Chapter 26
Chapter
Twenty-Six
RAYNE
Angelo left after lunch, having an evening mass to prepare for, and his absence only makes my loneliness more crushing and acute. I wish Enzo would deal with this Falcone situation so that I can go back to my normal, wonderfully mundane life.
Speaking of the devil, he appears in the doorway. Leaning against the doorframe, carrying a motorcycle helmet in each hand, he stands and watches me. I try not to meet his gaze but find myself drawn to it regardless. “I’m going for a ride,” he declares.
“Good for you. Have a great time.” I make a show of going back to my book, pretending it’s the most fascinating thing in the world.
“I’m not leaving you here alone, Rayne.”
“So, what? You actually expect me to go for a ride with you?” I scoff at the nerve of the man.
He holds out one of the helmets. “I just told you I’m not leaving you here alone unnecessarily.”
“You leave me alone here all the time. This penthouse is a fortress, Enzo. Lock me in this room if you must. I don’t care.
But I am not getting on the back of your motorcycle.
” For one thing, I’m comfy here, but more importantly, I have zero desire to be in such close proximity to him for any period of time.
Scratch that, I have far too much desire to be close to him, which is why it’s even more of a terrible idea.
Besides, being on the back of his bike would be the worst idea in the history of bad ideas.
My arms wrapped around his waist and my life in his hands…
Too many potential memories of happier times that could creep up on me and swallow me whole because those happy memories are far too painful now.
“There are usually guards in the lobby when I leave. There aren’t tonight because I wasn’t expecting to go out. But I need to think, so I need to ride. You either come with me, or I can get Rafael back here to come watch you.”
Ugh! Rafael. There’s no way I could spend a few hours alone with him without one of us committing homicide. Probably me. My book gets slammed onto the sofa cushion in protest. “Fine.”
I grab my boots and jacket and follow Enzo into the elevator and then outside to his bike. He doesn’t pass me the helmet. No, he puts it on for me. And then has the nerve to try and fasten my chin strap. I bat his hand away. “I can do it myself.”
He shakes his head, annoyed, and then climbs onto his bike.
A black Ducatti Panigale. It’s a nice bike, but I used to love the red Kawasaki he had when he was younger.
Chasing those unwelcome memories away, I fasten up my strap and climb onto the pillion seat with ease, thankful that I remember how and don’t need his assistance.
I sit still, wondering where to put my hands, testing out the viability of holding onto the seat behind me, but it doesn’t feel safe. Nothing feels safe on this sports bike. Nothing except holding onto him.
He looks over his shoulder, his dark eyes glowering at me through his open visor. “You’ll have to hold onto me, Rayne.”
I roll my eyes. “Pity.”
He snaps his visor closed, but I’m sure I hear him laugh. Psychotic asshole. I grab onto his waist, fingers gripping into the leather of his jacket. “Closer,” he commands.
“I’m close enough.”
He shrugs. “You remember how to do this, right?”
Remember? Yes, all too well, Enzo. I recall every single ride we took on a bike, at sunset, sunrise, the times we rode for hours and I reveled in the warmth of your back against my chest. How safe I felt with my arms around you.
All the times we stopped and made out, me straddling you, and the times you slipped your hand into my panties and made me moan your name.
I remember every single wonderful painful moment. “Yes.”
“Good.” Without any further warning, he takes off. The velocity of the bike propelling forward has me shifting in my seat so that my body is pressed all the way up against his, just as he knew it would be.
As I feared, I still love being on the back of his motorcycle.
Especially after being under house arrest. It’s exhilarating and fun and it reminds me of so much, when our world was so very different.
He taps my thigh, and I hold on tighter before he guns the throttle and we streak through the landscape like a flash of color.
When he eventually stops, my heart stutters at the familiar location.
He really brought us here—our secret little spot in the mountains.
Maybe I was wrong about him not being cruel.
The bike rolls to a stop and I shuffle back in my seat as he pulls off his helmet and brushes his hair back into place.
I force myself to ignore how sexy he looks doing that.
“Why the hell have you brought us here, Enzo?”
He glances over his shoulder, and his eyes meet mine through my open visor. “Muscle memory, maybe.”
“Yeah, well, we know how dangerous that can be.” Memories of him pinning me to the wall and the table almost overwhelm me. “Can we go?”
