Ache for You (Slow Burn Book 3)

by J. T. Geissinger

  When I visited him on my summer vacations from school, the house was always swarming with people. Neighbors dropped by unannounced. There were impromptu dinner parties and afternoon picnics on the lawn. On Sundays after church he always put out a big brunch with champagne and everyone was invited.

  When I think of it now, I realize that maybe he didn’t have bad money-management skills. Maybe saving it and making it wasn’t as important to him as how he spent it.

  Maybe he simply had different priorities.

  The ancient priest dodders over to the pulpit, signaling the start of the service. When he starts to speak in Italian, I stop listening to the words. Instead I close my eyes and listen to the cadence. To the responses from the crowd. To the painful beating of my heart.

  There’s a full mass, including communion. Hymns are sung, bible passages are read, people stand, sit, and kneel at the appropriate times.

  I do, too, aware always of Matteo on my right and his mother on my left. Aware of his constant, grounding presence. Aware of his gaze, which doesn’t stray from me for too long.

  There are no eulogies, because my father thought it was morbid to talk about the dead. Then it’s over.

  I survived. Barely. The scream inside my chest survived, too, and is impatiently clawing for escape from my throat.

  I’ll let it have its moment later, when I’m alone.

  Matteo, Dominic, and Lorenzo are three of the six pallbearers who bear my father’s casket out of the church to the waiting hearse and to the gravesite. The service at the grave is a blur. All I remember is that at one point, I swayed and Matteo caught me before I fell. He kept his arm clamped around my shoulders for the rest of the service, which was lucky for me. I doubt if I would have been able to stand unsupported.

  I throw a fistful of dirt on my father’s casket, then it’s over.

  I don’t remember walking back to the limo.

  I don’t remember the drive back to the house.

  I don’t remember anything, until I look up when the limo pulls to a stop and I see a familiar figure pacing back and forth in agitation in front of the front door of Il Sogno.

  When I gasp in horror, Matteo whips his head around and looks at me, then follows my gaze through the window and narrows his eyes.

  “Who’s that?”

  Though my mouth has gone bone-dry, I manage to answer, “It’s Brad. My ex.”

  When Matteo makes a terrifying sound in his chest—like a bear’s growl, only more lethal—I wonder if we’ll be having more than one funeral today.

  SEVENTEEN

  I’m the first one out of the limo because I launch myself from it like a rocket.

  Brad spots me and freezes. He’s as handsome as ever in faded jeans and a navy blazer, though he looks bone tired. The bruises beneath his eyes and the white strip of tape over the bridge of his nose don’t help.

  With a pleading look on his face and a crack in his voice, he says, “Babe.”

  I whip off my right shoe and hurl it at him.

  It lands in the middle of his forehead with a satisfying thwack, then bounces off into the bushes.

  I really wish I’d brought a pair of heels. He could be missing an eye right now.

  “Ow!” Clutching his forehead, he staggers back and stares at me with big eyes. “Babe!”

  I shout, “Call me babe one more time, you lying, cheating, gigantic piece of shit! I dare you!”

  Matteo exits the car behind me. He grips my arm, stopping me from flying across the driveway and clawing out Brad’s eyes. In the most dangerous tone I’ve ever heard a person who isn’t Clint Eastwood use, Matteo says, “You have ten seconds to get off this property before I kill you.”

  I blink up at him, surprised. Is he standing up for my honor?

  Then I remind myself this is the same person who’s stealing all my designs to use in his upcoming collection and shake my head to clear it. Matteo isn’t concerned with my honor. Matteo doesn’t have honor. He’s concerned with avoiding a scene in front of Mumsy-Wumsy.

  Either way, if it ends up with Brad dead, I’m on board.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I spit it out, beyond livid.

  “You wouldn’t take my calls. I had to reach you—I—we have to talk.”

  Lorenzo and the marchesa have exited the limo and stand with the limo driver, staring at our tawdry little tableau with expressions ranging from mild interest on the driver’s part to extreme distaste on the marchesa’s part.

