Lucky Boys (Il Fortunato #1)

29. Diego

CHAPTER 29

DIEGO

I checked each of the cameras that Skye and Brooks had planted for the sixth time. They were all still active. Apparently, Damian Larsen was boring as fuck. It had only been a few hours, so I had to be patient, but other than a fairly lengthy conversation with the kid who still wasn’t identified on what they were eating for dinner, in English which I thought was interesting, Damian hadn’t said or done anything that either confirmed where Matthew was or proved Damian was doing something shady.

“I’m starting to think that Covington sent us in circles,” I muttered to Wes, who was working on his own laptop at the other desk in the room.

He stopped whatever he was doing to look at me, and for a second I just stopped. He had reading glasses on, and they made him look . . . good. That attraction I always kind of felt around him smacked me right in the face.

He took them off with an odd expression on his face, and I remembered how to human again. Fuck, was this how Brooks always felt when he liked someone? It was exhausting. No wonder he couldn’t shut his brain off.

“Give it some time. They’ve only had the bugs planted for a short while, and the boys said themselves that he seemed a little suspicious. If he’s as trained as we think he might be, it would make sense he’s going to be extra careful, at least for a day or two.”

I slumped in my chair, frustrated but also understanding that Wes was likely right. I usually wasn’t this impatient, but I didn’t like being the one at a disadvantage, and I was when it came to Larsen. Also, I just really missed Brooks and wanted him home.

My mind went to the first night I’d tried to sleep alone when Brooks had left. Tried being the operative word. I’d eventually given in and taken my pills, but I’d still been up after a few hours, thrashing from nightmares.

Wes must’ve heard me and had picked the fucking locks on my bedroom door because suddenly, he’d been next to me, trying to wake me up.

“Diego, angel, I need you to wake up now. It’s Wes. You’re safe. You’re at Luca’s estate in your bed. That’s it, angel. You’re okay. Open those eyes for me.”

My eyes shot open, my limbs flailing, parts of the nightmare still flashing across my vision.

“Shhh, you’re safe, Diego. Can you take some deep breaths for me?”

My head shot to the left to see Wes standing along the side of the bed. Close but not close enough to touch me. He was using his phone to light his way, and with it held up to his face, it illuminated those blue eyes and locked me in place.

“Wes?” My voice sounded so shaky. I hated it. I cleared my throat, and suddenly the bottle of water I always brought to bed was in front of my face.

I looked away, embarrassed, but took it. “Thanks.”

Wes on the other hand, seemed unphased, even though he must’ve broken in.

“I’m sorry for barging in like this, but you were screaming and I needed to make sure you were okay.”

I was glad it was still mostly dark, so hopefully he wasn’t able to see how red my face got. Fuck, why was I such a mess?

“It’s okay. I’m fine now. You can go.”

Wes met my eyes, still using his phone to keep us in the light. “Is that what you really want?”

I should’ve said yes. I wanted to say yes. Instead, I shook my head. “Please don’t go.” Fuck. I sounded so pathetic.

But Wes didn’t tease me or look at me with pity. He even granted my request.

“I’ll stay for as long as you need me, angel.”

Angel. I thought I’d heard that when I’d still been fighting the demons in my sleep but figured I must’ve misheard. I wanted to scoff. I was no angel. But I really liked hearing that from Wes’s lips.

“Can I turn on the light?” I nodded my approval, feeling silly now but also not daring to tell Wes to leave.

Once it was flipped on, I blinked a few times, adjusting. Wes had come back to the spot near my bed. That was when I realized he was only wearing plaid pajama pants and that was it. No shirt, his sculpted chest with just enough graying hairs enough to leave other men drooling. Okay, maybe I was other men. I wasn’t drooling, but my eyes kept landing there as I wondered what those pecs would feel like if I ever dared to reach out and touch them. The grim reaper tattoo caught my attention next, but I somehow managed to drag my eyes back up to Wes’s face. He was smiling.

“Can I sit, angel? I promise I won’t touch you.”

My hands were shaking but I somehow managed to nod. Wes sat on the corner of the bed, as far away from he as he could manage without falling off. Too far.

“You can—um—you can move closer.”

