My skull was pounding.
Before I even opened my eyes, I knew I was going to be nursing yet another vicious hangover. Only the—let’s see, Roxy’s been gone seven days now—seventh hangover in a row. Seven straight days of getting drunk-off-my-ass shitfaced because my girl had flown away on a steel jet plane without saying goodbye.
When had my life become a fucking country song?
And if that wasn’t utterly depressing, I didn’t know what was.
Groggy as all hell, I carefully got to my feet and stumbled around for clothes. After a quick piss and a woefully-needed teeth brushing, I made my way toward the stairs.
That was when it hit me.
Not many people could gain entrance into my home without tripping my alarm. Only certain people had the code.
But only one of those people could actually play the piano.
I sprinted down the stairs, almost breaking my neck in my haste. Seconds later, I screeched to a halt in the doorway of the dining room.
Roxy sat at the piano bench, looking more beautiful and serene than I’d ever seen her as she gently stroked the ivory keys of the Steinway.
I drank in the sight of her, convinced I was hallucinating.
She wore a white summery dress that made my mouth water and my cock rise. With the thin straps, a healthy amount of her olive skin was on display, making my fingertips tingle with the urge to run them over every inch of all that delectable caramel.
If only I had grabbed my phone as I’d rushed out of my bedroom. Then I could have secured all the doors so she couldn’t escape. Because if she thought she could come in here after a week of no communication and then up and leave again, she was in for a surprise.
Her ass wasn’t leaving until I was good and goddamn ready for it to. Or at least until I had my answers.
Even then, I might just tie her to the bed.
The last melodious notes of her piece reverberated through the room before she turned around on the bench to face me.
She was smiling.
I was instantly confused. She looked so calm. Almost…at peace.
Christ. What did that mean for me?
“Hi,” she said softly. “I’m sorry if I woke you.”
I couldn’t come up with a single word to say. For the first time in my life, my brain was failing me. And a little part of me was also afraid of saying the wrong thing and driving her right back out of my life again.
Her smile faltered slightly as her gaze raked over me. “Or did I wake you? You look like you haven’t slept in a week.”
Because I hadn’t.
I’d drunkenly passed out for a few hours at a time and that was about it.
Her brow furrowed when I still didn’t say anything. “I’m sorry I’ve been ignoring your calls. I had to take care of some things. And I’m sorry I left without telling you in the first place.”
I still had nothing.
I could barely process her presence, let alone her words. I hadn’t yet come up with a response worth vocalizing.
She sighed and rose to her feet, nervously wringing her hands in front of her. “Look, Ace. You’re clearly mad at me, and you have every right to be. I just—”
“Mad?”
I guess she’d finally found the right button to push because the word burst from my lips like a reflex.
I stalked toward her, while her feet remained rooted in place. She looked too shocked to move.
“You think I’ve been mad, Rox?” I snapped. “Yeah, maybe for about the first five minutes after I realized you’d left me. But since then?” I shook my head. “I’ve been fucking scared. Like, out of my mind terrified.”
“Why? The Gabbianos are in jail.”
I scoffed.
Unbelievable that she still didn’t get it after all this time. After everything that had happened. Looked like I was going to have to make things super fucking clear here.
I grabbed her by the arms and hauled her to me. “This has nothing to do with the fucking Gabbianos. I thought I’d lost you. For an entire goddamn week straight, I’ve been hating myself for screwing everything up. I’ve been afraid, fucking sick with fear, that I’d never get you back again. I’ve never been so scared of anything else in my life, aside from that night at the church.”
Her eyes softened. “I’m sorry.”
“The thing is, I don’t know if I should still be afraid. You’re back in my home, a place I worried I’d never see you in again, but you haven’t explained what you’re doing here. If it’s another apology you want, I’ll give you a thousand of them and I’ll mean every single one. If it’s a goodbye you need, I’ll”—I swallowed— “walk away right now and let you leave. Because I don’t think I’m actually capable of telling you goodbye.”
As crazy as it sounded, I was almost grateful for not having caught her at the airport. Because if she’d told me goodbye and still left, that would have been a million times worse than never hearing those fateful words at all. The finality of her looking into my eyes and voicing her farewell would have been too painful to bear.
“But if you came back to hear how much I love you,” I pushed, “then I’d say everything I should have told you weeks ago. About how I can’t sleep anymore if you’re not right beside me. About how the passion I have for my work is nothing like the passion I feel for you. It doesn’t even come close. I’d tell you how you can make doing even the most inane, innocuous things in life exciting. Sitting on the couch with you, drinking coffee together, washing the damn dishes—none of those ever held any appeal for me until I started doing them all with you.”
Her lower lip began to tremble, her eyes watering. When I brushed my thumb over that dimple, she leaned into my touch.
A portion of that suffocating weight on my chest lifted.
