Chapter Twenty-Five
Angela
I have to hand it to him. Brady is a damn good boyfriend.
Admittedly, I don’t have much experience in this department, but like every girl, I have my dreams. And he ticks off all my Cosmo - and Seventeen -influenced requirements for relationship success.
Sweet but not mushy, funny but capable of being serious when appropriate (usually), edgy but not a jerk, attentive but not overbearing, and ridiculously attuned to me and always patient when it comes to sex.
Which still isn’t sex but is eminently satisfying all the same.
I go back to work and school and tentatively settle into Brady’s apartment. It’s a work in progress for me.
“What’s with you?” Brady walks into his bedroom to see me standing on the threshold of the en suite bathroom two days after I moved in, clutching a Target bag.
I turn abruptly. “What am I supposed to do with my…stuff?” I ask in a panicked voice, nearly paralyzed with embarrassment.
He looks at me like I’m crazy. “What, like your tampons and blow-dryer and shit?” He jerks his head toward the bathroom counter. “In the cabinet under the sink, Pines. Where else?”
For someone who’s never been in a real relationship, he sure as hell is a lot better at it than I am.
“Chill out, Pines,” he says whenever I start getting weird about living with him. “You’re getting worked up over nothin’.” After being in his easygoing presence all the time, chilling out is getting easier to do.
A week after I moved in with him, I’m working at Legal Aid when Elisa tells me that the task force meeting scheduled for next month has been pushed back a week. “Some FBI agent from New York is flying in, I heard,” she says. “He’s been collaborating with the L.A. agents, I guess. Should be good.”
That’s exciting. I love the taskforce meetings. I’m learning a lot about human trafficking and how to help victims. I can’t imagine that a career as a prosecutor is open to me, given my family connections, but I love being able to help victims as an advocate.
It’s dark when I’m finally packing up to leave the office.
“Um, Angela,” says Elisa, peeking her head in the conference room where I’ve been working. She has a slight grin on her face, and is she…blushing? “There’s a very cute guy in our waiting room. He’s asking for you.”
I stare at her. “Yankees cap?” I whisper.
“Yeah.”
“Okay, I’ll be right out.”
“Is he your boyfriend?”
“Yeah. Apparently, he is,” I say.
“I’ll, uh, let him know you’re on your way…”
When I enter the waiting room, Brady is chatting easily with Elisa, hands in his pockets, relaxed as always. She’s clearly charmed, a bright smile on her face. Brady winks at me.
“There she is,” he says. He slings an arm around my shoulder and plants a kiss on the top of my head. “You ready?”
Elisa beams at us as we leave.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“Picking you up. Obviously.” He presses a kiss to my mouth.
I unlock my bike from the side of the building, and Brady puts it in his car.
“And I’m making you dinner,” he adds when we’re driving away.
“You know how to cook?” I say incredulously.
“I picked up a few tricks at the firehouse over the years.”
When we get back to his—our, I guess?—apartment, it already smells delicious. “What is that?” I ask, inhaling.
“Pasta sauce.”
I go into the kitchen and peek under the lid of the pot. I look up at him with wide eyes. “You made this from scratch!”
“Yeah. Kind of a risk with an Italian girl, but I learned from my good buddy Johnny Buonatale down at the firehouse.”
I replace the lid carefully and watch Brady get a beer out of the fridge. He sits down at the table and stretches out his legs. “I’ll get back to it in a minute. I overdid legs at the gym yesterday, and it’s just hitting me now.” He takes a long drink of his beer. “What?”
I’m still watching him. I swallow. “How did you know I’m Italian?”
He shrugs, barely missing a beat. Barely, but enough for me to notice. “The sambuca. I told you that.”
“No lies.”
“What?”
“That’s our deal. We can hide whatever we want but no lies.”
He puts his beer down and nods slowly. “You’re right. That’s the deal. No lies, no blowing our cover. Right?”
I swallow back the dread rising in my throat like bile.
As if sensing that I’m about to bolt, he comes over to me and takes my face in his hands. “I’m not ready for that dead end, Ange. Are you?”
I stare at him. “No,” I whisper.
“The most important stuff I know about you I started learning on the first day of class, when Baker called on you with some bullshit question and you handed him his ass. The best stuff I know about you I’ve learned since I kissed you in the jacuzzi. Nothing else matters, okay?”
“Okay.” I still don’t have a voice.
“I think we need to modify our deal.” He brushes a strand of hair out of my face and tucks it behind my ear. “No questions. Questions lead to dead ends. What do you think?”
