Chapter 15 #2
“For me, it was to get him, once and for all, to get off my fuckin’ back.
For him, it was to convince me, once and for all, I needed to take my sister’s side in this mess.
Shit got heated. Honestly, I don’t think Rocco would ever harm me.
If anything would lose him Gypsy, it would be that.
But he had some gung-ho piece of shit with him who didn’t like we’d started shouting at each other, and the only thing I’ll cop to with that is that it was getting heated, but not that heated, but the motherfucker did something about it.
” He blew out a disgusted breath. “It was Rocco who drove me to the fucking hospital.”
And now the flesh had been put on the skeleton of my understanding of this, and I liked it even less.
“Since I’ve been shot, she’s tried to call and text,” he said. “Gypsy,” he explained. “I’ve blocked her.”
“Understandable,” I replied cautiously.
“So now she’s got some fuckin’ mobster passing messages to my woman?”
I could tell things were deteriorating with how rough his voice was getting, how close the air in the room suddenly seemed, and how green his eyes were becoming.
“I don’t think she’ll do that again,” I said, though I wasn’t sure, since Dimitri had decided he’d soften my return message to Gypsy.
It might be time to find out if I liked borscht.
He twisted to reach an arm to grab his phone from the nightstand.
Oh shit.
When he twisted back, I wrapped my fingers around his wrist to stop him.
“Dimitri said he’d tell her she needed to give it time before she reaches out again.
” I shifted closer. “And honey, you know how this works. I now get what it means to you that I’m having chats with someone like Dimitri Alexeyev.
But he’s…he likes the Angels. He’s not a threat to us.
He came in peace. When we do the things we do, you professionally, me not so much,”—I gave him a trembling, nervous smile at reminding him I was an Angel, which was what broke us up (not really, but you get what I’m saying)—“we rub up against people like this. It’s part of the job. ”
I watched his chest expand, then release.
I watched it do it again.
“I’ll be your go-between with her if you need me to do that,” I offered.
With his deep-breathing exercises, the air in the room was becoming less suffocating, but I screwed the pooch with that.
“She doesn’t fuckin’ get near you,” he said through his teeth.
“Okay,” I replied immediately.
“Alexeyev buys me some time, I’ll take it.”
“All right.”
“And then I’ll deal with this.”
“Your family, your play. But will you keep me in the know?”
His brows darted together in annoyance. “Of course.”
The perfect response.
I leaned in to kiss his jaw, pulled back and said, “Thanks.” Then I asked, “You blocked her?”
“I had it in my head I could save her. Like you with Dream, I wasn’t giving up. One of her crew put holes in me, it came clear it was time to give up.”
This was heartbreaking at the same time understandable.
I knew my expression said that with the way his gaze moved over my face.
Eventually, he held my eyes as he tugged his hand from my grip, dropped his phone and sifted his fingers into my hair.
As he pulled it forward, the curls wrapping around his fingers, I lost his gaze so he could watch.
He then twisted his fingers in my hair and bent to touch his face to it.
One could say, my man really liked my hair.
“Didn’t wash your pillowcase so I could smell this when you were gone,” he muttered into it.
God!
I loved him so fucking much.
“Time to go down on me now,” I decreed.
His fingers still tangled in my hair, he wrapped them around the side of my neck and returned his gaze to mine.
“I cannot tell you how fuckin’ happy I am we’ve sorted our shit.”
“Agreed.”
“So happy,” he continued, “I want all the crap festering around us done. Go to your meet with your girls tomorrow. I’ll arrange to talk to Cheyenne when you do.
And I’m not clear for work until next Thursday, but I’m going into the office on Monday to talk to the men about what they’re doing about my family, and to tell them what I need them to do. ”
“That being?”
“Making it clear I’m off limits and the family ties between me and any of them have been irrevocably cut.”
I wished those ties were such that I hated that for him too, but they weren’t.
This was healthy.
So all I could do was nod.
“And just to say, I like your bed,” he went on. “Your apartment has tons more personality than my pad. And when we used to be together, I didn’t get to be here very often. I want that time back now.”
“You in my bed and me not schlepping around changes of clothes and toiletries way works for me, Knox Chambers.”
“I’m not gonna schlep shit around, so don’t freak when I bring a bag so big, you think I’m moving in.”
My only reply to that was to roll off the bed, snatch up my phone, cue up Apple Music, make sure my phone was connected to my Bluetooth speaker and unleash Katrina and her Waves.
I was in the middle of doing the head banging Jack Black moves when I found myself on my back in my bed and Knox on top of me.
“You’re a total goof,” he said, smiling down at me.
“You stopped me before I could get to the air guitar part,” I complained.
Still smiling, he kissed me on my mouth.
Then he slid down my body and kissed me a whole lot more thoroughly somewhere else.
And I might have been lying on my back all the way through it.
But I was still walking on sunshine.