“I’d like that. If you start to feel uncomfortable, tell me.”

I loved that he didn’t ask me if I was sure. He respected that I knew my own mind and reminded me that he’d honor my boundaries. He scooted closer so he was sitting about half a foot away from my feet.

I stared at that little bit of blanket in between our bodies.

“I’m sorry I woke you,” I finally managed to say after we both sat in silence for some time.

“I wasn’t asleep. I don’t sleep a lot.”

I snorted. “I know the feeling.”

“Do you think you could try again now?”

I shook my head. “Yeah, no, I can’t go back to sleep now. Maybe I should just go to work?”

“Or we can go to one of the many entertainment rooms and watch some of that show you got me addicted to.”

That made me laugh. He really was addicted. Worse than I was.

I probably should have said no. I still hadn’t gotten anywhere with Larsen and shouldn’t waste time. But for the first time in forever, I didn’t want to work.

“Yeah, I’d like that.”

Wes looked like I just gave him the world. It made him seem so much younger.

We decided on the smaller family room. It had a big sectional with moving parts that could essentially make it a bed. Wes sat on one end, giving me the whole couch to chose where to sit on. I wanted to be close. Maybe not cuddle, but close enough that if I moved my arm, it might brush against his. I could manage that, right? A lump was lodged in my throat, and no matter how hard I tried, my fucking feet wouldn’t move.

“No pressure, angel. Sit where you want. Or if this is too much, we’ll go to the theater room with individual chairs.”

I shook my head stubbornly. “No! Sorry, no. I’m being ridiculous.”

Wes gave me a stern look that went all the way to my toes. “No, Diego, you are not. Whatever limits or concerns you have are valid, even if it’s something that doesn’t bother most. Don’t put yourself down.”

I hugged my body, suddenly unsure about all of this. “I wasn’t always like this,” I blurted. “A freak who can’t touch anyone or leave the fucking house. I was normal once.”

“Diego,” Wes warned, but I ignored him and pushed on. He needed to know. If he was going to be so nice to me, try to care about me, if I was going to try and care about him, he needed to know.

“When I was kid, before my parents—my birth parents—and my grandmother died, I was regular. I played with friends, had fun. I was even in tee ball. Even when I ended up in foster care, I wasn’t much different. I was pretty lucky with most of my placements. Some were better than others, but I wasn’t abused or anything. Some even cared. Things started to change at my last one.” My words caught in my throat and my hands fisted so tightly that my nails were biting into my skin and drawing blood.

“You don’t need to tell me this, angel. It’s okay.”

“It’s not. I-I have to tell you. You need to know what you’re getting yourself into.”

Wes met my eyes. “Diego, you can tell me whatever you’re comfortable with, but just understand nothing you say is going to change the way I feel about you.”

I managed not to scoff. He was being genuine, he just didn’t know what he was saying.

“My last placement, the parents, they were okay. Well, they were assholes that forced their foster kids to break into homes for them, but we were always fed and had decent clothes and were mostly left alone as long as we did what we were told.” I swallowed and turned away. I couldn’t look at Wes when I finished this.

“They had a biological son. He was nineteen, older than all of us, but still lived at home. He had gang affiliations and used his influence to terrorize us. We were scared to say anything because he threatened to have his gang go after us, torture us, and then kill us if we did. Some of the kids, they still had families outside, other siblings, or even parents that just couldn’t care for them at the time. He would threaten their families too. We believed him.”

“Of course you did,” Wes agreed, his voice clam and soothing. Enough that I turned around to look, relieved to see nothing but empathy in his expression. “You were only a kid. Weren’t you only 12 when your parents took you in?”

“Yeah. I went to my last placement when I was 9. I—um, I was there for two months the first time their son came into my bedroom at night.”

Wes’s eyes darkened, but thank fuck he didn’t say anything else. I didn’t think I could deal. “He would, well, you get the idea. I never said anything.”

“His parents didn’t know?”

I shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t think they did. Whenever they saw him bullying us, they’d stop him. And neither of them ever touched us. Well, I guess they know now. After Mom and Dad took me in, they made sure that they couldn’t have any other foster kids again and that the rest of the kids got to good placements.”