A single shake of his head. “I want us to talk, Rayne. Actually talk, not argue.”
Six years too late for that, asshole! Wisely, I keep that to myself. “And you want to do that here?” I ask, incredulous.
“Yes. Here.”
He signals that I should climb off the bike, and so I do.
Even though my instinct tells me to refuse, to force him to take me back to his penthouse.
I don’t want to talk to him, and I certainly don’t want to do it here, where the ghosts of the people we used to be are lurking close by, waiting to ask us how the hell things turned out so badly.
I take off my helmet and pass it to Enzo before shaking out my hair. He places it on the ground beside his.
My arms fold over my chest instinctively, creating any kind of barrier I can.
The way he’s looking at me makes me feel like I need an emotional hazmat suit.
So, I take a deep breath and suit up. Then I chase away the ghosts of that boy and girl who were so in love it felt like the whole world stopped turning when they were together, and I remind myself who we are right now.
Two people who pretend to hate each other but in truth have simply hurt each other so badly that there’s no going back. Not ever.
“What exactly do you want to talk about?”
“I want to know what happened, Rayne. With you and Tommy.”
Oh, wow! Now he wants to know. “What?”
“I want to know what happened.”
“I’m not opening up those old wounds now, Enzo.” I go to walk past him, to grab the helmet and put it back on, but he stops me, his hand circling my wrist.
“I deserve to know, Rayne,” he growls.
My anger is almost blinding, and it’s terrifying in its urgent intensity, boiling up from the place where I’ve buried it for too long.
“No, Enzo. I owe you nothing!” I shriek.
“You made up your mind about what happened a long time ago, and you never once asked me. Not once. The time to talk to me was six years ago. I begged you to let me explain, and you shut me down, listening to everyone but me.”
I brace myself, expecting my own anger to be met by his equally fervent rage. Instead, his grip softens and his dark eyes fill with a pain and sadness that I can barely stand to look at. He draws in a breath. “You’re right, and I’m sorry. But I’m asking you now, to please tell me.”
His apology almost takes my legs from under me. But it changes nothing. I shake my head. “You won’t believe me anyway, so what’s the point?”
The vein on the underside of his jaw pulses.
“You were right, okay, about me acting on my instincts. I was angry with you, with Tommy, and I let that cloud everything. I know what I saw with my own eyes, Rayne, but I also know that there must have been more. You loved me, I know that too. But you’re hiding something from me, and I want to know what it is. ”
“Maybe I’m hiding it for good reason, Enzo.
” That would be an understatement. I glance at the cliff edge and mentally note how easy it would be for him to throw me off it.
Clean. No strings. It’s what his father would have done.
“It will only cause us both more pain. Can’t we just let it go? Just let me go.”
His face twists in agony. “I can’t fucking let it go, Rayne. You were everything to me. Every-fucking-thing. Tommy was my best friend, more than that, he was like a brother to me. You tore out my fucking heart.”
“You think my heart wasn’t torn to shreds, Enzo!” I screech at him, hot, salty tears streaming down my cheeks. “I did nothing wrong, and I lost everything too.”
“You did nothing wrong? Are you fucking serious? You fucked my best friend.”
“No, I did not!” I scream back at him, the truth shaking out of me violently after all of the years of holding it in.
All those years of protecting this man right here from a truth that would have destroyed him as it almost destroyed me.
His jaw works, eyes narrow, and I’m sure he’s considering the merits of the whole throwing me off a cliff scenario.
Instead, he releases his grip on my wrist and takes a step back, closing his eyes and gritting his teeth like he’s trying to calm himself down.
Then he rolls back his shoulders and looks into my eyes. “Then tell me what happened that day. Explain it to me.”
I blink at him, shocked by his request. No not by that, but by the way he asked me. Visibly working to calm himself down and speak to me without anger in his voice.
“Please. Tell me why you came back here, and what I’ll find on that fucking video recording.”
The video. My knees buckle, but he’s faster than I am. He catches me before I hit the ground, then he gently lowers me into a seated position before sitting beside me, sending a cloud of red clay dust swirling around us. “What will I find, Rayne?”
A sob sticks in my throat, and I swallow past it to say, “It’s just a video.”
He visibly bristles, but he does a good job of keeping a lid on his temper still. “A video of you and Tommy?”