by Brynne Asher
The three of us are living in Gabby’s enormous childhood home her parents left her, but I’ve been keeping to myself in the basement as much as I can. Gabby’s right, Mia won’t leave my side. She’s some type of Shih-Tzu designer dog mix and the sweetest thing ever. I’ve always wanted a dog but my mom could never afford one and Preston would never let me have one. I’ve heard dogs can sense when something is wrong and this must be the case with Mia. She sticks to me like glue unless she’s eating or playing outside. I don’t know what I’d do without her. I’m not trying to be ungrateful because all the Caprinos are being caring and generous with me, but Mia’s the only being in my life right now that doesn’t try to get me to talk about what happened.
“I’m sorry about Mia,” I say. “Thank you for sharing her with me, I don’t know what I’d do without her. Thank you for everything. I would be all on my own with nothing if it weren’t for you. Or worse, I would still be with Preston since I wouldn’t have anywhere else to go.”
My beautiful friend reaches across the console to squeeze my knee. “We’re going to make everything okay, Leigh. I promise. Come hell or high water, you’re going to find yourself again. I really wish you would talk to a professional. I know my dog is perfect and believe you me, she got me through the loss of my parents when my uncles got her for me, but don’t let her fool you. She may be a professional cuddler but she’s no psychologist.” She throws me a sympathetic smile while giving my knee one more squeeze before driving us home.
Gabby pulls into her garage as Jude is getting out of his truck which is parked behind my car that hasn’t moved an inch since Gabby parked it there two weeks ago while I was in the hospital. He stalks straight to Gabby and hooks her behind her neck to pull her in for a kiss. She melts into him, fitting herself to him perfectly. Jude, who is tall and dark with a hint of Latin, is the perfect complement to my best friend who works her bombshell figure with olive skin, dark blonde hair, and blue eyes.
As I move by them, I hear him mummer, “Sugar,” before he kisses her again, quickly this time before letting her go. Gabby has a dazed look on her face and sighs.
But it’s Jude who gets my attention. “Leigh, I’m glad you changed your mind about going after Preston in the divorce. He deserves worse, but maybe he’ll get that from a judge. At least now you can start fresh when you’re ready without worrying about finances.”
I come to a standstill in Gabby’s messy garage. “How do you know what happened? Who told you I changed my mind?”
Jude continues to talk as he shuffles Gabby through the garage that’s a mess of old furniture and boxes, toward the house. “I just got off the phone with Tony. He called to say he’s coming for dinner and to watch the game tonight. He filled me in.”
Jude and Gabby have disappeared into the house and I hear Mia attacking them both. I can’t move from my spot in the messy garage as Mia makes her way to greet me next. Tony comes over to Gabby’s once in a while, but why tonight? I don’t want to see him tonight, especially after he railroaded me today. I should be divorced right now, but no. I’m still married and apparently taking Preston to the bank, damn-it.
“Girlie!” Gabby yells sticking her head out of the door from the house. “You coming? Jude’s grilling hamburgers, is that okay with you?”
“Sure, whatever’s fine,” I mutter and slowly make my way into the house.
Now I have to find an excuse to hide in my room all night. Unfortunately, I only have about ten thousand legitimate excuses to be depressed and want to be by myself. I just have to pick one.
Chapter Two
Tony Torture
Thanksgiving
Leigh
Pain shoots through my head as I bring my hand up to my eye. I try my best to get up and scurry to my feet as he stumbles back to find his equilibrium. Finally getting my legs under me, I’m only able to see with my good eye. The black tunnel is endless in front of me with nowhere else to go and I’ve got to get away. It’s not just him. I can’t take the noise. The crying is getting louder and louder with no escape. I start to run—to where I don’t know, but there’s nothing else for me to do but run. Away from him. Away from the crying. The crying is so deafening I can’t hear my feet hit the ground. That’s when I feel him again, his hands at my back…
My whole body jerks in my soft bed where I’m curled into myself, Mia is in my face nuzzling my ear. I’m sweating, breathing hard, and the covers are tangled around me.
