by Chelle Bliss
“That’s what Johnny suggested.” My attention shifted back to the man in question as he stood calmly, not watching us, gaze back on the rooms around us.
“Did he?” Sofia asked and gave his arm a squeeze. “Oh, you’re always bragging on my—”
“Sofia, cut the shit.” Johnny’s eyes were sharper now. His tone deepened and lowered enough that I heard the threat between each syllable.
“Johnny…” Sofia tried, dropping her hands from his arms. She attempted a weak smile. Even forced out a faint laugh, but it did little to convince anyone that she was amused.
“What are you hiding?” He focused on her face, his attention sharp and guarded. He was beautiful. So powerful. So strong. But it was the first time I’d seen how menacing Johnny Carelli could be.
Sofia took a step back. She didn’t look scared, but I didn’t figure she was stupid. There was a boundary she was crossing. I could make that out in how she didn’t yell at him and kick him out of her business. She might own it, she might run it, but something about Johnny and the way he carried himself announced with very little effort that you didn’t treat him with the same casual bluntness that most bossy customers got. If Sofia knew Johnny’s cousin, she knew who and what he was, and that knowledge was what had the woman looking on guard.
“I’m not hiding anything, Johnny. It’s not like that…”
He took a step closer to her with his gaze still focused on her face, one hand in his pocket like he wasn’t worried or irritated that something was happening he had no control over. “Then why don’t you tell me what it’s like, cara?”
Sofia pressed her lips together as though she had to force back the words beating to escape her closed mouth. Johnny lifted a hand to brush a fallen strand of hair from her shoulder before he rested his palm there.
“I-I…” Sofia stuttered. Her expression shifted into a wince when Johnny squeezed her shoulder. I thought he might be hurting her and was about to beg him to stop, but his gaze had left her face. His entire focus, in fact, was outside the door and on the woman staring at him through the glass.
“Dio mio.” The words rushed out in an awed, amazed sound.
“Johnny, please don’t…” Sofia tried, going silent when he shook his head and held his hand in front of her face to quiet her.
The man’s eyes went wide. His mouth dropped open, and all semblance of calm seemed to leave Johnny as he walked around Sofia. He met the woman as she walked through the door and stood just two feet in front of him in the center of the room.
I’d never seen her equal. To say she was beautiful seemed like some stupid, pathetic description that couldn’t come close to doing her justice. She was striking and looked like she’d stepped right out of the pages of Vogue, sporting a high-waisted black pencil skirt and a black turtleneck sweater with a beige pea coat hanging from her shoulders.
She was radiant, timeless, with dark olive skin and wavy black hair, a perfectly oval face, and sharp, exaggerated cheekbones. Her chin was square and strong but feminine. Her long, straight nose was tipped at the end, and her mouth was full, the bottom lip only a fraction larger than the voluminous top. But it was her eyes, those enormous green eyes, lit with a quiet fury that stood out among all that elegant perfection, and they were focused like lasers on Johnny.
“Merda,” he said, finally finding his voice. He came closer, and the movement seemed to wake something inside her.
The amazed expression on her face shifted, transformed into something that reminded me of a tiger ready to pounce.
“Sammy…”
Those beautiful eyes narrowed, her full, pouting top lip curled, and the woman shook her head. “No.” She reached back to slap Johnny Carelli, that fearsome mafia prince, so hard across the face that he stumbled back.
“Son of a bitch.” Sofia followed after Sammy as she turned on her heel to leave.
“Johnny?” I said.
He only stood there, holding his face. He wore an expression that alternated between disbelief, shock, and outright joy, as though he felt so many things and none of them made sense to him.
“You okay?”
It took several seconds for him to refocus, for him to drop the astounded, awed expression. When he did, it was like a fuse had been lit inside him. “Forgive me.” He did not bother to look back at me as he hurried through the door and after the woman who clearly had Johnny under her spell.
16
Gin
“So, something happened today.”
