Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
STEVIE
I wake up with kiss-bruised lips and a moral emergency.
I lie in bed staring at the ceiling, cataloging my sins.
Sin one: Felony breaking and entering.
Sin two: Petty theft of mob accessories.
Sin three: I slept with Dario.
Sin four: I liked it.
Sin five: I want to do it again.
Sin six: Frenzied makeout with the family’s violence concierge.
Sin seven: Liked that too.
Sin eight through infinity: Everything else about my life.
I roll over. Press my face into my pillow. Make a sound that’s somewhere between a groan and a scream.
I’m one throaty laugh away from Enzo joining the ‘Ruined Me With One Body Part’ club.
What am I doing?
The ceiling doesn’t answer. The ceiling is beige and unhelpful, like everything else in this apartment.
Except Saul’s blanket and Dario’s things.
And somewhere in this city, Enzo is walking around with the taste of me still on his lips.
Three men. Three completely different situations. One absolute disaster of a woman who apparently deals with witness protection by collecting mobsters like sex-positive Pokémon.
Gotta catch ‘em all hits different when your Pokédex is full of emotionally unavailable men with felony potential and excellent jawlines.
I need coffee. I need therapy.
Instead, I get up and make cookies.
The cookies are stress-baking. Obviously.
Chocolate chip. Basic. The kind you make when your brain is too busy spiraling to handle anything complicated.
Enzo kissed me like he was starving and I was the last meal before a hit.
And now I’m in here baking cookies like a horny Stepford corpse who got dickmatized by a hitman.
I’m on my second batch when someone knocks on my door.
Saul? He usually calls first.
Someone from the family? Enzo said I was spotted. Said Sal wanted me found.
Enzo? That last option makes my skin flush in a way that’s deeply inconvenient.
I wipe my hands on a towel. Walk to the door. Look through the peephole.
Enzo.
Standing in my hallway holding a pizza box and looking like he’s not entirely sure why he’s here.
I open the door.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.”
We stand there looking at each other.
The last time I saw him, his tongue was in my mouth and I was making sounds I’m choosing not to think about too carefully.
“I brought pizza,” he says, lifting the box. “Figured you probably haven’t eaten.”
“It’s eleven in the morning.”
“Which is practically lunch if you squint.”
I should tell him to leave. Should keep things professional. Should remember that we kissed last night and that probably complicates whatever protection arrangement we have going on.
“Come in,” I say.
Great job, Stevie. Really excellent boundaries.
He steps inside.
The apartment feels smaller with him in it. He’s not huge, not like some action movie muscle guy, but he takes up space. Fills it with that energy he has, that barely-contained something that makes you aware of him even when he’s just standing there holding a pizza.
“Smells good,” he says.
“I’m baking.”
“I can see that.” He sets the pizza on the counter. Looks at the cooling rack covered in cookies. “You stress-baking?”
“What makes you think I’m stressed?” I ask.
He gives me a look that says, I’ve seen your browser history and your choices are deeply concerning.
“There’s coffee,” I offer. “If you want.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
I pour him a cup. Our fingers brush when I hand it to him.
We both pretend that didn’t happen.
The pizza’s pepperoni and mushroom.
“Lucky guess,” he says when I comment on it being my favorite. But there’s something in his expression that says it wasn’t a guess at all.
I raise an eyebrow. “You been stalking my DoorDash history or just psychic?”
He shrugs, smug. “You talk in your sleep.”
“Oh my God.” I shove him. “I knew you were creeping around outside my window.”
He smirks. “Wasn’t outside.”
I freeze. Blink.
He doesn’t explain.
Heat flares under my skin. Not shame. Not even fear. Just... fascination.
“Jesus,” I say. “You’re lucky I didn’t hump a pillow that night.”
“Who says you didn’t?” he fires back.
I choke on my own spit.
He’s smiling now. That lazy, sinful grin because he knows he just cracked open a part of me no one else ever has.
“You’re not supposed to say that shit out loud,” I gasp. “You’re supposed to be the scary silent type.”
“You started it.” He leans back, spreads his arms across the back of the couch. “You flirt like a girl who wants to be pinned again.”
I go bright red.
He knows it. Loves it.
I grab a cookie off the counter just to have something to bite.
“You shouldn’t say things like that,” I say around a mouthful of chocolate chip. “I’m impressionable.”
“You’re dangerous.”
“I’m deeply unstable.”
“Yeah.” His voice drops. “I noticed.”
And fuck. He says it like it’s attractive.
He’s into it. He wants more.
I feel that click. That fuck-me-but-also-marry-me beat of attraction that’s so much worse than lust.
He saw me spiraling. Saw me snarky, scared, half-unraveled and he smiled. He flirted back. He didn’t run. He leaned in.
And now I’m fucked.
The kind that involves eye contact and feelings and maybe him eating cookies off my stomach while telling me I’m the best bad idea he’s ever had.
We sit on my couch and eat pizza at eleven in the morning like this is normal.
It’s not normal.
Nothing about this is normal.
I’m sitting three inches from a man who could kill me with a shoelace and I want him to do very different things with that string.
No thoughts. Just: choke me softly and tell me I’m doing okay.
“So,” I say around a bite of pizza. “About last night.”
Enzo tenses slightly. “Yeah.”
“We should probably talk about it.”
“Probably.”
Silence. More pizza.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I admit finally. “With any of this. With you, with Dario, with my entire life. I feel like I’m making it up as I go and doing a terrible job of it.”
“Join the club.” He sets down his slice and looks at me. “I don’t know what I’m doing either. I’ve never.” He stops. Starts again. “I don’t do this. Whatever this is. I do my job. I follow orders.”