  For someone who dislikes shows of emotion, this must be akin to surgery without anesthesia for her.

  But she surprises me by saying, “So this is the man who left my stepdaughter at the altar.” She looks him up and down carefully, then sniffs. “You ought to be shot.”

  With Lorenzo on her heels, she lifts her head and breezes past Brad into the house.

  Wow. That was a beautiful thing.

  Hurt, Brad looks at me. “She’s mean.”

  Deadly soft, Matteo says, “Your ten seconds are up.”

  I look at Brad and can’t help the vicious smile that curves my lips. “You really don’t want to talk shit about this guy’s mother.”

  “Please, Kimber, I was wrong. I was stupid and wrong, and I freaked out, and it was a total mistake, and . . . can we please just talk for a minute? I came all this way. I have so much I need to tell you.”

  At first I think that scary grumbling noise is coming from my chest, but then I realize it’s Matteo. He’s about to blow a gasket. His face is so hard it looks like it’s made of stone.

  Murder stone.

  When he drops his hand from my arm and takes a step forward, I grab his sleeve. “Wait.”

  He slants me a look. His nostrils are flared. That muscle in his jaw is jumping. He’s got violence written all over him, and I’m a teeny bit uncertain now about how much of this is for Mumsy-Wumsy’s sake and how much mine. I mean, she’s already gone.

  What is he doing?

  I exhale a hard breath, glower at Brad for a moment, then lower my voice. “I know this idiot. If I don’t give him a chance to speak his piece, he’ll never leave me alone.”

  “If I remove his tongue, the problem will be solved.”

  Matteo’s answer comes fast and quiet. It’s even scarier than if he’d shouted it to the hills. He’s serious. If I said the word, he’d take Brad apart limb by limb right here in the driveway.

  Why that should give me such a thrill, I don’t want to know.

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  He makes a small gesture indicating the rolling hills and woods around us. “There’s a lot of property here.”

  “Are you saying it’s good for burying a body?”

  “Say the word and you’ll find out.”

  We stare at each other in a strange kind of violent, intense Brad-hating bubble until Brad clears his throat.

  “Uh, you guys? Still here.”

  Matteo says through gritted teeth, “You were going to marry this idiot?”

  “I know, right?”

  We turn our heads and glare at Brad.

  He takes a step back. “Uh, okay, I’ll just . . .” He points down the driveway. “I’ll just wait for you over there.”

  He takes off walking at a brisk clip. Watching him go, the limo driver says, “Good hair, though. Robert Redford hair. You know Robert Redford? He’s my favorite American movie star. Good actor. Good teeth. Great hair.”

  When he sees the look Matteo sends him, his eyes widen. He jumps back into the limo and takes off down the driveway, roaring past Brad with a wave.

  “If you’re not back in five minutes, I’m coming to get you. I won’t be responsible for what happens then.”

  I lift my eyebrows, taking in Matteo’s expression. His gaze is on Brad. The look in his eyes has gone from murder to genocide.

  God, I’m so sick. I’m actually finding this show of protective machismo incredibly hot.

  “Hey. Psycho.”

  Matteo cuts hi
s eyes back to me.

  “What’s this caveman thing you’re doing?”

  “He hurt you.”

  “Yeah? So? How is that your business?”

  His jaw works back and forth as if he’s grinding walnuts between his molars. Finally he says, “We’re family.”

  “Ex-family,” I correct, watching his face. “You’re the one who so helpfully pointed that out to me.”

  He draws a breath through his nose, straightens to his full height, folds his arms over his chest, and stares down his nose at me.

  “Oh, this again? The snooty silent treatment? Great. That’s just great. That’s exactly what I need right now.”

  I hate myself for how my voice wavers, but I hate myself even more for letting anything he does affect me. It shouldn’t matter.

  It doesn’t matter!

  So why does it?

  “Go be with your mother. She needs you more right now than I do.”

  Dashing away the water springing up in my eyes, I turn and start to walk away. Matteo takes hold of my arm and turns me back.