I bring my hand up to calm Mia. “I’m sorry, girlie.”
Again. It happened again. It’s always the same, but not really.
The same.
Yet different.
I’ve never been in a tunnel before. The noise is always the same. It’s is too much. I can’t get the noise out of my head even after I wake.
Looking at the clock, it’s four-forty-five, still early. Maybe I can go back to sleep. I roll over to readjust the covers and wonder if I ever make any noise during these nightmares that have been haunting me for weeks. I can’t seem to shake them. Gabby hasn’t said anything about it, but her house is enormous and my room is in the basement on the opposite side of the house as theirs.
I’m not looking forward to today. It’s Thanksgiving and Gabby is hosting her massive family this year. She thinks it’s time she had a holiday family gathering in her house again. It will be the first since her parents died but she said she’s ready. The last four years have been hard for her so I’m happy she’s taking these steps. I’m pretty sure the difference is being with Jude.
As I lay here, I try not to think about still being married. My divorce didn’t pan out in five days. It’s being held up in court with all kinds of lame excuses from Preston. His lawyers are extremely creative to say the least. Tony isn’t happy with any of their offers, leaving me in divorce limbo. Mia does her best to snuggle in tight and I pray for dreamless sleep. Or nightmare-less sleep at least. There’s a big difference. I stopped letting myself dream a long time ago.
“Leigh, you look tired. Go sit down, we’ve got this.”
I look over at Gabby and give her a small smile as she’s pulling dish after dish out of her double ovens. I don’t know why I think I can help with only one arm so I take myself to the great room to get out of the way. The mountain of food on the island that will be the Thanksgiving buffet is growing by the second.
Gabby Carpino’s family is huge. Her grandparents had four boys, one being Gabby’s dad. Those four boys married and had a mountain of kids, although Gabby is the only one without siblings. I can’t keep track of all Gabby’s cousins. Now, all those cousins have started having their own mountain of kids making the Carpino mountain enormous. It’s not just a big family, but a close one to boot. And when I say close, I mean they’re fixtures in each other’s lives.
Living with Gabby the last six weeks has been pure torture for me with the Carpino family.
They’ve tortured me with love, kindness, goodness … really the list could go on and would include every Fruit of the Spirit. This comes to them naturally. However, being on the receiving end of love and compassion doesn’t come naturally for me, so all their forms of kindness are forms of torture because I don’t know how to handle it. But the Carpino who’s torturing me most is Tony.
I’ve come to refer to this in my head as Tony Torture.
It started four weeks ago in his conference room when I “changed my mind” about how I was going to handle my divorce. Since then Tony has started hanging around Gabby’s house a lot. And by a lot, I mean all the time. He hasn’t shown signs of Chameleon Tony since that day in his office. No, Tony’s torture has been delivered with soft looks, sweet smiles, and casual caresses.
The casual caresses are the worst. I don’t remember Preston ever touching me that way, even in the beginning when I could pretend things were good before his touches came in the form of pain. Every guy I was with before Preston had their mind on different kinds of touches that only brought them gratification. Tony’s cares
ses are like nothing I’ve ever experienced.
I’ll never forget the first of Tony’s torturous caresses. It was shortly after I changed my mind that day in his law offices. It was Halloween night. Gabby’s door bell was ding-donging constantly with the tiny trick-or-treaters making their rounds. Jude was with Gabby, doling out candy while I was trying to be a good one-armed houseguest and clean up Gabby’s kitchen after dinner.
Tony saunters in the kitchen with a beer in his hand and frowns at me. “You’re gonna get your cast wet. Let me do that.”
In practiced fashion, I didn’t look up from the sink. “It’s okay, I’ve figured it out.”
This is where I made my mistake. I really need to start paying attention, because all of a sudden, Tony moves in behind me, brushing his chest up against my back as he reaches around, flips off the water, and plucks the cleaning brush right out of my hand.
His lips come to my ear, making me shiver, his breath tickling as he spoke. “You shouldn’t put pressure on your arm and you really don’t want to get that cast wet. I’ve got this.”
