28. SOPHIE
SOPHIE
The second Matti and Tommy took over Vin’s full attention, I slipped out of the party, texting Siena and Giovanna my apologies on the way out.
The restaurant is bustling in the middle of dinner service when I walk in. The specials were never an issue; that’s just my go-to escape route in any social situation I need to leave. The truth is I don’t need to be here. Marco is running the show with practiced efficiency.
I nod to the chorus of “Hey, chef” as I pass through the kitchen and slide into my office as fast as I can, shutting the door behind me.
I’m not marrying Ashlyn.
What exactly does he expect me to do with that? I pace the length of my tiny tornado of an office, mere steps from the desk to the shelving unit and back, and try to quiet the storm in my head.
I didn’t stay to hear any explanations as to why, if Vin even gave any. He’s not one to explain himself but then his brothers might have demanded a reason given the expectation that they leave their babies and wives to fight his way out of this contract.
Whether they asked or he answered, I’ll never know. I slipped out quietly without making it about me. But his words echo in a refrain in my head:
I’m not marrying Ashlyn.
“Stop,” I tell myself out loud and drop into my desk chair, spin it to face the wall and then spin it back again.
He’s not marrying her. Okay. So what? So what does that mean, exactly?
It means he blew up an alliance. It means he’s going to war.
It means that Tommy and Matti now have to deal with the fallout of a decision he made without consulting them, which means Siena and Giovanna are going to deal with it too.
It doesn’t mean anything about me. I want to be very clear with myself about that.
And even if it did, even if that was Vin’s way of telling me he’s sorry for all the terrible things he’s done to me, that he wants to marry me, it doesn’t matter. There’s no frigging way I could ever trust him. Not ever.
A knock at the door makes me jump so hard my chair rolls back and clips the shelving unit.
“Sorry.” Gavin is in the doorway, his hands raised slightly. “The hostess said you were back here. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
I press my hand against my chest and breathe out. “No, it’s fine. I just.” I gesture vaguely at the room. “I’m in my head.”
“I noticed.” He steps inside, his gaze scanning the stacks of invoices, the picture of my nonna on the shelf, the wilting mint plant I keep forgetting to water. “You looked stressed when I left the party today. I wanted to check in.”
“I’m fine,” I say, and I hope it sounds true. “Really. Just a long day. The party was lovely.”
He leans against the doorframe, arms folded, and looks at me. “Kitchen looks like it’s running itself.”
“Marco’s good.”
“So you don’t actually need to be down here.”
“I’m always down here. I’m working.”
“Sophie, you’re pacing in your office. That’s not working.”
I stop pacing, which I apparently started again without realizing it. “Okay, fine. It’s been a day.”
He pushes off the doorframe and tilts his head toward the ceiling, indicating the apartment above us. “Let me take you upstairs, make you some tea. You can sit on your own couch and stare at your own walls. It’ll at least be more comfortable than this.” He pauses. “I’ll be a gentleman. I promise.”
The kindness in his voice snags something in me.
But instantly I’m back with Vin the night of my opening.
Him carrying me up the stairs and putting me in the bath.
Rubbing my feet. Tucking me into bed. The thought makes me feel guilty, and I can’t tell if it’s because I’m thinking about Vin when I’m with Gavin or if it’s because I’m with Gavin and not Vin.
“Thank you,” I say. “Really. But I think I need a night to myself.”
He blinks, recalibrates, then nods slowly. “Okay.”
“It’s not—” I start, then stop. If I’m going to keep seeing this man I should probably tell him something true. “I was hurt in my last relationship, more than I usually admit to people. And I don’t want to rush into something new before I’m actually ready. It wouldn’t be fair to you.”
He’s quiet for a moment. “Does that mean you don’t want me around?”
“No. It means I need tonight.”
He looks at me in a way that is both flattering and terrifying, and I don’t entirely know what to do with it.
“You’re special, Sophie,” he says, quietly. “I don’t mean that as a line. I mean that you are genuinely unlike anyone I’ve met.”
I open my mouth to deflect, oh thank you, that’s very kind of you to say, but— He crosses the small distance between us, cups my jaw, and kisses me before I can form the sentence.
It is our first kiss. I know I should feel something. He is objectively handsome, beyond kind, a patient man who brings amazing sandwiches and knows my staff and shows up to check on me when I flee parties without explanation. I wait for the warm gravitational shift I expect to feel.
What I feel instead is Vin. Vin’s hands on my hips, Vin’s mouth, Vin’s hard cock pressed against me. It floods in so fast and so real I have to stop myself from making a sound that has nothing to do with the man currently kissing me.
When Gavin pulls away, I grab his jacket and pull him back to me, kiss him again, hard and deliberate. I try to be here, present with Gavin and Gavin only, in this moment. I try to feel something clean and uncomplicated.
It doesn’t work.
He smiles when I pull back, pleased, and I smile back because I don’t know what else to do.
“Thank you for checking on me,” I say. “I appreciate it. I do have some things to get through tonight but I’ll text you.”
He tucks a piece of hair behind my ear and nods. “Get some rest.”
“I will.”
When the door shuts behind him, I drop into my chair and cover my face with my hands.
The problem is not Gavin. Gavin is doing everything right. The problem is that ‘doing everything right’ is apparently not the variable that determines whether I feel anything, because I felt more standing on a cold sidewalk in my pajamas watching Vin’s black SUV pull away than I felt kissing Gavin.
I’m not marrying Ashlyn.
I dig my fingers into my hair and stare at the floor.
It doesn’t matter. It does not matter. Vin has hurt me in ways I can count on both hands.
He ended us without a real goodbye and then keeps showing up to fuck me like I’m his toy.
He called me a whore at a party in front of our friends and his fiancée.
He spent a year treating me like an afterthought and months before that not even knowing I was alive.
The fact that he’s not marrying Ashlyn does not undo any of that.
A man can love you and still be wrong for you. My nonna said once, “Some loves are real and still impossible. That doesn’t make them less real. It makes them more painful.”
I turn to the security monitor on the corner of my desk, the little grid of camera feeds showing the front of the restaurant, the kitchen, the alley entrance.
No black SUV.
I pull up the dinner reservations on my screen and force myself to be present. Vin Demonio is not marrying Ashlyn MacCuinn, and that is absolutely, completely, 100 percent not my problem. The Arsenal is my problem, my one and only focus.
I almost believe it by the time I tie my apron and head back to the kitchen.