“Something?” Cara’s voice was a little pleased and mildly curious. I had a sneaking suspicion that pregnancy and being idle had bored the woman. She seemed too eager for gossip.
“Well, yeah. It was weird, actually.” I relaxed against the club chair next to the window in my hotel room with my feet propped up on the arm. “Johnny took me to Così Buono today for lunch.”
“Oh, Sofia’s place. Dio mio, I’d kill for her chicken piccata. So good.”
“Anyway…” I continued, ignoring the low moan Cara made. I remembered when Madison’s sister stayed with her while she was pregnant. The mere mention of certain food would have the woman turning into a moaning, drooling mess. “So Sofia seemed to be trying to keep someone away from Johnny, and he knew it.”
Cara went quiet on the other end of the phone. I could only make out the distant muffle of Kiel’s voice as he sang in the background, and then Cara moved, calling out something to her husband before her feet sounded on a floor and a door closed and then there was silence.
“Was it…Sammy?”
I sat up, dropping my feet to the floor. “Oh God, how did you know?”
“Ah…merda. Look, Gin, I should have warned you about this. I didn’t think he’d be stupid enough to bring you to Sofia’s place…”
“Why not?” Holding the phone away from my ear, I put it on the table and hit the speaker button.
“Because Sofia and Sammy were at St. Mary’s together. It’s how Johnny knows her.”
“He said your cousin Antonia was Sofia’s friend.”
“She is. They were all at St. Mary’s together. He’s fine bringing his boys there, that’s not the problem, but he knows…Ugh. He’s just never brought a woman there. Even though there’s nothing between you, it sends a message. Christ, I wish I had a drink.” She cleared her throat, fingers tapping against something as I waited for her to continue. “Okay, tell me everything that happened. Every detail.”
And I did, rehashing the strange behavior of the maître d’ and how Johnny seemed to be aware the man was trying to hide something. How Sofia tried to block Johnny’s view of the doorway and then…Sammy’s arrival.
“And then she just stared at him as he gawked at her. Her lip curled and her hand shook, and I swear to God, the woman reared back and slapped him hard across the face.”
“Oh Dio!”
“Well, she did seem mad enough to…”
“No, not her. God bless her, Sammy has every right to smack my stupid brother around. Merda…what did he do when she slapped him?”
“Went after her.”
“He left you alone?”
“He did. Cara, who is Sammy?”
“Ah, Gin…that’s a long, sad story, and my chooch of a brother doesn’t come off very well in it. It’s also not my secret.” She groaned, and I heard Kiel muttering something to her about a back massage. “I will say that if all Sammy did was smack him, then it’s an improvement. There was a time when she promised to kill him if she ever saw him again.”
“She sounds like a tough woman.”
“That’s the thing,” Cara said, stifling another satisfied moan. “Before she met Johnny, she wasn’t. She was sweet, kind, and very chaste. Had plans to stay that way, and well…things happened.” Kiel said something to her, and Cara muttered back before she returned to our conversation. “My brother isn’t proud of what he did to Sammy. In fact, he’s told me many times it’s the worst thing he’s ever done in his life and he never expects to be f
orgiven. But deep down, Gin, he has a good heart.”
“I hear you,” I said, distracted by the memory of another good man who once told me the same thing about himself. “Thanks, Cara. You take care of yourself.”
“You too. And don’t feel too bad for my brother. He can take care of himself.”
We said our goodbyes, and I opened my text messages, noticing that Dale had only sent one, and that was early this morning.
Words always get in the way.
They did. Somehow, it was the words we didn’t say that injured the most. It was the silence that kept us from what we want.
Johnny had done a lot of bad in his life. To hear him tell it, so had Dale, both for very different reasons. I had no idea what Johnny’s were, but I knew that the things Dale did were because he thought it would bring honor to himself or his country. There was a difference between those two men, but neither one of them believed their sins could be forgiven.
Always figured I’d sinned too much, did too many dirty things to ever be forgiven, he’d once told me.
For a long time, I didn’t believe that.