Whatever it is? You have me mentally bent over this couch eating cookies off your abs. That’s what it is.
“Make out with witnesses you’re supposed to be strongarming?”
“That.” His mouth twitches. “That’s new.”
“For what it’s worth, I don’t usually kiss mob enforcers in my apartment.”
“How many mob enforcers have been in your apartment?”
“Just you. But the sample size is growing.”
He laughs. Short and surprised.
I like making him laugh. It changes his whole face, makes him look less like someone who hurts people for a living and more like someone who deserves to be happy.
“I meant what I said,” he tells me. “Last night. I care about you. And I know it’s complicated with Dario, with all of this, but I’m not going anywhere. Unless you want me to.”
“I don’t want you to.”
“Okay.”
“But I also don’t know what this is. Or what it means.”
“Does it have to mean something?” He picks up his pizza again. Takes a bite. “Can’t it just be... whatever it is?”
I consider this.
The neat little boxes I try to put my life in, Beth Taylor in one box, Stevie Reeves in another, Dario in a third, Saul in a fourth, they’re all falling apart. The boundaries are blurring. Everything is bleeding into everything else.
Maybe that’s okay. Maybe trying to categorize everything is what’s making me crazy.
“Okay,” I say. “It’s whatever it is.”
This man just walked into my trauma spiral and offered to rawdog reality with me like it’s casual. I’m in danger.
“Good.” He stretches out on my couch. Comfortable. Like he belongs here. “What are we watching?”
“What?”
“You’ve got a TV. I’ve got nowhere to be for a few hours. What are we watching?”
I blink at him.
He’s just... staying. Like this is a thing we do now. Like eating pizza on my couch and watching TV is just part of the arrangement.
“Have you seen The Princess Bride?” I ask.
“The what?”
“Oh my God.” I’m already reaching for the remote. “We’re fixing this immediately.”
Two hours later, Enzo is sprawled on my couch with his feet on my coffee table and an expression of mild betrayal on his face.
“He dies,” he says flatly. “And then he comes back. Because of love.”
“True love,” I correct. “Death cannot stop true love.”
“That’s not how death works.”
“It’s a fairy tale.”
“It’s ridiculous.”
“You loved it.”
“I did not.”
“You laughed at the Sicilian.”
“He was funny.”
“And you made a face when Buttercup pushed Westley down the hill.”
“She pushed him down a hill! After he came back from the dead! That’s cold.”
I’m grinning. Can’t help it.
Enzo catches my expression. “What?” he asks.
“Nothing. You’re just...” I search for words. “Not what I expected.”
“What did you expect?”
“Scary. Silent. Definitely not someone who has opinions about fairy tale movies.”
“I have opinions about a lot of things.” He sits up slightly. “I just don’t usually say them out loud. Nobody listens when you talk with fists.”
The admission is quiet. Vulnerable.
I think about what he said, I’ve never done this. Whatever this is, and I realize he means it. Not just the witness protection situation. The whole thing. Having someone to eat pizza with. Watch movies with. Talk to about stupid things that don’t matter.
“Well,” I say, “you can tell me your opinions anytime. Even the wrong ones.”
“My opinions aren’t wrong.”
“You just said The Princess Bride is ridiculous.”
“It IS ridiculous.”
“It’s a masterpiece.”
“It’s a masterpiece of ridiculousness.”
I throw a pillow at him because that’s the only way I know how to flirt without mounting someone.
He catches it. Easily. Like his reflexes are tuned for projectiles. Then he throws it back.
It hits me in the face.
“Oh, that’s how it is?” I grab the pillow. Launch myself at him.
We tussle. Stupid. Childish. I’m trying to smother him with a pillow and he’s laughing, full and unguarded, while fending me off with one hand.
I end up pinned. His hands around my wrists. My back against the couch cushions. Him hovering over me, breathing hard, grinning like he forgot for a second he’s a professional killer.
We both freeze.
The playfulness shifts into something charged.
He’s so close. I can see the flecks of gold in his caramel eyes. The scar on his cheekbone. The way his lips are slightly parted.
I’m one half-inch from grinding on his thigh and moaning into his mouth like.
“Stevie,” he says quietly.
“Yeah?”
He doesn’t answer. Just looks at me like he’s trying to decide something. Then he lets go of my wrists. Sits back. Puts space between us.
“I should go,” he says. “Before I do something stupid.”
Sir, you’re already inside my apartment, in my mouth memory bank, and about four seconds from getting ridden like a Peloton. Define stupid.
“Okay,” I manage.
He stands. Cracks his knuckles. Won’t quite look at me.
“I’ll come back tomorrow,” he says. “If that’s okay.”
“It’s okay.”
“And you’ll stay away from Dario’s. Until I figure out the Sal thing.”
“I’ll stay away.”
He finally meets my eyes. There’s something raw there. Something wanting. “Goodnight, Stevie.”
“It’s one in the afternoon.”
“Whatever.” But he’s almost smiling. “Lock the door.”
He leaves.
I lock the door.
Then I stand in my apartment surrounded by pizza boxes and cookie smell and the ghost of his body against mine, and I take a breath, and then clean up the pizza boxes.
I bake another batch of cookies, because it’s that or spiral into insanity.
And I wait.
For the knock. For the smirk. For Enzo with marinara sauce intel and opinions about fairy tale trauma.
Because he said he’d come back tomorrow.
Which gives me twenty-three hours to:
A) Clean the apartment.
B) Pick out panties I won’t be wearing for long.
C) Imagine all the ways he’ll take them off me.