I do my best to turn without touching him which is impossible since he’s at my back and my side brushes his chest. He’s looking down at me but not into my eyes, rather at my eye that is now healed where Preston hit me. Bringing his hand up, he brushes the backs of his fingers down my temple and under my eye with only a hint of a caress I can barely feel, but still leaves a wake of heat in its path.
“It’s healed.” He states the obvious. Then he looks from my eye and gazes into my eyes. “Gems.”
I close my lids slowly because I feel that caress down to my soul. A caress so perfect, I don’t even know how to process it. It’s like nothing I’ve experienced and I want to savor it.
“What?”
“Your eyes,” he goes on. “They look like emeralds. Precious gems.”
My heart skips a beat and I side step around him. “You can clean the kitchen.”
I turn, walk as quickly as I can through the great room, past Gabby and Jude at the front door giving candy to Thing 1 and Thing 2 from the Cat in the Hat.
“Good night,” I announce as I start down the stairs.
“You’re going to bed already?” Gabby asks. “It’s early. Don’t you want to help pass out candy?”
“No, no. I’m tired. See you in the morning.” I don’t give them a second look before I make it to my bedroom and slam the door.
Halloween was just the beginning of Tony’s casual caresses. He always found moments when we were alone to torture me. They would come in the form of him catching my bad good hand, giving my fingers a squeeze. If he walked by me in a room, he would ever so slightly run his hand along the small of my back. When he would come into a room, he would greet me with a sideways hug while looking intently into my eyes lingering way past the point of, “Hello, it’s nice to see you, childhood friend of my favorite cousin.”
Just last week Gabby, Jude, and I made the last-minute decision to go out to dinner when Tony showed up to join us. It was too late for me to make an excuse to stay home since I had already said I was hungry. I even made the extra effort to put on a little makeup for the first time since I got out of the hospital. Putting on makeup with my bad good hand isn’t easy, but I kept it light so I didn’t look like Bozo the Clown. At least Gabby sat in the backseat with me on the way to dinner letting the tall guys sit up front. But as we entered the restaurant, Jude was dragging Gabby along in front of us when Tony lightly grabs my waist, stopping me in surprise. I turn to look up at him and once more he has me alone.
He pulls my side into his rock hard front and with his lips at my temple. “You look beautiful, gem.” Then, if it can be believed, he proceeds to lightly kiss my temple before putting a hand to the small of my back giving me a nudge forward as if nothing happened.
Jude was already sliding into the booth beside Gabby and, grabbing her far hip, he gives her a good yank into his side. I had no choice but to sit next to Tony through dinner where he pressed his thigh and hip up against mine.
Pure. Torture.
“I’m here! I’m here! Sorry I’m late,” Paige announces, pulling me out of my memories as she bursts into the kitchen, arms full of covered dishes and containers of food. “My apartment size oven sucks and I can only bake one thing at a time in small dishes.”
Charlotte chides her. “You’re always late.”
“We don’t care if she’s late babe, we only care what she made.” Charlotte’s husband, Vic, looks to Paige. “What did you make?”
“Sweet potatoes with a brown sugar-nutmeg-honey glaze topped with candied pecans, a caramel apple pie, and I tried a new corn bread dressing this year with bacon in it. Oh, and I made some cookies,” she adds, offhanded.
I hear a beer bottle slam to the granite and look over to see Micah’s husband, Joe, staring at Paige. “You made cookies?”
I hear the deck door slam and Tony saunters in. “My little pest made cookies?”
“Cookies!” tiny Chloe screams at the top of her lungs, as she clippety clops across the kitchen wearing a pair of Gabby’s high heels.
“What’s the deal with the cookies?” Jude’s deep voice enters the cookie conversation where he standing next to Lanny.
“Man, you know we like you.” Lanny, who’s married to Tony’s oldest sister, Sophia, turns to Jude. “But the problem with this family getting bigger and bigger means less cookies for everyone.” Lanny turns to Paige and speaks in cookie code. “Tell me you made them.”