For a long time, I didn’t think there was a thing Dale could do that would stop me from loving him or always wanting him. He’d pushed me away before. He’d broken the camel’s back.
The last time was just a week before I left Seattle for Portland and Trudy had shown up on set. It had been his first week back, and I’d managed to avoid him at all costs. Kit and Kane seemed fine with me using Asher as our go-between, but that wouldn’t last forever. Dale had cornered me to tell me as much.
“Next time you need something from me, you come ask me,” he’d said, looking pissed that I’d sent Asher to fetch Dale’s lunch order instead of asking him myself like I’d done every day for two years.
“The lunch request is for anyone who doesn’t eat craft services. Asher takes those special orders now.” I didn’t bother looking up from my laptop as he hovered over my desk.
“Since when?”
“Since I damn well don’t want to do it!”
We stared at each other. Both of us glaring. Both looking half crazed and fully out of control when Asher walked into the trailer.
“Dale?”
“What?” Dale yelled.
“You got a visitor. She…she says she’s your wife.”
I laughed, utterly unamused as I sat back down, ignoring him when he let out a curse and stomped to the door. The kid didn’t follow, watching Dale as he left.
“Asher, shut the door please, and get back to work.” My fingertips ached from how hard I punched on the keyboard.
“Yes, ma’am, but I was actually coming in here for you too.” He came back in, closing the door behind him. “The delivery guy is here with that shipment of flooring, but it doesn’t look right. And he says he’s already unloaded it and won’t load it back. Kane and Kit are out to lunch, I don’t know where Bill is, and Dale is…well…”
“For heaven’s sake… Okay.” I moved away from the desk and followed Asher out to the large truck and two skinny assholes sitting on top of my shipment of scraped walnut flooring, drinking sodas, and flicking cigarette ashes on the fresh gravel driveway. They looked unbothered that they were pissing me off just by half-assing their work. “Get up and open that box!”
It took a good twenty minutes to straighten out the order and send those lazy jerks back to their warehouse—with the flooring reloaded in their truck. By the time I finished yelling at them, I felt better. It helped having an outlet for my anger, especially when they deserved it for only phoning in their jobs.
My good mood didn’t last. In fact, it got infinitely worse when I headed back to the trailer and overheard Dale’s raised voice and Trudy’s loud shriek just ten feet away from the back of our makeshift office.
“You are out of your fucking mind if you think I would ever even consider taking you back!”
“Baby, you don’t mean that. I know you don’t. We were so good together—”
“Until you started fucking around!”
I should have moved. I took steps, four of them, but stopped abruptly when that foul thing pulled me into the middle of her drama.
“You were already running around with that redheaded whore. Don’t deny it. I see the way she looks at you. I know how you’ve always looked at her.”
“First off,” Dale said, his tone getting thicker, deeper, as though he was going to make her understand. “I ever hear you refer to my friend as a whore again, I swear to Christ, everyone at your hospital will find out about the company that daddy of yours runs and the bribes he pays to the doctors at your hospital to get the doses increased for their patients. Pharmaceutical companies bribing doctors so they can sell more drugs is against the damn law. I’m guessing your bosses and their bosses would love to know how you introduced your daddy and your friends, or how just two weeks after you left me, you were already living with that pain management specialist they just hired. The one who got in a whole heap of trouble in Dallas for exchanging lap dances for opioid scrips. Yeah, bet your ass didn’t think I knew about that shit.” When he spoke again, there was a laugh in his tone that unsettled me. “I was a SEAL for twelve years, Trudy. You think I can’t find out shit people don’t want known?
“Second, and you might want to get this straight in your head. Might save the next sucker you manage to convince you’re worth the trouble having. Not every person on this planet fucks around on the people they claim to love. That’s just how you think the world goes. And third, and most important of all, it is none of your fucking business how I look at Gin or any other woman in the world. Doesn’t matter anyway. You fucked that for me. You fucked me over so hard. You made me distrust everything I thought I knew about people who are good or decent. I can’t ever bring myself to love anyone else again, you rotten bitch. There. You happy now? You ready to pretend you didn’t fucking destroy me? You still wanna play like we can have a normal, happy life again? No? Good. Me the fuck either.”
