by Chloe Liese
His eyes slid shut and he sighed. “Then we shouldn’t be together.”
Fifteen
Zed
The Sox won the World Series and Boston threw a city-wide rager for a solid week. My own team still had until spring to prove itself in the world of soccer, so no rest for the weary. I sat on a plane trying to untangle the knot of facts I had before me. I was miserable. I still didn’t want to fuck my standing subs. Nairne’s voice, the taste of her cunt, the feel of her breasts, her rapid-fire intelligence—none of it would leave my head. And more disturbingly, someone in the faction was trying to either out me or eliminate me. I was in a foul mood, and not even the Sox breaking a losing streak that had outlived my grandparents could snap me out of it.
“Hello, muffin.” Lucas ruffled my hair as he stepped over me, squeezed his lanky frame into the window seat, and dropped back. “That loo is even tinier than usual. My head was practically in the vent.”
Lucas was on the freakish side of tall, which was an asset as a goalkeeper. But it made daily life logistically challenging for him.
“Good to see you survived.”
He rolled his eyes and turned toward me in his seat. “All right, sad arse. Out with it.”
I shook my head and checked my phone one last time before powering it down. Still nothing from her. “I’m fine.”
“Bollocks you are.”
“Luc. Drop it.”
He frowned and sat back. “It’s the woman, isn’t it? From the pub.”
I opened my book and lifted out my place marker. “Who?”
He snorted. “Oh, let’s see. The gorgeous bird with hair like polished chestnut, jade eyes, and tits that make you want to—”
I slammed the book against his chest. “Stop.”
He smiled in triumph. “So easily baited. What happened, mate? Come on, let’s have it out. It’s better to say it and move on.”
“I’m sorry, pot, but fuck you. Love, the kettle.” I pulled my book away and flipped it back open.
Hands up in surrender, he laughed. “Listen, I didn’t say I practice what I preach, though I’m trying to improve myself. I’ve certainly not done it very well thus far in my life. Men aren’t taught to speak their feelings, especially on my side of the pond. But you, you’re particularly atrocious. You’re too controlled. Too self-contained. You need to get gazeboed and just fucking let it out.”
I shook my head. My book was open, but I had no idea what I’d been reading. “That’s the last thing I need, to get shitfaced and publicly embarrass myself. We didn’t work. We’re too different. We’re not a good…fit.”
Lucas’ eyebrow lifted. “She wasn’t keen on your ways.”
“Oh, she liked them plenty when it came to some.”
“Let me guess, in the biblical sense.”
“Indeed.”
He sighed. “Typical woman. Loves a brute in the bedroom, but so much as breathe a directive at her outside those walls and your arse is on the curb.” Lucas wasn’t as exacting as me, nor did his life demand protection and order as mine did, but he liked his shit a certain way and a lady friend who wasn’t constantly trying to subvert that. “So, it was your overbearing demands that put her over the edge.”
My eyes snapped to his. “I know it’s a lot to ask of someone.” I went back to my book. “Obviously, it was too much for her. It’s not who she is.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Zeddy.” His hand landed as a hard slap on my thigh. “Give her time to be underwhelmed by others out there, and I think you’ll find her back at your doorstep soon enough.”
I sighed and threw the book down. Reading wasn’t happening. “I’m pretty sure she thinks I’m a neurotic asshole who wants to stick a tracker on her and gets off on bossing her around.”
Lucas laughed and crossed his arms. “If she’s wise, she’ll recognize that there’s much more to you than that. And if she’s not, then she’s not for you, Zed. And that’s that.”
The plane taxied, and my stomach clenched as it always did. Relinquishing total control to two strangers with hundreds of buttons and dials to steer me in a metal tube three thousand miles in the sky did not come naturally.
“Yeah, that’s nice of you, but I think it’s over,” I said.
Lucas glanced at me in sympathy.
“I’ll be fine.”
If I told myself that enough, it’d be true. It had to be.
“You’re a sad sack of shit if ever I saw one.” Teo dropped into his seat at the dinner table and gave me a piercing stare. “Bruno was right, you’re extra moody. What the hell’s wrong with you?”
