14. Milan Rivers #2
He didn’t move, and neither did I.
My eyes dropped to his mouth before I could stop them, and when I looked back up, he was already watching me a little more intense. The playful energy between us slowly disappeared, leaving something heavier in its place.
Vice didn’t reach for me this time. He didn’t move closer or give me any reason to feel like I had to make a decision before I was ready. He simply stood there, waiting, and somehow that made my heart beat even faster.
Three nights ago, fear had gotten to me before anything else could. Tonight, I didn’t want to be afraid.
I stepped closer, placed one hand against his chest and kissed him.
For half a second, Vice didn’t move, almost like I’d caught him off guard. Then his hand slid around my waist and pulled me closer as he kissed me back.
Whatever I thought kissing him would feel like, I had been wrong.
His mouth moved against mine slowly at first, giving me enough time to change my mind if I wanted to. When I didn’t, the kiss deepened, and my hand ran up his arms and locked around his neck as the heat from his body mixed with my own.
The alcohol had nothing to do with the warmth spreading through me now.
Vice backed me against the door, keeping one hand around my waist while the other settled against the side of my neck.
I could feel his hard dick pressed against me, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew we were standing in the hallway where anybody could step off the elevator and see us, but I didn’t care.
For those few seconds, I forgot about Evan and the ten years I’d wasted believing I knew him.
I forgot about the shooting, the break-in and everything that had happened since I came back to Atlanta.
The only thing I could think about was Vice kissing me like he’d been waiting three days to finish what we’d started.
Shit, maybe he had.
I pulled back first, breathing harder than I wanted him to notice. Vice didn’t move away immediately. He rested his forehead against mine while his hand stayed around my waist.
“You good?” he asked.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
His thumb moved lightly against my side as I looked up at him and immediately wished I hadn’t. The way he was staring at me made me want to kiss him again.
So I did…
The second kiss was shorter, but it didn’t feel any less intense. When I finally stepped back, Vice looked at me with a grin that immediately made me suspicious.
“What?”
“Nothing...”
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Like what?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Never mind.”
His grin got wider as I reached behind me and opened my apartment door. “Goodnight…”
“You kicking me out?”
“I can’t kick you out of somewhere you don’t live.”
“Could invite me in.”
My hand tightened around the doorknob, and Vice laughed before I could decide whether he was serious.
“Relax. I’m fucking with you.”
“Oh…”
His eyebrows lifted, and I immediately regretted letting that one word slip out.
“Oh?” he repeated. “So, you want me to come in?”
“Goodnight, Vice.”
He laughed again as I stepped inside. “Goodnight.”
I closed the door before he could get anything else out and stood here for a moment with my back against it. My lips still tingled, and my heart hadn’t completely settled down.
“Shit,” I whispered before pushing away from the door.
My phone rang while I was taking off my shoes, and I smiled when I saw my sister’s name on the screen. “Hey.”
“Hey, stranger. You busy?”
“No. I just got home.”
“From where?”
I carried my heels toward the bedroom. “I went out.”
There was a brief pause before she asked, “With who?”
I should’ve known better than to say anything. “Nobody.”
“Girl, please. You don’t sound like you just got home from being out with nobody.”
I laughed as I dropped onto the edge of my bed. “What does that even mean?”
“It means you sound happy.”
That hushed me for a second because the crazy part was, she was right. I was happy. At least right now, I was, and it had been a long time since I could honestly say that.
“His name is Vice.”
The silence on the other end lasted long enough to make me laugh.
“His name is what?”
“Vice.”
“Like drugs and gambling?”
“That’s his middle name.”
“What’s his first name?”
“Kaiden.”
“Then why the hell are we calling that man Vice?”
I laughed harder. “Everybody calls him that.”
“Not me… I’m not calling him that. I don’t care if that is his middle name.”
“You don’t even know him.”
“Exactly. So until I meet him, his name is Kaiden.”
I shook my head as I leaned back against my pillows. “Whatever.”
“So who is he?”
I tried to figure out how to answer without explaining the entire mess that had brought Vice into my life. All she knew was that I’d witnessed a shooting, everything else I refused to tell her because I didn’t want her to worry. “He’s somebody I met after I came back.”
“Sooo, you like this somebody.”
