8. Chloe
8
CHLOE
N o! Don’t. Please don’t leave me.
I wiped at my eyes, fighting through the blurry vision from my tears. Watching Franco get off the bed wasn’t easy. I struggled with the clawing need to beg him to stay with me, to lie with me for just another moment, but that was too cruel of a request to make. I had no right to ask him to cuddle. I had no grounds to demand more tender touches.
Nothing about that quickie was tender. Half the time, he taunted me, pushing me to tell him to go away.
I hadn’t been able to utter a protest once he laid his hands on me and burned up my skin. Words failed me when he explored, readjusting to loving my body.
When he first kissed me, I wanted to tell him that I shouldn’t rush into anything with him until he explained why I mattered in the deli getting shot up. Or how he thought falling into bed could be wise in the context of how we’d been reunited.
“Where—” My voice was too croaky, but I fought to speak again. “Where are you going?” Sitting upright, I could track where he moved in the room. While these damn tears continued to build up and spill, I followed his movements as he retrieved his pants and shoved them on before pacing.
He didn’t leave the room, and as I caught my breath, I tried to cling to that fact. He wasn’t running out of here, determined to flee.
That’s my job. I was the one who ran.
I caught my breath, working through the emotions that clogged my throat. It was just so much to get past. So much to endure and accept.
Now that the last waves of bliss faded from that orgasm, I was vulnerable to feel so much more than the undeniable desire and urgency to come with him.
Shock. I was rooted in a deep pit of shock and stunned marvel that I’d just had sex with the one man I’d always loved. Franco had always been the one. From the first time we kissed, I knew he was the man who would hold my heart forever.
The moment he kissed me after his heartbroken statement, that it wasn’t fair of me to have left him, I felt like I had come home. Touching him, kissing him, and having him thrust into me hard like that, I was home. Falling into bed with Franco was living proof that I was a fool to separate from him. With him, I slotted into where I belonged in life—with him.
But that’s impossible. It was too difficult to figure out back then, when I ran from home, and it was still too challenging to accept now. Our decisions had pulled us apart, and I felt disillusioned to think we could have a future together. No matter how right it felt to really be with him, it couldn’t be feasible.
I heaved out one last sigh, comforted by his staying in here. He didn’t leave. Pacing back and forth, steadily, as though the movement calmed him, he remained in the room, almost as though he was waiting for me to get over myself, to settle down and be able to talk.
I licked my lips, torn with the need to speak up, but I didn’t know how to start or what to say.
I’m so sorry that I ran?
Please fuck me again because it makes me feel better?
Don’t hate me, but can I please leave again?
Nothing would work. They were all lame platitudes that wouldn’t help this situation.
“I’m sorry.”
I blinked at his simple words, direct, blunt, and sincere. He wasn’t talking out of his ass, but I didn’t understand how he thought he should be the one apologizing here.
“I’m sorry I was so…” He scowled, seeming mad and disappointed with himself as he gestured at me. “I’m sorry I was so rough.”
I wiped the last of my tears away and fought the hysterical urge to laugh. “Too rough ?” It was just right. Perfect. So good that I wanted him again despite all the reasons I definitely shouldn’t.
“I shouldn’t have been that hard and?—”
I swung my legs off the bed. “Franco, it’s…” I couldn’t say it was all right. If I was reduced to tears, so blindsided by how good it felt to have him deep inside me and kissing me so possessively again, nothing was all right.
“Come here.” He held out his hand, helping me stand. Once I was on my feet, he pulled me into a tender hug. It wasn’t an excuse to cop a feel, but an embrace of security. “Let me at least clean you up.”
I smiled, touched that he could be so soft and careful with me. Maybe that was it. He spent so much of his anger and frustration with so-called rough sex that he only had the energy to be delicate and tender now.
He led me to the bathroom, and after he turned on the water, I followed him into the stall. Hot water pounded down and massaged my body. It felt so good that I couldn’t hold in a moan of pleasure. I never had a luxury like this, only affording lousy apartments with pathetic bathrooms and even lousier water tank pressure.
“See?” he said, slightly teasing. “I was too rough with you.”
I smirked, keeping my eyes closed as I lifted my face to the spray of water. “Not too rough.”
He rubbed his thumb over the marks he had left on me from taking me so hard. “I didn’t expect to do that.”
I nodded. “Me neither.”
He grunted a laugh. “What do you mean?”
“Well. Seeing that you killed that man who was chasing after me, I think it’s not farfetched to think that you and Liam saved me back there. And that what we did in the other room could be mistaken as some weird form of gratitude.”
He cleaned up, letting me start on my head. This was the first time I could clean up since the A&J Deli shift that I never finished, and I wanted to purr at the chance to do so. I hated that I felt like I was washing away the evidence of what Franco and I did, but with him in the shower, cleaning up alongside me, I didn’t suffer his absence.
“I meant that I didn’t come into the room to question you to the point that we’d fuck like that.”
I sighed. “But you let Romeo interrogate me first.”
