Chapter 8
He was right, it was just like how I might’ve imagined it if I was a small animal or insect living in the rainforest. Of course, with the exception that there weren’t the right sounds—like birds or bugs chirping.
It was actually kinda fun, and as he washed me with all his nice, expensive products, I was beginning to second-guess what it was I wanted out of this and out of life.
We left the loft apartment together, and the skies were clear with twinkling starlight now. I didn’t even know what time it was until he handed me my phone. It was nine. My eyes widened and I almost punched him in the arm—playfully, but I saw the seriousness on his face.
“Straight home,” he said. “Leave, and maybe eventually, when or if I decide it’s right, you can actually come back and we can spend another night together.”
My head spun. I didn’t want to be treated like I was something to be commanded away.
It was almost a punch to the gut. The time we’d spent together in bed, in his shower.
I thought something might’ve counted to change his mind, but he just didn’t want me around him or his businesses.
And I couldn’t blame him. I’d pretty much told him I’d already tried to start an investigation into him—an investigation that would never have legs because of whoever he had working for him, and with the quickness he’d gotten the files, I knew it had to be someone high up on the food chain.
My mom was on the sofa under one of her many crocheted blankets, watching her shows on the TV.
She barely looked away from it to me, just a cursory blinking glance.
I went straight to the kitchen, guzzled down an entire bottle of water, and stood at the kitchen counter, contemplating life.
I needed answers, I’d always needed them, and there was no way I’d get any if I left.
“You have a nice walk?” she called out to me.
“I did,” I said. “Have you eaten?”
“Yes,” she said. “I ate with you earlier.”
“But you should have something more to eat,” I told her, peering into the living room at her. “And what about some tea?”
“Isn’t it too late for tea?” she asked. “I can’t have anything with caffeine in it. I’ll be up all night.”
“And how’s your chest?”
She waved a hand at me. “I’m watching TV. Can you be quiet?”
Unless I heard her coughing, it was hard to tell if her chest was okay or not. I put the teakettle on anyway. There was non-caffeinated tea, especially the fruit tea. I could also go for one myself. I needed something warm to help me think right.
Rocco wanted me to leave, he also wanted to fuck me senseless, but more than anything, he wanted me to leave.
And I’d thought he’d never let me go. I knew I should be grateful that he let me live, and that he’d found me attractive, but most of all, I was glad and surprised he’d let me call him Daddy—then acted like one as well, from the way he replied with a good boy, and his soft touches were so delicate compared to how brooding and masculine he actually was.
“What’s going on?” my mom asked, appearing behind me in the kitchen.
“Jeez.” I turned, hand on my chest. “Why are you walking so quietly?”
She laughed. “I called your name,” she said. “I’ll have a tea, but only if it’s that strawberry one.” She hugged her long cardigan around herself. “So, where did you go?” Her brows were up her forehead, wiggling. “Is it a boy?”
“A boy,” I scoffed.
“Fine, a man, whatever,” she said, gesturing with a hand at the comment. “I only just saw the time when I paused my programs. You’ve been gone for hours. And it was raining earlier. So I don’t think you were walking through that.”
She had this uncanny ability to read me, a blessing and a curse, and perhaps also one of the reasons I’d become good at actively lying.
As long as you blended a little bit of the truth into it, people were easy to fool.
“I—” She continued to stare at me and smiled. “It was a guy, and it was nothing.”
“Sounds like something, actually,” she said.
“Well.”
The teakettle whistled, almost saving me from her grilling. Almost.
“Go on,” she said. “Who is he? What does he do? Am I going to get my sofa back?”
There it was: the reason she wanted me to have found someone. “It’s nothing,” I said. “And you’re not getting your sofa back until we’ve been to your doctor’s appointment on Monday and they tell me what’s going on with you and your lungs.”
She rolled her eyes. “I could take myself.”
“Ma, you missed your last appointment,” I said, softer. “I’m here because you need me. And I know you might not think that, and I really do know it’s intrusive, but remember all those times you said to me as a kid, ‘Kalen, you better look after me when I’m older.’”
Looking away, I didn’t know if she was going to cry or completely change her mood. “Well, I know your job is important,” she said. “And if it wasn’t, then I’d be fine with you being here.”
“Well, I’m—” I couldn’t tell her about Rocco, or the Bianchi family. I knew there were rumors on the street, and I doubt she even knew what they looked like considering she barely got outside, but she would’ve heard the gossip. At least, she would’ve when she’d lived closer to her friends.
“Finish what you were saying,” she said, playfully hitting my arm. “If you tell me you’re quitting your really nice job to be closer to me, I think I’ll have to march you to whatever headquarters I’ve got to and tell them you temporarily lost your mind.”
I chuckled, pulling her into my arms and hugging her. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” she said, really squeezing me. I didn’t do the same back. I was far too conscious of the effect that might have on her lungs. “Now, pour me some tea, and let me know all about this man you went on a date with.”
There was only so much I could tell her, and it definitely wasn’t a date, but for her benefit, and maybe mine, mentally I would be embellishing little details to make sure it wasn’t going to make the whole ordeal sound crazy.
I’d been in similar situations before, but most of those situations were through training exercises, and I absolutely could navigate them, but this wasn’t like any of those at all.
In the living room, over our steaming cups of tea, my mom continued to prod with questions about my love life. She wanted every little detail, and I really wanted to tell her everything. I liked it when she was like this, it made being an adult bearable.