  He drops his head so we’re nose to nose. “Did you just say you need me?”

  I frantically try to recall the specific words I just spoke, but with him so close and his damn delicious, brain-melting scent in my nose, and the scream trapped in my throat, and the tears filling up behind my eyes so fast, I can’t.

  I whisper, “I don’t know what I just said. This is the worst day of my life. Last week I had the second worst day of my life, caused by that douchebag waiting for me at the end of the driveway. My brain isn’t really working right at the moment.”

  We stare at each other until he exhales. He looks at my mouth, then briefly closes his eyes. When he speaks again, he sounds exhausted. “Let me get your other shoe.”

  He leaves me standing there while he fishes my shoe out of the bushes. Then, when he comes back and kneels down in front of me in the gravel, it’s all I can do not to fall flat on my face.

  He gently takes my ankle in his hand and slips my foot into my shoe. Then he looks up at me.

  And my heart stops. It just stops, like you hear stories of when people first glimpse the love of their life . . . or in that split second after they stepped off a curb and realize they’re about to get hit by an oncoming bus.

  Yeah, probably more like the second one.

  Matteo kneels at my feet with his big warm hand wrapped around my small cold ankle, and just looks at me while I stare back at him with a nonfunctioning heart and a barely functioning brain and try to remember how to breathe.

  His voice thick, he says, “No matter what he says, remember who you are.”

  Before I can ask Who am I? Matteo has risen and is walking away with stiff shoulders and his hands clenched into fists.

  I watch him until he disappears into the house, then I turn and walk down the driveway to where Brad awaits. He’s pacing again, kicking at the gravel like a four-year-old.

  I stop ten feet away, fold my arms over my chest, and send him a death glare.

  He exhales loudly. “Okay. Okay, um . . . you’re mad. I know you’re mad. And you probably never want to talk to me again.” He’s still pacing. Pacing and wringing his hands, which is so unlike him I frown.

  He glances at me, quickly glances away, then shakes his head and laughs. It’s a horrible laugh, the kind that isn’t funny at all. The kind that bursts out of you like a groan or a bark, or like the sound an animal makes when it’s in pain.

  Honestly, it freaks me out a little.

  “Brad, stop.”

  He stops in place and looks at my feet. He inhales, his chest heaving, then finds the nerve to meet my eyes.

  I’ve never seen anyone with that wild, awful look in his eyes. It’s similar to the look he had when I was walking down the aisle toward him at the church, but there’s more than sheer panic there. Now I see pain and fear and visceral dread, like someone being tortured.

  Like someone about to die.

  “You could’ve just written me a letter.”

  “You would’ve torn it up.”

  He has me there. I definitely would have torn it up. Then lit it on fire. Then stomped on the ashes and sent them back to him in a box marked Fragile: Broken Heart Inside.

  “You have sixty seconds to tell me what you need to say. Then we’re never going to speak again. Go.”

  He swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and shoves his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. He squints up at the sun, closes his eyes, and releases a pent-up breath.

  Then he looks me dead in the eye and whispers, “I’m gay.”

  It doesn’t hit me right away. I stand there waiting for him to say something, until I realize he did say something . . . and what it was that he said.

  Slowly, I repeat, “You’re gay.”

  He nods.

  “Gay.”

  When he nods again, I’m this close to killing him with my bare hands. But I don’t want to go to jail, so I’ll kill him with sarcasm instead.

  “So gay you slept with half the female population of San Francisco behind my back, huh? Was that just you making sure you didn’t enjoy vagina? Just putting the lid on it?”

  “Listen—”

  “So gay you constantly made fun of Jenner and his boyfriends? That gay?”

  “Kimber—”

  I take a step toward him, my entire body shaking with fury. “So gay you had to, what, make up all those stories you told me about the amazing sex you had before you met me? All those crazy threesomes in your college days, all those kinky things you wanted me to try, all the ways you made me feel like I wasn’t measuring up to your expectations in bed?”