I don’t want the road to end. I don’t want to lose him, not yet, not when there’s no risk to him. I don’t want to unleash a flood of dangerous truths and slam into that dead end.
“Deal,” I whisper.
He pulls me against him, wraps his arms around me. “Everything’s okay,” he says. “Don’t freak out on me, all right? Are you freaking out?”
“No,” I murmur against his chest. Now that I’m over the initial shock, I’m irrationally but ecstatically happy that he figured out this detail about me.
I’m terrified about how I may have let slip the dots he’s connected, but I’m so desperate for him to know the real me that it doesn’t matter. I’m practically giddy over it.
“Cool.” He slaps my ass. “I’m gonna finish making dinner.”
“I’ll help you.”
“Well, now that we’ve established you’re Italian,” he says with a cocked brow that makes me laugh, “I think it’s safe to let you in the kitchen. Do you know how to cook?”
“Not really, but my pasta always comes out al dente.”
“Good enough for me.” He puts a pot of water on the stove to boil and hands me a box of imported pasta. “Knock yourself out.”
“So what’s the occasion?” I ask when we’re sitting down to dinner.
“You’ve survived a week of living with me,” he says. “I thought that was worth celebrating.”
“I’ll drink to that.” I hold up my glass of Chianti.
“Slainte,” he says, tapping my glass with his beer bottle.
“Salut,” I say in Italian, smiling.
After dinner, I go to the bedroom to change. Most of my clothes were ruined in the fire, so I’ve taken to wearing Brady’s T-shirts to bed. I’ve just slipped one on when he comes in.
“Damn, Pines,” he says, running his hands down my body as he looks at my reflection in the mirror.
I watch my face heat up as he trails kisses down my neck.
It heats up even more when he pulls the shirt over my head.
“Look at you,” he whispers. But I’m looking at him, at the expression on his face.
It’s desire and awe and something else, something more vulnerable.
I turn in his arms, and he exhales as though he’s been holding his breath.
His hands trail over my back and down to my underwear as I pull his shirt over his head and undo his jeans.
He backs us up to the bed and sits down on it, hiking my legs up and around his waist. I press myself tightly against him and kiss him, the friction of my breasts on his chest making both of us groan.
He unbraids my hair and threads his fingers through it while kissing me from my temple down to my shoulder.
“Have I ever told you how much I love this tattoo?” he murmurs, tracing it with his fingers and his lips. “It’s another thing that gets me hard at inappropriate times.”
“Fortunately, this is not an inappropriate time,” I say, my voice tight with desire.
“No, it is not,” he agrees. “I can’t think of a more appropriate time, in fact.” He pulls me farther onto the bed with him, until my head hits the pillow and he’s on top of me. He slides my underwear off before going for his boxers.
And this time, he goes for the condom.
Holy shit. Oh my God. This is happening.
“How are you feeling tonight, beautiful?” he asks, ripping the wrapper with his teeth.
“I’m happy,” I say. “Completely unstressed. And in a really good space in my head.”
He laughs softly. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
My heart is thundering so loudly I’m sure he’ll hear it and stop. I take a deep breath, try to quiet it down. He has the condom on and is pressing inside me.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“I’m great,” I say. But he’s getting nowhere. I try to relax. Then I feel his fingers and I’m not just relaxing—I’m melting.
“Oh my God, Ange, you are so fucking wet.”
And then, all of a sudden, it’s not his fingers inside me anymore. He thrusts hard once, twice, and I bite my lip to keep from screaming. It comes out like a pained moan. He freezes.
“Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”
“No, no, I’m fine,” I say, breathless. “Just, just wait a second, if you can. Can you?” I’m not entirely sure how this works. I just know I need to get used to the feeling of him inside me before anything else happens.
“Yeah, of course,” he says, smoothing my hair away from my face, kissing me. “I don’t want to be anywhere else. You feel amazing, Angela.” He’s shaking slightly, from the strain of not moving or from something else, I have no idea. But it makes me want to kiss him.
He rests his forehead on mine, and I touch my lips to his. “You taste like blood,” he says, brushing his thumb across my lips. “Did I do that?”
“No, I did.” He kisses me again, and then he starts to move.
Ow, ow, ow. Tears pool in my eyes from the pain, but I love that he’s finally inside me, I love that his eyes are full of heat and desire, I love that he’s lost and found in my body, that he feels so perfect in and around me.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“Yes, yes, I’m so okay.”
“Why do I feel like I’m hurting you?”
“I’m good.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“I’m just a little nervous,” I say, which is totally true.