. I wanted you that much. And I really did believe we were meant to be together, like a fairytale come to life.”

  She laughed softly. It was either that or cry, and if she started crying she’d never stop. “That night was amazing. I must have imagined it a hundred times, but it was better than all of my fantasies.”

  Without conscious direction, her gaze returned to his. “The dance, and then…after the dance.”

  His eyes blazed hotter, like he was remembering too.

  “I don’t only mean what happened between us physically. I mean the way we talked. The plans we made. I was sure we were going to be together forever. It was stupid, but—”

  He tried to object, but she shushed him. She had to get this out before it ate a hole inside her. “I was young and I had all these silly fantasies. I thought you were my prince and we were going to live happily ever after. And then I got your breakup letter. At first I didn’t think it was real. I was so caught up in my dream world that I figured it must be someone’s sick idea of a joke. But you didn’t answer any of my calls. I went to Jenna’s party hoping I would see you, that you would explain everything, but you were all over her. And then I got your letter from Basic Training. You didn’t contact me again until you were 2,000 miles away. And I finally realized what I should have known all along. You weren’t my prince. You were an eighteen-year-old boy, who liked me well enough until someone better came along.”

  “You don’t understand.” His jaw was clenched so tight the words barely made it through.

  Her throat was raw from forcing out the story she’d never wanted to share. She was exhausted, but she was also free. It was over. “I understand perfectly. When it was convenient, you were with me. And when it wasn’t—bam, you were with Jenna.”

  “That’s not how it was.”

  “That’s how your entire life is! Sean calls you Easy, and I can see why. You sail through life like it’s the easiest thing in the world. Your fiancée dumped you, and you barely noticed. Even your injury—it ended your career. And I’m so glad you’re making a new life for yourself, but you did it like it was nothing. No wallowing in depression, no cursing fate for putting you in the wrong place at the wrong time. Because that’s what you do. You go with the flow.”

  “Like nothing?” His voice dropped to a low, dangerous growl she’d never heard before. “You want to know how I got that nickname?”

  She caught herself just as her head started to shake. “Y-Yes.”

  “We’d gotten a new kid in our platoon. I don’t know how he made it through BUD/S, because he was as green as it gets. We get word that a soldier in another platoon is being held by some tangoes nearby, and we’re gonna get him out. Two minutes ’til go time and the kid was freaking out. Out there, you can’t panic. You take your mind off the mission and you’re dead. So I told him to take a deep breath—that we had his back. That all we were gonna do was take a little stroll and find our buddy. Easy.

  “’Course, it wasn’t quite as simple as that. We took some heavy fire. I got pinned down by some asshole with an AK-47. And you’d better believe that in the back of my mind, I had all the worst case scenarios running. But I knew if I let them out, I was dead, so I concentrated on that gun. And when Sean took out the shooter, I got the hell out of there. We were lucky that day. No casualties. When we got back to base, the kid started calling me Easy, and it stuck. But it wasn’t easy. Being out there was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Every day, it was the hardest thing.”

  Shame curdled the contents of her stomach. Ty might adapt to changes faster than she did, but he wasn’t superhuman. “I’m so sorry. I should never have said—”

  “It wasn’t just hard because of the danger. It was hard because I knew I was missing something. But I didn’t know what that something was until I came back here. To you.”

  She wanted to believe him. But all the pretty words in the universe wouldn’t change the fact that he’d left her once. That, until two months ago, he’d been engaged to another woman.

  Maybe he knew what she was thinking, because he went on. “The morning after the dance, Sean told me he was joining the Navy, and it was…it came out of nowhere. I knew his parents weren’t like mine—they didn’t have dinner on the table every night at six and they wouldn’t slip him a twenty if he was short on gas money
—but I had no idea how bad it really was. They tossed him out. He turned eighteen and graduated, and that was it. They were done and he was on his own. He didn’t have any money for college, so he decided to enlist. We’d always done everything together, and…I don’t know how to say this right except that it didn’t feel like a choice to me. Enlisting felt like something I had to do. That I was meant to do. I had no idea when I was gonna be back. I couldn’t ask you to wait for me. I knew it was shitty to break up with you in a letter, but I was afraid to do it in person. I knew if I saw you…saw what I was giving up….” He swiped a hand over his face. “I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do it.”

  The part of her that still believed in true love and fairytales wanted to throw her arms around him and tell him all was forgiven. The logical part of her brain tackled that naive half-wit and put her in a chokehold. “Let me get this straight. You were so heartbroken you had to let Jenna comfort you. In her bedroom.”

  “She threw herself at me, and yeah, I kissed her. I was leaving for BT the next day, and I was scared shitless. I wanted a distraction.”

  “You didn’t want me.”

  “A distraction I could leave the next morning. Can you understand that?”

  “I do understand. But that proves my point, don’t you see? You were with Jenna because it was convenient. In that moment she was the person you needed. And, two years ago, when you proposed to Bri, she was who you needed. It’s the same thing with the two of us. Right now, it’s convenient for us to be together. The sex is great, and—bonus—a quick proposal got you out of my father’s rifle scope. But if we stay together, it’s not always going to be easy. We’re going to fight and take each other for granted, and, once the novelty wears off, the sex probably won’t be anything special.”

  He tilted her chin up, forcing her to meet his gaze. “You sure about that?”

  Just that one little touch, and all she could think about was the weight of him over her. The way he’d surged into her, hard and desperate, filling her completely.