36. Elio
Elio
S taying away from Deirdre the night before our wedding just might be the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
And I’ve done some hard fucking shit in my life.
I’m only just down the hall from her. I get up three times in the night and snatch the key card to the bridal suite from my bedside table, striding to the door before I stop myself and turn back.
I want her to have this. This is a real wedding, and I want everything done correctly. Including the whole no-fucking-the-bride-the-night-before thing.
Whoever came up with the tradition deserves a boot up their fucking ass.
I miss her. And not just because I’m a ball of loose, lusting ends when it comes to her. I miss her on a cellular fucking level, like there’s not quite enough air in the room when she’s gone.
I don’t sleep much. I’m still babying my kidney, so I didn’t get blasted with Curse and my uncle and I can’t rely on the sweet embrace of alcohol to make me sleep.
I spend most of the night half-hard and wanting her, imagining what she must be doing, what she might be wearing.
What kind of magical, mysterious girl shit does a bride-to-be get up to the night before her wedding?
I have no fucking idea.
But I still try to imagine it anyway.
I picture her in white, lacey, wedding-themed lingerie.
I picture her completely naked.
My splint is finally off my dominant hand, and I jerk my cock to thoughts of her, but it isn’t fucking enough and I give up with a groan of frustration.
One night. Just one… fucking… night.
I must fall asleep eventually, though, because I wake with a start when someone pounds on the door.
For a single, mind-searing second, I have this terrible fucking thought. This thought that whoever is on the other side of the door is banging that loud because they have something bad to tell me.
I’m out of bed like a shot, tugging on underwear and yanking the door open.
“Where is she?”
“What?” Curse says from the other side. “You mean Deirdre? She’s in her room. Enzo was at his post until two, then Robbie took over and he’s still there now. She hasn’t left the room. Valentina and the other girls are in there now. They’re all getting ready.”
The throb inside my head eases to a dull ache.
“Good. What is it, then?”
Curse has something slung behind his shoulder. He heaves whatever it is forward. It’s two garment bags, dangling from his fingers by hooks.
“Our tuxes.” He gives me an appraising look. “I assume you aren’t planning to get married like that.”
I look down at myself and grunt, opening the door wider so he can come in.
Curse settles himself in the room while I head into the bathroom to shower.
I’ve got plenty of time, but I still find myself rushing, eager to get out of there and get the day rolling.
I’m experiencing a new sort of paranoia that I do not fucking like.
A paranoia that tells me Deirdre could vanish any moment, and that I won’t really, truly have her until she’s said, “I do.”
Thank fuck Valentina planned a morning wedding. The ceremony is scheduled for 10am, then there’s some big brunch thing and a dinner thing and a dance thing. I don’t care about any of the stuff that comes after.
I just care about making that girl my wife.
When I get out of the shower, it’s only 7:48, and I swear, pacing the room as I scrub a towel over my head.
“Don’t do that shit. Your hair’s gonna be crazy,” Curse admonishes me. I blink at him, then hurl the wet towel his way. He catches it easily out of the air then hangs it on the back of the chair at the desk in the room.
“What, you gonna do my hair for me?”
“Yeah. If you shut up for a second and sit the fuck down, I will.”
It’s then that I see all the shit Curse has on the desk beside that chair. A full shaving kit is splayed open, along with combs and various jars.
“Are you serious?” I ask, more stunned than anything. “Where’d you get all this?”
“Valentina helped me out. She knew you’d be too wound up to have Uncle Vinny’s barber working on you this morning.”
“She is too fucking smart for her own good,” I say, crossing the room and heaving my body into the chair. Curse stands there for a long moment, just studying me.
“Are you gonna just stand there or do something?” I grunt. “I don’t wanna be late.”
“We have more than two hours.”
“Yeah, two hours for you to fuck something up.” I eye the straight razor gleaming on the desk. “Deirdre didn’t change her mind, did she? Didn’t convince you to come in here and cut my throat this morning or something?”
Curse makes a gruff sound in his throat, about the closest he gets to a laugh.
“I’ll only cut you if you don’t stay still and keep talking shit.”
I hold my hands up in a gesture of surrender. I’ve already got my gloves on. Put them on first thing after getting out of the shower.
Curse doesn’t start with the shaving, though.
He starts with my hair, muttering something about not letting it dry wrong.
He spreads some kind of spicy-smelling pomade between his fingers, working it through the strands before combing everything back.
He’s surprisingly thorough. Or maybe it isn’t that surprising.
He’s always been methodical and detail-oriented.
I just didn’t realize that extended to styling another man’s hair.
When Curse is satisfied with my hair, he moves onto the dark shadow lining my neck and jaw. He smears shaving cream with firm, efficient strokes, then handles the razor the exact same way.
Despite my joke about him cutting my throat, I don’t feel even a hint of anxiety with Curse holding a blade to my jugular. For one thing, the man knows what to do with a knife. He’s probably slit more throats than anyone I know. He won’t make a mistake.
And for another thing, he’s Curse. The boy I pulled from the flames. The man who I know would do anything for me now.
Titone men. We don’t talk about our feelings much. So I don’t know how to address the odd way this act touches me. It fucking means something, what he’s doing right now, helping me with this shit on the morning of my wedding.
When he’s done, and he wipes a warm, wet towel over my jaw, I thank him.
“I’ll do the same for you on your wedding day,” I tell him.
“I won’t have a wedding.”
I snort.
“Yeah, well, that’s what I always said too. And look at me now.”
“No,” Curse says, quietly emphatic. “I won’t have a wedding.”
“Why not?”
“You know why.”
And I sigh, because he’s right. I do know why.
“Still her, huh?”
“Still her.”
Neither of us need to name Aurora to know that’s who we’re talking about. She’s the only girl Curse has ever wanted, even though he only met her once, back in Sicily, when we were all dumb little kids.
“You saw the announcement, then,” I say, more a confirmation than a question.
Curse’s eyes flash with some coiling emotion, maybe anger, maybe not. It’s hard to tell with him.
“Yeah. I did.”
Like me, Aurora Bianchi has recently gotten herself engaged.
Her family lives in Buffalo, and after all the shit that went down with our papà none of them wanted to touch us with a ten-foot pole.
Since they’re in the States, it never really mattered all that much.
We didn’t need the Bianchis for money or power or clout, though they’ve got that shit in spades.
Aurora is now engaged to one of the big bosses of New York.
Her parents announced it earlier this year, and evidently, Curse and I both saw it.
If there had been a way to get her for my brother, I would have.
But after the shit our papà pulled, it was like we had the fucking plague.
Her parents never would have agreed to a match with Curse.
And unlike me, he’s not the type to abduct a woman in the dead of night and force her into it, consequences be damned.
Curse flips the razor open and closed over and over, watching the morning sunlight glance off the blade.
I know he doesn’t want any more words from me, or any pity either.
Neither of us can fucking stand that shit.
So instead, I just clap him firmly on the shoulder and tell him, “Come on. Let’s get dressed. ”