Dad was in the kitchen on his phone, and from the sounds of it, talking some surgical newbie through a procedure. I tried not to listen because I had a weak stomach for that shit.
I poured a hefty glass of Zia Maria’s chianti—which may have been one of the contraband imports I didn’t bust my Italian side of the family for—and shrugged. “I’m tired. My internal clock is off from a weekend in sunny fucking LA.”
I poured Teo’s wine, too, and spun the bottle without losing a drop.
He watched me through a scowl. “Uh-huh.”
Salad served on plates, Dad leaned into the room long enough to hand us a bowl of pasta. He mouthed something I was supposed to understand and waved his hands, then disappeared back in the kitchen.
“I don’t know how many times I’ve told him I don’t read lips,” I said, “but he insists on doing it.”
“I think it was go on without me, but I’m shit at it, too.”
Teo and I ate in silence, but I caught him boring those hazel eyes, same as Dad’s, right into me. The guy was dangerously intuitive, and I didn’t want him reading anything I wasn’t prepared to discuss, so I kept my eyes down and gave my food undue attention.
“Fratu,” he said.
“Hm?”
“Talk to me. I’m sick of this shit. We’re brothers. You can tell me anything.”
I wiped my mouth with my napkin, threw it on the table, and folded my arms. “You’re my baby brother. I protect you. I don’t dump on you.”
Teo craned his head to the side until his neck made a gross crack. “See, this is where you’re wrong. You threw me the party last summer, Zed. I figured you’d remember I’m twenty-fucking-one. I’m a man. I can handle your problems.”
My hands scrubbed my face. Fuck coming to Sunday dinner. I should have lied that my return flight was delayed.
“Fine. I accept that. You’re getting older. You’re a man. I will try to be more open with you.” A dinner roll took the brunt of my frustration as I ripped it in half. “Just not about this.”
Teo threw up his hands. “Jesus Christ.”
Dad took that moment to stroll through the door. “Eh, Teo! Bada a come parli.”
The guy was old school and told himself his boys weren’t abject blaspheming potty mouths. We all have those lies we need to tell ourselves to sleep at night.
“Sorry, Papa.” Teo rolled his eyes and took a good swig of his wine.
“Zeddo, you look like shit. Che cosa è?” Dad sat at the head of the table and frowned as he glanced between us. “Trouble in paradise?”
Teo laughed into his glass. “Something like that. Zed’s got a larger than normal stick up his ass and doesn’t want to talk about it.”
Dad nodded and scooched in his chair. “Well, that’s typical. Pass the vino, Teo.”
I sighed and sat back in my seat. “I’m fine. Can we please move on?”
“Yes.” Dad nodded. “What’s going on in the family?”
That was Dad’s way of asking if I was all right. His face pinched with poorly concealed worry as he poured himself a glass and started in on his pasta.
“Someone’s trying to catch me two-timing. I had to have my place swept after someone dropped a bugged pen in my pocket a few weeks ago. Thankfully, my house was clear.”
Dad froze and dropped his fork to his plate. “This is what I’m talking about. You’re gambling with y
our life, and for people who would kill you in cold blood, mimmo.”
I shrugged and speared a shrimp in my pasta. “I’m not doing it for them. I’m doing it because if I don’t, it all goes to shit. It’s about everyone that would get fucked over and hurt, and you know it.”
Dad sighed. “You need to leave.”
I turned toward him. “Besides the fact that I can’t stomach the moral implications of my leaving, what the hell would happen to you two? Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, big fat sitting ducks. You’re telling me they don’t pull Teo into it, exactly where I was?”
Dad threw up his hands. “We’ll all leave.”
“Oh, okay. Real easy,” I snapped. “Sell the house, move our entire life to another country, secure visas, ’cause we Americans are real popular in Europe these days. Get new jobs. And still, you think that shit wouldn’t follow us?”