* * *
Knox and I had shuffled around my kitchen to cobble some dinner together from cupboards that weren’t exactly bare, but they weren’t teeming (we settled on baking the two frozen salmon filets I had, and miraculously, I had all the ingredients to make Cracker Barrel hash brown casserole, so dinner was going to be yummy).
Now, while the casserole cooked, we were camped on my couch, me and my two boys (only one had his head in my lap (Knox) the other one was curled in the crook of Knox’s hips), Knox was watching some skiing competition somewhere I wanted to go (not to ski, to drink hot toddies and look cute in outdoor gear).
And I got on my phone.
It rang.
And rang.
And then Dream picked up.
“Hey,” she greeted.
“Hey,” I replied. “Thought you’d want to know, Knox is sitting next to me, and we have Cracker Barrel hash brown casserole in the oven. He’s been here since last night. We had an epic session of letting it all hang out, we understand what went wrong, and we’re back on the right track.”
She said nothing.
“But I’m still up for a sister date tomorrow after your shift at SC,” I offered.
She spoke then. “You just made up with your man, he’s been there since last night, it’s the weekend and you don’t have to work, and you’re offering to leave him to have a sister date with me?”
“Full disclosure, the seal on our reunion was already broken when the girls came over this morning to see if I was okay, Knox gave them hell for not taking my back—”
“Good,” she spat over my talking.
Her defense of me felt fabulous, but I kept going. “Then Knox had to go break up a fight between Jacob and Alexis’s dad in the courtyard. I mean, not a fight fight, though that was forthcoming as chests were being bumped and faces were in faces.”
“Cavemen,” she muttered.
I ignored that and shared, “Incidental news, Alexis’s father is kind of a dick.”
Dream didn’t have anything to say to that.
“So, tomorrow after your shift, I can give you the whole skinny about Knox.” I felt his eyes come to me.
I looked down at him and shook my head to communicate it wouldn’t be the whole skinny, just enough of it I could keep my plan moving forward with making sisters out of my sister and me.
“And you can tell me how it went with Byron.”
His lips hitched up at one side (nice), and he turned back to skiing.
“I don’t want you to think I’m making a statement with this or anything,” she began.
Terrific.
“But Sunday nights after the kids leave and after I’ve worked seven days straight are kind of the only me time I have. So it isn’t that I don’t want the skinny, it’s just, I’d rather take a bath, drink a glass of wine and give myself a facial.”
Oh.
Well then.
It actually was terrific.
“I feel you,” I told her.
“But the date with Byron went great.”
“Really?” I asked.
“He was very worried about you, and I thought that was sweet.”
“I think he’s a nice guy.”
“I tested him by showing him about five hundred pictures of the kids. He’s either a good actor or he understands a mom’s need to brag about her children and hear people say how cute they are, because he didn’t seem to get tired of it at all.”
“Oh, he totally got tired of it. But that’s how much he likes you.”
“Yeah,” she said softly.
“Did he kiss you?”
“Yeah,” she said softer still.
My back straightened and I felt Knox’s attention again on me.
But I was all about this intel.
“Ohmigod, is he good?”
“Nerds can kiss. Like really kiss. Who knew?” she replied.
Ohmigod!
Byron was a good kisser!
Thus commenced me and my sister having the first healthy conversation—on the phone or ever—for the next half an hour.
She told me about Byron (it really did sound like a good date, case in point, they already had another one planned).
I gave her a little about Knox. We discussed what a dick Alexis’s dad was (Dream’s take: “Of course, he’s pissing on his patch about his own daughter, which is revolting.
And the second of course is he’s dragging his wife right along with him. What a tool.”—by the way, I agreed).
Knox got up to take the casserole out and put the salmon filets in.
Dream had to let me go to get the kids down.
And when we were both back on my couch with our plates in front of us, me with crossed legs, Knox with his long legs stretched out, bare feet on my coffee table, Jacques hanging close because he took his job of cleaning up any food that dropped on the floor super seriously (his record of falling on a dropped morsel: half a nanosecond), Knox brought it up, his eyes on the TV.
“I never thought I’d hear you two talk to each other like that.”
“I know,” I agreed.
He reached out to squeeze my knee (I’d allowed him to take his arm out of the sling so he could hold up his plate, which I did not think onerous enough to tear his stitches, then again, in all of our other activities that hadn’t happened, so I was beginning to learn not to worry).
“Happy about that for you,” he muttered after he went back to his food.
I was happy too.
Happy I was hanging on my couch, eating dinner with my guy.
Happy my dog was happy our guy was back.
Happy I was no longer in a seven-way tiff with all my girls.
And happy I was building something with my sister.
If we could get Knox’s family to back off and Cheyenne to back down, life would be amazing.
In time, I would be reminded things like that didn’t come very easily.
Even so, I was so happy, I didn’t let that moment slide.
I memorized it, just as I settled safe in the knowledge that night was going to be the first of many.
An eternity.