Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
Matteo
“What are you doing?” Sophia looked up at me with those wide, secret-filled eyes, and I felt my cock harden even more.
God, she was beautiful.
And infuriating.
“I’m making you listen,” I said, because this time, my head had to take over. The ache in my cock would have to wait.
“Talk…”
I cut her off. “Do you remember when I told you that we couldn’t see each other anymore?” Idly, I stroked my fingers down her cheek.
“Yes. I wish you had meant it.”
“No, you don’t.” I shook my head. She could say that all she wanted, but the look in her eyes gave her away. “Do you remember the next time we saw each other?”
Her eyes widened. “Vaguely.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “Liar.”
I knew she remembered, because I remembered it all so vividly. There were a few moments in my life that were seeded into my brain, and this was one of them.
Yes, I remembered the first time I saw her as a woman and not just Gio’s kid sister, and I remembered the first time I had tasted her lips against mine.
But the first time I had seen her after telling her we were over was so ingrained in my mind that it was part of my soul, because that was the day I realized it was all over for me.
There would never be anyone else for me but her.
Even from within the house, I could hear the sound of raised voices.
“Something wrong?” I asked Gio, who was reclining on the sun lounger next to me. A beautiful girl in the smallest bikini known to man sat over him, right over his junk. She was rubbing sun tan lotion over his chest.
He shrugged. His hands closed around her waist and dragged her against him.
I tore my eyes away. Was he seriously dry jumping a girl in front of me? If things went any further, I would have to leave. There was no way I was waiting around to watch that particular show.
Sometimes, I worried about my best friend. He was spiralling and cared more about women and the fast lifestyle than he did stepping into his destiny.
But I guessed that was why we got on so well. They said opposites attract. And boy, were we opposites.
“Sophia.” Another shrug, but he didn’t say anything else. Instead, he pulled the girl down for a kiss.
Sophia? Instantly, I was on edge. It had been a month since I had seen her last. In fact, I had been actively avoiding coming over anytime I thought she might be around. It was childish, but I just couldn’t handle seeing her yet.
She was engaged to someone else. She wasn’t mine. What we’d had, had been nothing but a brief fling, and now she was going to be someone else’s.
“I didn’t realize she was home.”
“Want me to rub your sunscreen in, Matteo?” the girl to my left said when Gio didn’t answer me.
I shook my head and then thought better of it. Sophia was engaged. I wasn’t betraying her. Even if that’s how it felt.
“Sure.” I rolled over onto my front. Resting my cheek on my hand, I barely noticed her climb over me.
“You’re not listening to me.” Sophia’s voice rose up from the house. She sounded angry, although that didn’t quite cover it. She sounded furious.
“I don’t want to go back to school.”
My ears pricked up. She didn’t want to finish her degree? That made no sense. She had been so excited to finish her education.
“I mean, what would be the point? I’m not going to use it.”
I could almost hear her eye roll.
“You’re making me marry a man I don’t even know.”
“You do know him, Sophia, and it’s a good match.” That was her father’s voice. “He will look after you.”
Something smashed inside the house.
“You’re not getting it,” she screamed. “I don’t want him to look after me. I don’t want to get married to him.”
My eyebrows lifted in shock. She didn’t want to get married? I knew it had been a shock to her, but I had always presumed that she would just accept her fate. After all, she had always known that this was a possibility for her. Women in her position didn’t get to choose.
Men like me didn’t, either.
We had power, but love wasn’t an option for us. The best we could hope for was a match where we didn’t hate each other.
“Did you even once ask me what I wanted from my life? Maybe I wanted to marry for love.”
“Sophia.” Her mother groaned. “That’s just a…”
“I’m in love with someone else.” The words tore themselves out of Sophia’s throat, and I couldn’t help it. My head snapped up.
Had I heard her right? Was she in love with someone?
It took me a second to realize that she was talking about me.
Sophia was admitting out loud that she loved me.
“Not that it matters to you, does it?” she screeched. “Because you don’t care what I want. You don’t care that my heart is breaking.”
The back door slammed, and her eyes found me instantly. Hers were swimming with tears. They dripped down her cheeks.
For ten whole seconds, she stared at me. I didn’t know how it was possible that she could look so stunning with tears and snot on her face, but she did.
Would there ever be a time when I didn’t think she was beautiful? Another month? A year?
A lifetime, maybe?
Then her eyes went to the girl straddling my back, and she ripped her gaze away in disgust.
“Sophia.” Her mother appeared behind her. “Come back in here and talk like an adult.”
“An adult gets to choose her own path. You want to treat me like a child, so I will act like a child. I’ll be in the pool house, alone. Don’t follow me.” She stomped away, and her mother shook her head.
“Sorry about that.” She forced herself to smile. “Teenage girls. She will come around.” The back door shut behind her, and silence swirled around us.
Turning my head, I found Gio staring at the pool house.
“What was that about?” I asked quietly. “Sophia is in love with someone.”
“Looks that way, but she will get over it. Girls her age don’t know what’s best for them.”
I stared at the pool house. “I didn’t even know she had a boyfriend.”