“I’ve met your parents a few times. They’re good people.”

I smiled genuinely. “They really are.”

“So what happened then?”

“I tried to rob Mom and Dad’s house.” I laughed. God, I’d been so fucking scared when Dad had walked in on me. “My whole life changed after that.

“The touch aversion started then. Once I felt safe, once I realized that if I told them not to touch me, they’d listen, it became harder and harder for me to allow people near me. Hell, even Brooks, who was only seven and a cuddly, needy little shit even back then, was amazing at not touching me without consent. He took it so seriously once Mom explained it to him.

“Anyway, I did therapy and stuff, and it helped some. It got to the point where I could accept casual touches from my parents and Brooks. And then I ran into Blade,” I laughed harshly, “what a dumb fucking name. His real name was Sam, but he would punish any of us kids if we used it.” I paced the room, unable to stay still. “He got away when my parents went after the foster parents. No one knew where he was. I knew he’d kill me if he ever found me, but my parents had moved us far away after everything and it had been years . I wasn’t a scared little kid anymore. I was twenty.”

I stopped, trying desperately not to fold into myself. Wes stood up and came close, but not close enough to touch. “Diego, it’s okay to stop.”

“It’s not. You need to understand why I can’t leave. Why I don’t know if I ever could.”

“I don’t want you to force yourself. You can barely breathe.”

I tugged on my hair. “I gotta try. Wes, please let me try.”

His expression softened. “Of course, angel.”

So I told him. I told him how I’d rarely gone out, even then, but had decided to go to the movies with Brooks, who’d been fifteen at the time.

“I had left him in the theater to go to the bathroom and then I’d been jumped. Blade had found me. He’d had five of his gang buddies with him. I still didn’t know how. After they’d kicked me to near unconsciousness, they’d dragged me out of the bathroom, in front of everyone who hadn’t stopped them, and outside to the back with the dumpsters. They’d gotten me naked, had started to touch me, to rape me, and that had been where Brooks had found me.”

“He realized something was wrong and ran out of the movies. He eventually got one of the witnesses to tell him where I was.” I smiled at the image of Brooks when he’d burst through the back door, knife in his hand and looking deadly as fuck. “He was a scrawny, little thing back then. Hadn’t gotten any muscle yet. But he didn’t give a flying fuck. He just launched on them, kicking them, stabbing their arms and legs. They were armed, but none of them had their guns out, and Brooks never gave them a chance to. He was all over the fucking place. Eventually, someone called 9-1-1, and they got there before one of us ended up dead or Brooks killed them. I’ve barely left the house since.”

I hadn’t told that story to anyone. Who would I have told? Brooks had been there, and I had pretty much gone mute for a week or two, so Brooks had been the one who’d told our parents and the cops. I’d talked through some details with my therapist, but never someone like Wes. I was terrified how he would react, but he only thanked me for telling me that story and assured me that it didn’t change anything. I was doubtful but eventually sat on the couch with him. I must have fallen asleep because when I woke up hours later, my head was in his lap and I had a blanket around me.

I panicked. Not because I was being touched, but because it was Wes. It felt so fucking intimate and it scared me. I ran to my office like a coward, but Wes followed me and crashed on the couch. That had been where he still was when Brooks called me that day. I had been successfully avoiding any discussions about that since then, and I had managed to sleep alone.

“Diego?” My head snapped to Wes. Holy fuck, I must’ve dissociated for ages.

“Sorry. I was, uh, thinking.”

He tilted his head, considering. Finally, he asked me, “Do you need to be watching those monitors constantly?”

“No. I have it programmed to send an alert to my phone if any keywords are said.”

“Good. Then do what you need to do to be able to walk away. I’ll be back in about an hour.”

I frowned. He was leaving me? “Why? Where are you going?”

“ We’re going on a date. If you want to.”

A what now? “A date? Um, Wes, have you forgotten I’m not leaving?”

He waved his hand. “I know, angel. We won’t leave the property. Just, trust me?”

Trust him? I barely knew him. Yet, I found myself thinking about it and was surprised to realize I did. “Okay.”

He grinned, his face completely lighting up. “Okay?”

“Yeah. I’d like to go on a date with you.”