Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Gio left the back alley, reentering the restaurant through the kitchen door. He hip-checked Keeley, who was drying dishes. She laughed, then went back to work.
“I took the rest of the trash out to the dumpster,” he said to Rafe, who was putting the last of the tables back in place in the main dining area.
His family had stuck around after the party, everyone pitching in to clean up, but eventually they began heading out one by one, all of them wanting to get home before the coming storm hit. He, Keeley, and Rafe were the last ones there.
“I’m finished too.” Keeley followed him out of the kitchen and walked over to retrieve her purse.
“What’s the deal with you and that hippie bag?” Rafe asked curiously. “I never see you without it.”
Keeley hugged the bohemian-style hobo bag to her chest. “It belonged to my mom. She loved it and carried it all the time. I thought…well, I was surprised to find it in her closet when we were cleaning out her things after she died. I would have expected her to take it with her, so I assumed it was lost in the plane crash.”
Gio smiled. “I can see your mom carrying that. She was super cool. Made the best Italian hoagies on the planet.” He studied Keeley for a minute, then added, “You know…you look and act a lot like her.”
Keeley lit up like he’d just crowned her Queen of the Universe. “Thanks.”
“You should be proud of yourself. It was a great party, Kiwi,” Rafe said.
She smiled widely. “Yeah. It was. And damn if Penny didn’t get one hell of a great present.”
Gio narrowed his eyes, though he didn’t feel any real annoyance.
The Morettis and Russos were famous in Philadelphia for their Hatfield-and-McCoy-style feud, battlelines drawn four generations earlier.
Gio’s dad and nonno still held grudges against the older Russo men—who were all dead now—for long-ago slights, something they’d worked hard to instill in Gio and his brothers.
Some of the disdain had held. Some hadn’t.
Because while he was no fan of Matt Russo, Gio had no real beef with his younger brother, Gage—who’d stormed in here tonight and swept Penny off her feet—or the other brother, Conor.
“Bet she’s getting lucky tonight,” Keeley mused, and Gio couldn’t help but laugh at the obvious jealousy in her tone. “You find my lack of sex life funny?”
“Apologies. I didn’t mean to rub salt into that particular wound,” he said, bowing at the waist dramatically.
“You know,” she drawled. “If you want to make it up to me, one of you could kiss me good night. I would kill for a decent good-night kiss.”
“Keeley,” Rafe said, in that patient way of his, gently letting her down without actually saying the words.
“This isn’t me flirting,” she argued. “It’s an honest request. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had a good good-night kiss?”
“How hard is it to kiss someone goodbye?” Gio mused.
Keeley scoffed. “Apparently, very hard. In the past year, I’ve had dry kisses, sloppy, disgusting kisses, tastes-like-cigarettes kisses, short kisses, and ones that lasted way too fucking long.
And there was the guy who bit my lip and made it bleed, then proceeded to tell me he was part vampire on his mother’s side.
A special kind of crazy he didn’t reveal to me until that point in the date. ”
“Wow.” Rafe shook his head.
“Not to mention the guy who sucked on my bottom lip. Nothing else. Just sucking. Or the guy who ran his tongue along every single one of my teeth like he was doing a fucking dental exam.”
Gio held his hands up in surrender. “Keeley. Jesus. You gotta stop. You’re killing me.”
She crossed her arms and gave them a smug grin. “And those guys didn’t even break into my top five worst kisses ever.”
“Given the things you’ve told us tonight, I don’t know why you’d ever go on another date,” Rafe said.
“Or haven’t consider playing for the other team,” Gio teased.
“Oh, believe me, I figured out a long time ago I’d probably be a lot happier if I was into women, but—”
A bright flash of lightning cut through the night sky.
“Shit!” Keeley jumped, cursing in surprise.
“Doesn’t look like we beat the storm,” Rafe mused, glancing out the front windows. The wind had picked up, the rain suddenly coming down hard. Thunder rumbled, filling the quiet night with something equivalent to the roar of a pissed-off giant.
Lightning flashed again, and once more, Keeley cried out, “Son of a bitch! That was close.”
Gio grinned…until he realized she’d suddenly gone pale. “You okay, Kiwi?”
Rafe crossed the room when a loud peal of thunder shook the front windows. “It’s only a little thunder,” he reassured her when she covered her ears.
“I know. I just…God, I hate storms!”
Gio stepped next to her, taking her purse from her shoulder and placing it on a table before pulling her in for a hug. “I didn’t know that.”