“She doesn’t,” he hissed. “Anymore.”
I didn’t know how much time had passed, but we had moved from the pool to the house, and Gio and his date for the night had left to go to his bedroom. The girl I was left with kept making doe eyes at me.
“Shall we go up as well?” she asked. Clearly, the time for being coy was over, and now she was asking me outright. The answer was going to be the same, though. I wasn’t interested. Even less so now that I had seen Sophia. She was all I could think about.
“You go on up,” I said without thinking, because Gio would get suspicious if I didn’t. Not that I was going to sleep with her. There was no way my cock would rise to the occasion. But I was counting on the fact that she would pass out drunk before I had to make some excuses.
“I’m just going to go for a smoke and then I’ll be up.”
“I would mind…”
I stood, heading toward the door. “Just go and make yourself pretty for me,” I called back over my shoulder, but didn’t turn to look at her. This was all for show. “I won’t be long.”
Stepping out into the balmy summer night, I took a deep breath. My eyes instantly found the orange rectangle of light coming from the pool house.
She was in there and she was awake.
Was she waiting for me? It didn’t matter whether she was or not. I needed to see her, and we needed to talk, because I wanted to know if the man she was in love with was me.
Keeping to the shadows, I crept around and tapped once on the door. When there was no answer, I pushed it open and closed it softly behind me. Scanning the small living room, I found it empty.
The bedroom wasn’t, though. She was in the middle of the bed, lying on her stomach. Her legs were swinging back and forth as she hummed along to the music playing on her headphones.
“Hey,” I said softly. Nothing. The music was loud. Creeping into the room, I touched her ankle.
Letting out a scream, Sophia rolled until she was sitting cross-legged and staring at me with wide eyes. “Matteo.” She said my name too loudly, and I winced back. It wasn’t that anyone would be able to hear us, but I still needed to be careful. I didn’t have a good excuse to be here.
She ripped the headphones out of her ears.
“Hey,” I said again, a smile playing over my lips.
“What are you doing here, Matteo?”
“I wanted to make sure you were okay.” I took a step forward, closing the distance between us. She didn’t move backward away from me, but her face did tilt up as I loomed over her.
“I heard what you said earlier.”
She swung her legs over the bed and stood. “That was a private conversation.”
“Then you shouldn’t have been shouting.” My hand closed around her wrist. “You told your parents you loved someone.”
She glanced down at my hand, and then warily lifted her eyes to my face. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Is the person you are in love with me?” I paused. Had I really just said that out loud?
“It doesn’t matter,” she repeated, completely dejected.
“It matters to me.”
Why was she making this so hard?
“Why?” A flicker of anger sparked to life in her eyes. “You’re the one who said we couldn’t see each other again. You’re the one who moved on to…” she waved her hand toward the pool.
“Are you jealous?”
“Go away, Matteo. I want to be alone.” She tried to turn away, and my hand tightened.
“Nothing happened between me and that girl. Nothing is ever going to happen.” I took a breath. “Nothing has happened with any other girl since the moment I saw you at the party last summer.”
She blinked in surprise. “Why? You could have any girl you wanted.”
Laughing, I tugged her into my arms. “Maybe, but there’s only one girl that I want. She’s kind of always been in my life, but I didn’t really see her until recently, and now I can’t see anyone else. I’m so fucking in love with you, Sophia.”
Her eyes widened.
“So tell me that the man you love is me.” I didn’t let her get a word in. “Or tell me you’ve met someone else…”
“I haven’t met anyone else.” Her voice broke. “But nothing has changed. They are still going to make me marry him.”
Tilting her head up, I brushed my lips against hers just once. “It changes everything, Sophia. Because now I know you love me, I can’t let you go. Do you think I would ever let you marry someone who wasn’t me?”
“Do you mean that?”
“With my entire heart. You’re mine, Sophia, not anyone else’s, and if you are going to marry anyone, it will be me.”
I meant that with every fiber of my being.
“But our parents…”
I caught her lips with mine, my tongue swiping against the seam of her lips and demanding access. We fell together. Our mouths never left each other as I fell on top of her on the bed and pinned her under me.
“Let me deal with them, Sophia. Trust me. I’ll always make sure you are okay, and if it comes to it, if they make me choose…”
If they made me choose between my birthright and taking over my parents’ criminal empire and her, then I would choose her.
“You said that night you would trust me, to always look after you.” I couldn’t help it. I brushed my lips against hers, over and over again, until her mouth opened for me. She pulled me down on top of her. Her tongue was as wild and demanding as mine.
“Trust me now. Tell me.”
She pushed at my chest. “There’s nothing to say. You lied back then, and so did I. Or maybe we meant it, and we were just young and stupid. We were never going to be forever.”
Rolling out from under me, she turned her back. “I don’t want to talk anymore, and I don’t want to listen either. The past is the past, Matteo. It’s time you moved on.”
Moved on? My brows slammed down. How could I move on when the past was haunting us still?
I wanted to scream at her.
And more than anything, I wanted to punish her, because even after all this time, I still loved her with everything I had.
And it was killing me.