“I made it my job to protect you this summer,” I went on. “I took that upon myself because I didn’t trust anyone else to keep you safe. And in doing that, I basically set myself up to fall in love with you. Because there was no way I could watch you pursue your goals, chase your dream, love your father unconditionally, laugh and smile in your uninhibited way, and walk down the street, clueless to how stunning you are, without falling in love with you. It would have been impossible.”
Her mouth curved up into the kind of smile that had my heart skipping a beat.
“And now my life looks completely unrecognizable from how it looked before you came back into it.” I pressed our foreheads together, squeezing my eyes shut. “Thank you, Rox. Thank you for showing me what this is like and how much better my life could get. And I’ll be honest, I don’t want to go back to the way my life used to be. Because now I know how much it was lacking. I kind of hate you for that.”
I could tell her laughter took her by surprise.
“Unless, of course, you’ve come back to stay,” I prodded. “Then I won’t have to go back to suffering. Have you come back to save me from that? Please say yes, baby.”
“Actually…” She drawled the word out, hesitating with her next words. “I only came back for the piano.”
My eyes popped open. “What?”
She shrugged. “I figured it was a gift to me, so I came back to discuss moving it up to Connecticut.”
Is she fucking serious?
I pulled back to look at her—
And saw the shit-eating grin.
“You ass.”
She slapped my chest, laughing. “Hey, I couldn’t resist.”
My own smile faded at the reminder of Connecticut. “Why didn’t you tell me when you were leaving? And then you just…flew away, Rox.”
I couldn’t put into words what that had done to me. But the hurt in my voice seemed to come through because her expression fell in sympathy.
“Now, you have to go back.” The reality of that was just setting in with me. “Jesus, you have to leave all over again, don’t you?”
She rubbed her hand over my abs, almost absently. “I’m staying here.”
I sear
ched her eyes for more deception and couldn’t find any. “You’re kidding again, aren’t you? What about med school?”
“Columbia University here in New York has a medical school,” she explained. “The College of Physicians and Surgeons. I went back to Yale this week to explain everything to the Dean and my advisor, and I was able to transfer to Columbia. I start next week.”
The rest of that weight lifted.
My lungs could finally suck in the first deep breath I’d taken since she left.
“Holy shit, you’re serious.”
She nodded, looking pretty satisfied with herself. “I just felt like I needed to handle the situation in person, rather than through an email. I was pretty close with some of my professors. That’s what this past week was all about. I’d always planned on coming back.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? You made it seem like you’d left for good.”
She raised an eyebrow. “That was the point. When you found out I’d left without saying anything to you, you felt helpless, right? Like you had no control over what was going on in your life?”
I immediately saw where she was going with this.
I nodded.
“That’s how I felt when I heard what you and Papà had done. I know you weren’t involved with his plan from the beginning, but you still didn’t talk to me after he went to you for help. I don’t ever want to feel like my own life is in someone else’s hands again, Ace. Papà made me feel like that by dragging me back to the city in the first place. And yes, although doing that led me to you, it also made me feel powerless. Like I didn’t have any control over what was happening to me. The last thing I ever wanted was for you to make me feel like that, too. That’s why it hurt so bad when you did.”
“Rox, I’m so sorry—”
She put her finger over my lips, silencing me. “I’ve thought about it a lot, and I know why you did what you did. But I still wanted to give you a taste of your own medicine, so you could see how it feels to be in the backseat while someone else does all the steering. I wanted you to feel powerless, just for a moment, so you would never be tempted to do anything remotely like that to me again.”
My chest collapsed like a sinkhole with relief.
I wrapped my arms back around her. Inhaling her strawberry shampoo felt like coming home. “Believe me, baby, you absolutely made your point. Nothing like that will ever happen again.”
“Good. Because remember, I know exactly where all your major veins and arteries are…and where all your guns are.”
My laughter sounded rusty because for over a week now, I’d had no reason to laugh.
“And by the way”—she craned her neck to meet my gaze— “I love you, too.”
“No past tense?”
“No past tense.”
“Well, that works out, then. Because I hadn’t planned on letting you leave this house again. Maybe ever.”
Her giggle was cut off by my mouth.
The kiss was hard and deep enough to start making up for the week’s worth we had missed out on. She rose up onto her toes and plastered her body against mine in every way she could. Her moans were music to my ears, which gave me an idea.
“You know, there’s still one thing we haven’t officially christened in this place,” I said after pulling my mouth away.
I’d missed seeing how red and swollen her lips got from our kisses.
“What’s that?”
I picked her up and set her down on top of the piano keys. The series of random, disjointed notes her butt played made us both laugh.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”
“You better make it quick,” I warned.
Her dress should have been on the floor by now.
She glanced down at the white piano, then at her white dress, and finally back up at me. “What’s your deal with white? You seem to like having it all over the place.”
I was actually surprised it had taken her this long to ask.
“I’ll tell you, but you’re going to think it’s stupid.”
She grinned. “I’m sure I won’t.”