“Of course, I made them.” Paige sounds exasperated. “It’s Thanksgiving. You can’t have Thanksgiving without pumpkin cookies.”
That’s when it happened. Every man in the vicinity, minus Jude since he’s still in cookie confusion, descends upon petite, little Paige. They’re even bumping the little kids out of the way to get to the cookies.
Wow. What is up with these people?
“Carpinos and Carpino in-laws!” Lizzie shouts, as she cradles her six-week-old granddaughter in her arms. “Can you not wait until we give the blessing and have dinner first? The cookies are for dessert. Foolish men. You act like you’ll never see another pumpkin cookie.”
That’s when Tony shows up at my side with a half-eaten cookie in one hand, chewing a mouthful of cookie, and a whole cookie in the other. He shoves the full cookie my way as he swallows. “Here. You don’t want to miss this. Heaven in the form of a cookie.”
I pull in a breath, thinking I’ll never get used to him calling me gem, and try to pull it together. Thinking of nothing but escaping more Tony Torture, I say as he pops the rest of his cookie into his mouth to inhale, “As popular as they seem, I’m fine. You really seem to like them, you should eat it.”
What he does not do is eat the cookie but leans closer. “Did you not see me battle that brawl to win you this cookie? I know you like sweets, Leigh. Eat the cookie.”
“Really. I’m fine,” I say, through clenched teeth. He just doesn’t listen.
“Gem,” he starts as he closes the space between us. His empty hand goes to my hip, up my lower back and he surprises me by pulling my front to his, but the cookie is still held up in between us. “Eat the cookie.”
If for no other reason than to get him to leave me alone and out of my personal space, I snatch the cookie out of his hand and take a bite.
Wow.
This is the best cookie I’ve ever tasted.
“What is in this?” My mouth is full, realizing Tony hasn’t let me go, and my bottom half is still plastered to his.
“I have no idea.” Tony shrugs but doesn’t move even an inch. “Paige is a pain in my ass but she’s a wizard in the kitchen. She’s been making these since she was a teenager.”
Something about the magical pumpkin cookie makes me relax a bit and I barely smile. “Now I see what all the fuss is about. I think I have a new favorite cookie.”
Tony’s gaze sweeps my face. His other arm comes around me and his demeanor intensifies. “I’ll pay her to make
you more. I’d pay a mint to see that look on your face again.” Then he leans in to kiss my forehead and turns to walk away.
I sigh, feeling even more worn down. I decide to focus on my new favorite treat and not think about it now.
I’ll think about it later.
Honestly.
How did this happen?
There are at least three hundred—slight exaggeration—Carpinos at Thanksgiving. How did I get seated here? I thought I would sit next to Gabby since I’m her guest, but nope, I’m seated at the kid table. Right smack dab next to Tony.
I mean, really.
And we’re squished in here tight. Like sardines. Tony and I are seated with nine other miniature Carpinos, ranging in age between William, who’s fourteen, down to little Chloe, who is only three-years-old. Chloe is the only thing I have to be thankful for at this Thanksgiving table. She’s sitting on the other side of me and talks constantly so I’ve kept busy chatting it up with a three-year-old, ignoring the fact the entire side of Tony’s body is plastered to mine.
“Tell me something,” I ask conversationally toward the end of our meal as I pick up my place card that’s misspelled and written in crayon with a heart next to it. “Who decides the seating arrangements?”
“We all do.” Four-year-old Cayden answers with a mouth full of turkey while pushing a feather out of his face. He’s dressed up as an Indian but he’s molting, as the feathers are falling out of his headdress.
“Thank you, Kemosabe.” I bow my head and grin at him.
“My name isn’t Kemosabe. That’s stupid. My name is Running with Knives. That’s a tough Indian name.” He throws his four-year-old little boy attitude back at me.
“You shouldn’t run with knives. It’s dangerous,” I add because I’m an adult and feel it’s my duty. However, this doesn’t answer my question, so I forge ahead as nonchalantly as possible. “Okay then, I have another question. Why are Tony and I sitting at the kid table?”