“We wouldn’t go to Italy,” Dad countered. “Somewhere new. A fresh start, where you don’t waste your life, and I don’t wake up to every on-call page worrying if it’s to hear you died—”
“Stop,” Teo barked. “Zed’s not dying. He’s careful, Papa. He knows how to handle himself. Zed, to Papa’s point, you need a plan, an exit strategy.”
I sighed. “If I could see a way out that wouldn’t ruin everything I’ve worked for, that wouldn’t destabilize our world, and wouldn’t leave it poised for an explosive criminal regression, I would.”
It was Dad’s turn to sigh. “I regret it, every day, that I didn’t just take us away when you were born. If I’d known you’d step in place of me—”
“Dad.” I glared at him. “It’s not your fault. Let’s move on for now.” Teo opened his mouth to argue but I pushed past him “We’ll talk about it again another time. Anyway, I had this place swept yesterday, too. You’re clean.”
“Jesus.” Teo groaned. “When did this all become a mess?”
I laughed bitterly. “It’s been a mess from the start, Theodore.” The rest of my wine went down easily, and I poured myself a second glass. “You’re just finally seeing it.”
Sixteen
Nairne
It was for the best—ending things between us. He was too complex a character for my story. Dubious ties to the mob. An iron will that was just as rigid as mine. His blunt force communication style and raw physicality that troublingly echoed my former life.
Dispassion was my anchor. Life was ordered and safe if I followed my plan, stayed within the boundaries I’d created. Focus on your studies. Learn to walk again. Avoid men who pull you anywhere off that path. Technically, Zed didn’t thwart my goals. He supported my intensity, applauded my intellect. Yet at his core, he was an animal that brought out my basest impulses. And that was dangerous. Risky living had made me pay a hefty price already. I couldn’t afford it again.
Two weeks. Each night, I woke wet and gasping, my hands stroking skin that wavered between numbness and shocking hypersensitivity. I missed the heat of his touch, the warm cadence of his voice. Days without texts demanding knowledge of my whereabouts or the state of my knickers. Board meetings were brutal. He was too functional, offering me a terse nod hello, looking handsome and composed as ever. And I was crumbling inside. Part of me wanted to throw off caution and let risk take me where it willed, begged, and screamed.
In the past, when I felt unsettled like that, I’d go for a run, or grab Elodie by the elbow and demand we head to some club so I could drink my mind into silence. Running and drunkenness were both casualties of my injury, neither of them plausible or safe for me anymore. So, I’d had to find a new outlet.
In my driveway, I dribbled the ball across the pavement and rode an arc that approximated the three-point line. November air stung my cheeks, which were warm from exertion as I lifted the ball and took a shot.
I was sweaty and tired, but an hour of shooting hoops, spinning around, and chasing the ball had finally quieted my racing thoughts. I backed up to take a long shot and bumped into something. My head whipped over my shoulder as panic tightened my throat.
“Easy.” Zed’s voice was gravelly and as sensual as ever. “That’s my livelihood you’re rolling over.”
Anxiety released its grip as my gaze slowly traveled from his shoes, up the length of muscular legs in fitted jeans, ending on a dark, long sleeve shirt that left nothing about his physique to the imagination. Then those eyes. Every shade of the sea and sunlight striking its waves. He was unfairly handsome.
His face twisted from a smirk to concern. “What’s the matter with you? You’re white as a sheet.”
I rubbed my thundering heart and exhaled slowly. “I don’t like being snuck up on. You startled me.”
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to catch you off guard.” He frowned and crossed his arms. “You’re upset. Did something happen?”
I dribbled the ball tentatively and watched its bouncing path. “No.”
He stepped closer and swiped the ball away. “I don’t believe you, and that pisses me off. If someone’s bothered you, I need to know. Do you understand me?”
I glanced up at him and ripped the ball back out of his grasp. I hugged it and scrubbed my face. “Nothing’s happened recently. Nothing here, all right? Now let it go, Zed.”
His eyes searched mine. “Fine.”
“Thank you.” I dribbled, shot, and sunk a deep two. When I turned to look at him, he was watching me intently.
I spun the ball on my finger and caught it as it tipped off. “Why are you here?”