“I needed a moment, Chloe. Seeing you again threw me off balance.”
I know exactly what you mean.
“I won’t apologize for what we just did.”
Me neither. “I… I wanted it too, Franco.”
“But that wasn’t why I came into the room.”
“It just happened,” I finished for him, owning up to my part of the spontaneity of it all.
“I trust that Romeo got all the answers that he could out of you, anyway.” He looked at me seriously, as though he was trying to grapple with this situation of seeing each other in the last way either of us could ever have imagined.
“Will I be a hostage here?” I asked.
He studied me again, that brooding and solemn expression so stark on his face as he shut the water off. Keeping me waiting for a reply, he focused on grabbing towels and continuing to be attentive. While he didn’t dry me off, he took his time wrapping me in the towel and looking me over, as though he needed to constantly reassure himself that I was here, in the flesh, and not his imagination.
“Franco? Will you and Romeo keep me here?” I didn’t want to ask for how long. If he thought to secure me here for good, that would be kidnapping. While I knew he was in the Mafia and the Constellas weren’t above performing that crime, I needed to know why they would need me any further.
“Now that I’ve answered your questions…”
He grunted. “You’re that anxious to run away again?”
I swallowed and broke eye contact, intimidated to admit that yes, I was. His affiliation with the Constella Family was always a main point of contention between us. My parents never approved of Franco back when we dated, and they’d be pissed to know that we’d reconnected despite the circumstances. I’d struggled against the prejudice of Franco being in the Mafia for so long. I knew that his actions toward me could never be something he considered as himself, but as a dutiful member of the Mafia.
“Look at it this way, Chloe,” he said as he walked back into the room to get dressed. He pointed at the clean clothes someone had dropped off, gesturing for me to use them if I wanted to instead of putting on the clothes he’d taken off me in a hurry. They lay scattered on the floor. While they were mine and I didn’t want to be indebted to Franco or the Constellas, I refused to put them back on. They were too stark of a reminder of the bloodbath I’d narrowly escaped.
“You’re in the witness protection program.”
“ Your version of it,” I clarified.
“Something like that.” He finished dressing and crossed his arms as he looked me over. Still clad in a towel, I felt underdressed and vulnerable. As though that one quick fuck was not nearly enough to scratch the surface of how much I’d missed him.
“Because you witnessed a crime committed against the Constella Family?—”
I gaped at him. “Manny and Suzie were just the managers of the neighborhood deli!”
“Which is in a building owned by the Constellas.”
I rolled my eyes. “So you take anything as a turf war?”
“A building,” he continued despite my snark, “where we hosted different operations in the basement level.”
I cringed. “What… kind of operations?” I felt sick, worried that they tortured people down there or deposited bodies… I slapped my hand over my mouth and gasped.
“What?” He frowned. “Do you remember something else? You shouldn’t have ever been allowed down there as a new-hire deli worker.”
“Please tell me that dead people weren’t stored in any of the walk-in freezers or fridges.”
He rolled his eyes. “No. The basement was used for packaging.”
I narrowed my eyes and waited for more.
“Of products. Like drugs. Not bodies.”
I exhaled in relief. “I… I was never in the basement.”
“As you shouldn’t have been. Manny wouldn’t have slipped up. He was well aware that the deli was a cover business.”
Slumping to sit on the edge of the bed, I felt weary of these details. I was so sick of struggling with life, and now I had to come to terms that my new job that was supposed to have been a restart on life was just a cover-up for a drug packaging operation.
“A crime happened on Constella property. We can’t determine why, nor can we determine who could have done it.”
I tensed, trying to look like his words didn’t impact me. But they did. He might not have a clue, but I had my suspicions. Remaining quiet, I stared at him and willed him to say his piece and go.
“What?” He stared at me, noticing that I clammed up. Try as I might, I couldn’t fool him. He was too damn observant, especially, I figured, where I was concerned. Back when we were in love, he’d made it his mission to memorize every inch of me, inside and out. He knew my body, but he had a damn good idea of how my mind worked too.
“Nothing.”
“Why’d you hesitate?”
I sighed. “I’m just sitting here.”
“And anxious to run away again.”
Maybe… not. If the person who had the deli shot up was who I thought of, perhaps I’d be smart to stay where Franco could protect me for once.
No. That’s stupid. I shook my head, both in an attempt to clear my wishful thoughts and to dissuade him from the ready-made assumption that I was hellbent on fleeing.
As if I could even escape this guarded house.
“I want to help you, Chloe. I’m sorry that you were caught in that shooting.”
I gazed at the sincerity in his green eyes, blazing with a firm sense of sadness that lingered. He should hate me. He could loathe me, but I knew he meant it when he didn’t wish me ill.
“But I can’t help you if I don’t know everything.”
God, no. I was not prepared to come clean, not about the one thing that would ensure he’d hate, loathe, and scorn me.
“Did you tell us everything?” he demanded, full of authority but not being malicious.
I nodded, swallowing down the taste of the unspoken lie so bitter on my tongue.
No, Franco. Not even close.