I placed my hands on her waist as I thought about it. “It started when I was at MIT. Everything in class was always done on white boards. Every equation we solved, every formula we worked out, they were always written out on white boards. And once we had the answer to one problem, it was erased, and we would move on to the next one. Then when I started getting into security, I had a lot of algorithms to write and program. I did all of it on white boards. Hell, my house was littered with them in the beginning. They’re all over my office now.”
She nodded. “I noticed that.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, it just became symbolic for me. Every project of mine has always started out on a blank white board. It’s like a fresh canvas. A clean start. Anything can happen on a blank white space, and that’s kind of how I see my life now. Every day starts out on a blank white board. We can write whatever we want on it. And the beauty of it is, if one thing doesn’t work out, we can just erase it and start again.” I glanced down at her dress. “Seeing white everywhere is just a constant reminder of that. There are always new possibilities.”
She slid her arms around my neck. “And what are we going to write on our board today?”
My heated gaze focused back on that dimple. “As long as I’m with you, I’ll be happy with whatever we write. But why don’t we start by making beautiful music together first and just see where it goes from there?”
She smiled before pulling me down for another scorching hot kiss.
I couldn’t believe I’d finally made her mine.
Roxy had never been the one that got away. I hadn’t been in love with her years ago, so that didn’t apply.
She was the one I never saw coming.
And now, she was the one I’d never take my eyes off of again.
Not for one day, or even one second, for the rest of our lives.
One month later
The Rossettis had always been like family to me. Even when we’d acted like enemies.
So, I shouldn’t have been nervous to be having dinner with them for the first time in over five years. And yet here I was, seeking out Ace’s hand for comfort with one hand while reaching for my wine glass with the oth—that’s not wine.
I cleared my throat to cover up my coughing.
What the hell were they disguising in that unlabeled bottle?
“Keep thy wits about ye when guzzling down this stuff,” Jasmine leaned over to whisper in my ear, doing her best pirate accent. “It’ll knock you on your ass before you even know you’re buzzed.”
“What is it?”
She squinted at the bottle conspiratorially. “Secret family recipe. But I’ve made it my mission to solve the mystery once and for all.”
“Any progress?”
She grunted. “The investigation is still ongoing. I’ll report back with my findings.”
I giggled, sipping slowly from my glass.
She, on the other hand, didn’t seem too keen on taking her own advice. She tipped her glass up and emptied it in a single gulp. Somehow, she still managed to make the action look dainty and feminine.
I really liked Cris’s fiancé. Gia seemed to, as well.
Jasmine was polite, smart, considerate, and sweet as pie. And she clearly had no issues with laying down the law with her future husband and brothers-in-law-to be. She’d already read all four of them—Nico was currently out of the country—the riot act for watching a baseball game instead of helping Val and the rest of us set the table.
I’d missed Val almost as much as I’d missed Gia. She had always treated me like her second daughter, and she was now the only thing I had in terms of a mother. The way she’d hugged me when Ace and I walked through the door earlier was one of the best things I’d felt in five years.
“How’s med school going so far, Roxy?” Cris asked. “How are you liking Columbia?”
I knew Columbia was both his and
Nico’s alma mater.
“It’s really great.” My mouth watered as Ace placed the other half of his leg of lamb on my plate. “Columbia’s med school is actually ranked a little higher than Yale’s, so it worked out even better in the end.”
When Ace moved his hand to my thigh and squeezed, I knew he was agreeing with me.
Everything had certainly worked out better in every way. I’d moved back into his place the second my transfer became official, and we’d spent very little time apart since then. It was actually getting to the point where I was going to have to sit down and have another talk with him. As much as I relished his insatiable sex drive, I was finding it hard to concentrate on schoolwork.
Although the last time I’d brought up that particular topic, things had taken an interesting turn.
“You’re required to have a very thorough understanding of human anatomy to become a doctor, right?” he’d asked while watching me from the other end of the couch.
“Yeah… They kind of encourage that.”
He’d drawn his shirt over his head and chucked it across the room. Splaying his muscular arms out and leaning back against the cushions, he’d grinned. “Then come study mine. I have no doubt you’ll ace this test.”
Needless to say, I hadn’t gotten anymore studying done that night.
“Vinnie said the hospital was so impressed with you that they want to bring you on for a year-long internship,” Enzo commented. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
I was smiling for more than one reason.
I was honored that I’d made such a good impression with the doctors I’d shadowed. But I was even happier about Papà’s and Enzo’s renewed friendship. They might as well have been the older, manlier versions of me and Gia. They were practically attached at the hip.
Papà had left the five families.
The D’Angelo name was no longer affiliated with the mafia. Or at least, it was now only connected in the same way the Rossetti name was connected.
The other bosses hadn’t been thrilled with his decision, seeing as how a self-imposed excommunication had only happened one other time since the Rossettis’ voluntary exile in the very beginning. But once word had spread of Santi Gabbiano confessing to murdering Mamà and Filip, they had all begrudgingly understood his desire for separation.
Scars and Sins (Brooklyn Brothers Book 2) Page 26