  The last part is shouted into his face. I’m so angry I can feel my pulse in every cell in my body.

  In a defeated whisper, Brad says, “Yes.”

  I blink. “What do you mean, yes?”

  “I mean . . .” He presses his lips together for a moment, his eyes fierce with unshed tears.

  I’m shocked to realize he’s going to cry.

  “I mean yes. I did all that. I slept around with women because I was desperate no one would know. I said those things about Jenner and his boyfriends and made up those stories about all the sex I had in college and did pretty much anything else I could think of—everything I could think of—so I wouldn’t have to admit it to myself.”

  He chokes out a sob right as the first fat tear rolls down his cheek. In a strangled voice, he says, “But mostly so I wouldn’t have to admit it to my father.”

  Then he drops his face into his hands and starts to bawl. Shoulders shaking, body trembling, boo-hooing and carrying on in that totally over-the-top, out-of-control way you just can’t fake.

  I’m so overwhelmed I plop right down on the gravel driveway in my vintage Christian Dior couture dress and sit there with my legs stuck out in front of me, staring at my shoes.

  “But nobody stays in the closet anymore,” I say, bewildered, to my feet. “I’m no expert, but, I mean . . . do they? He’s a grown man . . . a grown man who lives in San Francisco, the LGBTQ capital of the universe. Why on earth would he pretend to be straight?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry!” Brad wails between his fingers. “I never meant to hurt you!”

  “Oh, well, good job with that, Wingate.” I’m too stunned to be furious at the moment, so it comes out as sarcasm, as dry as a crust of old bread.

  Brad drops down beside me and folds his legs. He then proceeds to wail and cry in a cross-legged position, and now I’m getting a migraine.

  “If anyone should be bawling here, it should be me, asshole. Do you have any idea how much you hurt me? How what you did absolutely devastated me? How I will never, ever get over that shit for the rest of my life?”

  He wails louder. At this rate the authorities will show up soon to find out who’s being murdered.

  “Okay.” I sigh, exhausted. “Hey, calm down, it’s gonna be okay.”

  He grabs me and buries his face
in my neck, clinging to me like a lost little boy, hiccupping between sobs.

  I look up at the clear blue sky. I want to remember this moment. I want to let it sink in before I go numb. I want to be able to take it out later and look at it, examine it, try to understand what it means and how I ended up within it. Because maybe if I can understand, I’ll be able to find some deeper meaning in it.

  Something that doesn’t make me feel so worthless and small.

  “I buried my father today.” I watch a fluffy white cloud float by overhead. In the branches of the trees, birds are singing.

  “God, I’m so sorry.” Brad’s sobs have turned to sniffles. He’s drying his face with his hands, wiping his fingers on his jeans. “I know how much he meant to you.”

  I look at him, this man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Really look at him. How could I have been so blind? “I spent three years of my life with you. Three years. You’re telling me it was all a lie?”

  “No, no, it wasn’t.” He’s desperate, grabbing my hand and imploring me with his eyes. “I loved you! I did! I do. You’re my best friend. You’re the only person I ever felt safe with.”

  We stare at each other. His face is blotchy. His lashes are wet, stuck together in clumps. He looks as close to haggard as I’ve ever seen him. Haggard, hopeless, and lost.

  “I don’t understand. You could’ve told me at the beginning. I would’ve supported you. You didn’t have to steal three years of my life. Because if what you’re telling me is true, that’s what you did. You stole three years of my life because you were too much of a coward to live yours. I can never get that time back. All that time and all that love I gave you . . . and you repaid it with disloyalty and public humiliation. And now you’re here to what? Ask my forgiveness?”

  He starts to cry again, this time silently. Tears flow down his cheeks and drip from his jaw. “I know,” he whispers brokenly. “It’s unforgiveable, I know.”

  He’s so pitiful I just don’t have it in me to hate his guts. I mean, I do hate his guts, but part of me also feels sorry for him.

  Part of me remembers what a judgmental prick his father is and how nothing Brad ever did quite measured up.