I smiled but didn’t say anything, and apparently my silence was enough of an answer.
“Oh, shit.”
“Calm down.”
“You like him.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“And you didn’t have to.”
I rolled my eyes even though she couldn’t see me. “We’ve been spending time together.”
“How much time?”
“Enough.”
Her voice changed immediately. “Did you kiss him?”
My mouth fell open. “Why would you ask me that?”
“Because you sound guilty.”
“I do not sound guilty.”
“You kissed him.”
I covered my face with one hand, already knowing there was no point in lying. “Maybe.”
Her scream was so loud that I had to pull the phone away from my ear. “Girl, calm down!”
“Do you know how long it’s been since you talked to me about another man?”
“I know.”
“No, seriously, Milan. You were with Evan forever.”
The mention of his name settled something inside me.
Ten years was a long time to belong to one person.
For ten years, Evan had been the only man I kissed, the only man I slept beside and the only man I imagined myself growing old with.
Even after finding out about his betrayal, a part of me had still been stuck in the life I thought we were supposed to have.
Tonight, I had kissed somebody else.
More importantly, I hadn’t thought about Evan once while I was doing it.
“How did it feel?” my sister asked.
“Good...”
“No. I mean kissing somebody who wasn’t Evan.”
I looked down at my hands, thinking about the question. “Different.”
“Bad different?”
“No.” A small smile returned to my face. “Not at all.”
“Then stop overthinking it.”
“I’m not.”
“You are. I can hear you doing it.”
I laughed. “You cannot hear somebody thinking.”
“I can hear you.”
We talked for another twenty minutes before hanging up, and by the time I got into bed, I was tired enough that I didn’t spend the entire night replaying the kiss.
Only part of it.
The next morning, I woke up with Vice on my mind, which annoyed me more than it should have. I got ready for work and tried to push him to the back of my mind, but that became harder when we started texting.
We went back and forth on and off throughout the day. Nothing important, nothing I would remember word for word later, but enough to keep a smile threatening my face whenever his name appeared on my screen. Thankfully, Nia was too busy to notice, or at least she didn’t say anything.
By the end of my shift, I was exhausted and ready to go home. I changed out of my work shoes, grabbed my purse and headed toward the parking garage. The drive home was quiet, and somewhere along the way, I found myself thinking about how normal my life almost felt.
I worked. I had my own place. I had gone on a date with a man I liked, and for the first time since Evan, I had kissed somebody without immediately wondering whether I was making a mistake.
Maybe things were finally starting to settle down.
The security guard downstairs greeted me when I walked into the building. I spoke back, used my key fob to access the elevator and leaned against the wall as it carried me upstairs. Everything felt normal until the doors opened on my floor and I stepped into the hallway.
I was halfway to my apartment when I noticed something lying on the floor in front of my door.
At first, I thought it was a flyer somebody had slipped underneath the door and left sticking out. The closer I got, the more I realized it wasn’t.
It was a photograph lying directly in front of my apartment, and something about the way it had been placed there made my steps slow. The hallway was empty, but I looked behind me anyway before turning my attention back to the glossy paper.
I didn’t want to touch it.
Something in my stomach already told me I wasn’t going to like what I saw, but I forced myself to bend down and pick it up anyway.
The second I looked at the picture, my stomach dropped.
It was me.
Vice sat across from me at the restaurant where we’d had lunch the first time, his body turned slightly in my direction while I laughed at something he’d said. The picture had been taken from outside the restaurant, through the window, and neither one of us had known anyone was watching.
My hand started shaking as I turned it over.
The back was blank.
There was no message, no name and no warning written across it, and there didn’t need to be. Whoever had taken the picture knew where I’d moved. They knew who I was spending time with, and somehow, they’d gotten past the security downstairs and made it all the way to my front door.
I slowly looked down the hallway again. The silence that had felt normal a few minutes ago suddenly felt different, and my eyes moved toward the camera near the elevator before dropping back to the photograph in my hand.
This was supposed to be the place where I was safe.
Visitors had to show identification. There were cameras on every floor, and nobody was supposed to be able to get upstairs without being cleared.
Somebody had anyway.
I reached into my purse and pulled out my phone. My fingers were still shaking as I found Vice’s name, and without hesitation.
I called him.