“He’s just a guy,” I said, nearly scalding my tongue on the hot water.
“Is he the reason you’ve been coming in late?” she asked. “I know you mentioned your job and stuff, but c’mon, I’m your mom. I know better than whatever you’re telling me.”
“A little, maybe.” I should’ve bitten my tongue with the way she was getting this information out of me. “It’s nothing, though, really. I live in New York, and he’s here.”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t be silly. You drive. It’s not too far away. Or there’s some great transport links.”
I shook my head. “It’s not even that.”
As she gasped, I nearly jumped into action, thinking something was wrong. She placed her mug of tea on a crochet coaster on the coffee table. “I know,” she said. “I know why you’re apprehensive.”
“Why?” I knew, but if she also knew, I could’ve used someone verbalizing my situation aloud. “Tell me.”
Her lips pursed as she pressed a hold on them. “Well,” she said. “I’m sure it’s confidential, but are you—are you sleeping with a man you’re investigating?”
I could’ve folded in two. It wasn’t even an official investigation.
It was a means to stay close to home. It was all going wrong.
I was supposed to be leaving, and she was supposed to be coming with me—at least after Monday—but I was nervous, anxious, palms sweating.
I put the tea on the table. “It’s complicated. ”
“Love is complicated,” she said. “And so are whatever feelings you’ve got going on inside.
I’m your mom, I know you, Kalen. And I want all the good things for you.
So, if those good things are in the arms of someone you’re supposed to be investigating, or analyzing, or—” She sighed, probably giving up on trying to decide what it was I actually did for the FBI.
“It’s just not something I can go for,” I said.
“I think if you find love, you should chase it.”
“Isn’t that how I was born?”
She laughed. “Except, I don’t think you have the same worry. Unless, unless—” She paused, and I thought she was going to keep mentioning someone’s ability to get pregnant. “Unless he’s like an evil person, in which case, I’ll tell you to leave it alone.”
That was the thing. Rocco wasn’t evil. His family weren’t evil.
“What do you know about the Bianchi family?”
She picked up her mug of tea and held it in her lap once more, sipping at it as she stared at the paused TV screen. I must’ve waited minutes for her to respond. Each passing second was heavier on my stomach than the last. I didn’t like it.
“They had a death recently,” she said. “I know of them, obviously. I’m surprised you don’t.”
“I do, I just—wanted to know if you knew anything. You live near them, right?”
“Sure,” she said. “I know they’re quite a big family.
Italians. I know they’ve got a reputation for violence, but in town, they do a lot of good.
They’re building a community center. I know that, mostly because Lynne, my old neighbor, would get gossip from the butchers.
She’s married to one of the men who do all the meat stuff. ”
I should’ve asked her sooner. The community center might’ve been a better way of getting in under the radar, but this wasn’t even about an investigation anymore. That was a non-starter, and nobody could know I’d ever tried it. I’d be fired, which was significantly much worse than quitting.
“Is that what work you’re doing?” she asked.
Of course, she didn’t know I was here to make sure she was fine and going to her appointments, she thought I was here for work, and I wanted to keep that ruse up as much as possible. “It’s mostly just observation,” I said.
“Well, they own a lot of places in the neighborhood,” she said. “If you’re looking into them, you should definitely try one of them. Maybe the fancy Italian restaurant they’ve got. I’ve always wanted to go there.”
The place I’d been working at, she’d wanted to visit. “Maybe I can take you one evening,” I said. “My treat.”
“If you insist,” she said with a wry smile.
I wished I could’ve had this mom all the time—the smiling one, the aggregable one.
She was my favorite of all my mom’s moods, though I’d never fault her for becoming angry or sad, or even just completely despondent.
She’d been through a lot. “I won’t ask for a weekend visit.
I’d rather not go when the place is busy. ”
“Monday, after your doctor’s appointments,” I said.
She scoffed. “You keep going on about that. I might not be feeling well afterwards.”
“But you’ll need to eat,” I reminded her. “You’re getting your blood taken, I think.”
She shuddered. “Enough about me,” she said. “You should go and see if you can make something of this thing with the guy you may or may not be seeing.”
“I can’t,” I grumbled. “And—”
“And what?” she asked. “Love doesn’t wait around.”
I knew she was right. I knew love didn’t wait.
I knew there was something about Rocco that I wanted to explore—it was the Daddy stuff.
I’d played around with it in New York at some of their hidden hole-in-the-wall playrooms for littles and such, but I’d never had a connection like the way I’d formed one with Rocco.
Maybe it was my bad taste in men, inherited right from her, but maybe, just maybe, it was something special, something that could last.
“I really shouldn’t,” I said, shaking my head, but there was a contradictory hum, a vibration that seemed to take hold of me, as if saying I was wrong. Again, probably going back to who my mom was and her terrible taste in men. “It might compromise my job.”
She stared at me, her brows raised. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but whenever I need to make a decision about something, I think about whether it’s something I’d want even if I had to wait. And if it’s something I’d forget about if I had to wait, I know I shouldn’t make a rash decision.”
Somewhere in that, she had a point. If I had to wait, would I still want Rocco?
If I was actually just a bartender, would he even be interested in me?
I didn’t know, and not knowing sat heavy on my chest. Or maybe she was just telling me this to get me to leave her in peace while she watched her programs.
“I think I’m gonna go see him,” I let out in a whisper.