He toed some gravel, stared at the pavement, then peered up at me. “I was in the neighborhood. Figured I’d check in on you.”
My hands found the push rims of my wheels and wiggled me side to side. I stared at him. “All right. Well, you’ve checked in. You see I’m fine.”
I couldn’t do this. Couldn’t be in proximity to him. He smelled like rain and ozone and sex. He made my body burn, brought out the insane passion and intensity that had marked my past. He made me want things I didn’t get to have anymore.
His jaw clenched. “I wanted to talk about…us. Our understanding.”
I wiped my nose that dripped in the cold, pivoted, and shot again. The ball made a satisfying thwack as it dropped through the net. “We never had any.”
“We did, we just hit a road bump and I—” He sighed and raked a hand through his hair. “We talk better over food. Come get something to eat with me.”
I shook my head as the ball rolled back to my feet. “I’m not done.” I resumed dribbling.
Zed stood for a long minute, hands in pockets, watching me dribble. The neighborhood turned two dimensional as the sun slanted lower. Homes nearby drifted into abstract shadows, trees became rough charcoal lines against a backdrop of blue-grey, and Zed’s dark waves were swallowed up in the flattening reach of dusk.
“I’ll wait,” he said.
I drew up, released the shot. Watched the ball arc away from hands. It fell through the net with a happy thwack.
“You’re going to be waiting a while then, Mr. Salvatore.”
He rebounded the ball and passed it back to me. “I’m a patient man.”
I smiled as I shot.
He caught the ball as it bounced off the rim and set it on his hip. “A wager. We have a shoot off. I win, you come home with me tonight. Give me twenty-four hours.”
I narrowed my eyes at him and picked up my water bottle. My teeth ripped open the lid and I chugged. “Dinner instead.”
“Dinner, then my place,” he countered.
His place would end badly. Or very spectacularly, depending on how you looked at it. I’d let him fuck me, which would be incredible. We’d get tangled up together again, and I’d wake up regretting the mess I’d gotten myself into. “Dinner’s all you’re getting.”
He frowned. “Damn, you’re stubborn.” He took a shot that slipped through the net with a perfect swish. “Drink up, buttercup. You’re gonna need it when I wipe the floor with you.”
I smoothed back my hair, which
was drenched with sweat. “I’m warning you, I’m about to embarrass you. You prepared to have your arse handed to you, Salvatore?”
An imperceptible quirk of his mouth, but those eyes danced. He liked it when I gave him hell. “Bring it on, MacGregor. Bring it on.”
Seventeen
Zed
Contrary to what the tabloids would tell you, I’d never dated a female athlete. Never looked at one covered in sweat, with a competitive glint in her eye, and fantasized about tossing her on my bed and fucking her good old missionary style. Just so she’d have to look into my eyes and remember who was top dog.
Until Nairne. She leaned her hands on her legs and laughed as she breathed heavily, winded from all our shooting. She’d just beat me, and that meant I’d lost the bet. That meant no dinner.
That wasn’t happening.
“One more,” I demanded.
Her arms folded. Emerald eyes glittered with menace or arousal, maybe a little bit of both. “No.”
“Why.” It wasn’t a question. It was a fucking command. Answer me. Explain why this exists between us, when you despise how I am, and I can’t stop wanting everything about you that makes me crazy.
“Because I’m going to win anyway. No point in getting your hopes up.” She sped by me, dribbling the basketball, and I got hard just watching her. Lean arms, that smirk on her rosy lips. Jesus, I was so fucked in the head over her.
“What do you want from me, Zed?” She turned and sunk a long two. “I’m trying to figure it out. I’m not one for being dictated to. I seem to drive you mad with my independent streak. Why exhaust yourself on someone like me?”
I wanted to tell her everything. How I couldn’t make sense of why I liked her so much when she made me want to rip my hair out half the time. Why her ocean air and flower scent made my dick stone, and why her clipped accent and sharp tongue heated my blood. Or why the temporary nature of us fit so well into the sad fact that my life could never involve forever. I settled for a dialed down but largely honest answer.