I should have gotten my ass in gear and pretended I didn’t hear a damn bit of that admission. But I didn’t, and every word felt like a knife in the gut.
“I can’t ever bring myself to love anyone else again.”
Right then, that’s when I knew. It had to be the reason he pretended what happened between us at the cabin had never actually happened at all. Dale wished it hadn’t. He couldn’t love me or anyone else.
I felt stupid just standing there. My stomach knotted up and coiled like a spring, hurting so badly, I had to hold my palm flat against my belly just to keep it settled. That was how Dale found me, stepping out from behind the trailer, his gaze shooting straight to my face, to what I guessed was a mix of horror and disappointment with the tears that had started to build up in my eyes.
“Shit.” I heard him say, walking toward me with his hand held up. He stopped when I shook my head.
“Nuh-uh.” I turned on my heel to get as far away from him as quickly as I could.
“Gin, hold up!” He ran behind me.
I made it to my truck, cranking it and throwing it into reverse before Dale had cleared the golf carts circled around the back of the set.
“Will you stop?” I heard him, but I kept going, wanting nothing more than to put distance, as much of it as I could, between us.
I parked in the back of Madison’s gated lot hidden behind her privacy fence. I stayed on her sofa because I knew Dale would come looking for me. He hadn’t stopped trying to talk to me for weeks since the shooting. I just hadn’t wanted to hear what he had to say. Now, hearing what he believed, I realized with a grief I thought might topple me, it would make no difference what he said. It would never be what I wanted to hear from him.
I’d toyed with the idea of a transfer. There was another show filming in Portland, one about rehabbing old homes. Portland had those in abundance. But it was right there on Maddy’s sofa that I sent out the request, texting Kit to have Bill rush it through.
Three night
s later, with the weekend done and having taken a personal day, I was still camped out on Maddy’s sofa. I was avoiding life, avoiding the incessant texting from Dale and his frequent drop-bys at my house with him stopping in my driveway next door. That Monday night, on Madison’s sofa, checking my email while she binged Scandal for the fourth time, I got the response I’d been waiting for.
Good news, Ms. Sullivan, the email read. Your transfer has been approved, and you can report to the set of “Make Me Pretty Again” in two weeks.
That was plenty of time for me to find a place to rent and get gone.
“Maddy?” I said, talking over Olivia shaming Fitz because he always deserved it. She nodded, too engrossed to answer me. “Your brother still have that moving company?”
“Yeah.” She paused the screen to watch me. “Why?”
“Think I’m gonna hire him.”
A week later, I sat in my Armada, watching the moving truck pull down the road with everything I owned in the back of it. I was ready to leave Seattle and all the heartbreak in it behind.
“You sure about this?” Kit asked, and I could make out the sniffle in her tone through the phone.
“I have to.” I looked one last time at my empty bungalow, wiping my face dry as I pulled onto the road. “I’ll never get any peace if I don’t.”
“Um…Dale…he’s been calling and calling. Keeps pestering Kane and everyone on set, wanting to know where you are.”
He would. I’d gotten more messages from him. A dozen, at least. Until, finally, he agreed to give me some breathing room. But that had been nearly five days ago. I’d changed my number after the second day.
“Give him some time.” I blinked quickly when more tears collected in my eyes. “He’ll get over it soon enough.”
“You sure about…”
“Shit, he’s here.”
“What?” Kit asked.
“I… Let me call you back.”
“You better.”
I pulled to the side of the road, parallel parking two houses down from my bungalow. I watched as Dale ran up my drive, jumping onto my front porch to bang on my door. He didn’t wait for an answer. He kept up a constant barrage of pounding, then moved to the front window, cupping his hands around his eyes as he peeked inside.