She nodded shakily. “Ever since…”
Gio cursed himself. He wasn’t thinking. Of course she was afraid of storms. She’d lost her parents when they got caught in a nasty thunderstorm, their small plane crashing and killing them both. “Oh, Keeley,” he said, continuing to hold her. “I’m sorry. I should have realized.”
Keeley closed her eyes tightly, pressing her face to his chest, her muscles tensing when another lightning strike lit up the outside sky.
This time, it was followed by a loud crack, then a sizzle. The bolt had hit something nearby.
When the lights in the restaurant flickered, then went out completely, he realized it was probably a power pole. And a quick glance out the front window proved they weren’t the only ones without power. The neighborhood outside was pitch black.
With the restaurant plunged into darkness, Keeley clung to him tighter, her whole body shaking. She had downplayed her dislike for storms. This wasn’t disdain…it was terror.
“Hang on.” Rafe used the flashlight on his phone to guide him as he walked back to the kitchen.
Gio carefully led Keeley around a couple tables to the circular corner booth, pushing her onto the cushioned seat before claiming the spot next to her, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and keeping her close.
“Let’s ride out the worst of the storm here. There’s no way we could make it to our cars without getting completely drenched, and I don’t like how close that lightning strike was.”
“Okay,” she said. “I wasn’t planning on leaving right now anyway. I don’t…I couldn’t drive in this.”
Rafe returned with a couple of candles and a lighter. He placed them on the table, lit them, then slid into the opposite side of the booth, claiming Keeley’s other side. He reached out for her hand. “You okay now?”
She shrugged. “Sorry for acting so silly. I swear storms never used to bother me.”
“I get it, Keeley. We understand why,” Rafe said quietly.
Gio shared a look with his best friend, over Keeley’s head.
He knew Rafe was recalling the same night he was, ten years earlier.
The two of them had been out with Kayden, sharing a pitcher of beer at a sports bar, watching Gio’s cousin Elio play in a pro hockey game on the big screen.
It was his first season in the NHL and they were all proud as shit, excited to see him in the rink.
A storm warning scrolled across the bottom of the TV screen, announcing the imminent bad weather rolling in off the coast. Gio had been sitting there wondering if he’d left his car windows cracked, when Kayden’s phone rang.
Within seconds of his friend answering, he knew the news was bad.
Really bad.
“You know,” Keeley said softly, “I don’t think I ever thanked you guys for…that night.” She didn’t have to specify which night. “For what you did for me and Kayden,” she added.
Gio tightened his grip around her shoulders, taking note that Rafe still held her hand. Ever since the night her parents died, Gio had felt some level of…
God, he wasn’t sure what word to use. Responsibility? Protectiveness? Possessiveness?
All he knew was, he’d started watching Keeley a little more closely after that, and Rafe had as well.
When she’d been high school, it had definitely been in big brother fashion.
But after she graduated from college and returned home…
that changed. She’d always been pretty and confident and independent, and those attributes had only become more amplified as the years passed.
He’d started taking notice a few years ago, and not as an overprotective brother figure.
“You don’t have to thank us for that, Keeley.”
She shrugged, and Gio could tell she was recalling that night too. He’d played it over in his mind more than a few times himself over the years.
He and Rafe had driven Kayden home. Not to the apartment Kayden shared with Aldo, but to his family home, the one he’d moved out of on his twentieth birthday when he’d achieved his dream of becoming a Philadelphia police officer.
It was just after midnight when they arrived, and they could see the living room lights on, the TV flickering. Gio recalled smiling for a split second, realizing that—of course—Keeley, queen of the night owls, would still be up. That smile faded soon enough…
Keeley looked up from the TV when he, Rafe, and Kayden walked into the house, clearly surprised to see them. Kayden hadn’t lived at home in five years, and it was way too late to stop by for a visit.
No doubt, she’d been waiting up expecting to see her mom and dad walk in, full of stories about their anniversary weekend on Nantucket.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, her gaze traveling from Gio to Rafe, before it locked onto Kayden’s face.
Kayden was trying to school his expression, but Gio could see the shattered devastation in his friend’s eyes. He’d been quiet in the car on the ride over from the bar. No talking, no crying, just steeling himself for what came next.
Gio knew telling Keeley their parents were gone would be the hardest thing his friend would ever do in his life.
“Kayden?” Keeley said, rising slowly from the couch.