Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
“Now this is fair,” Serena said, tugging the cotton T-shirt over her breasts. Milo wore only jeans as he pulled out the pizza and placed it on a cutting board.
“I think our previous arrangement was better,” he said, as he rolled a pizza cutter through the crust. The scent of melted cheese filled the air and her mouth watered.
“Me naked and you fully dressed?”
He handed her a plate and sat next to her. “Yeah, what’s wrong with that?”
She lifted a slice to her plate and blew on it. “Well, for one thing, I like this view a lot better.” She let her gaze slide to his bronze, ripped abdomen.
“And I like this”—he inched up the T-shirt she wore—“a lot better.”
She shooed his hand away, but laughter tickled her throat.
She took a bite of pizza, and the sweet taste of basil touched her tongue.
A cloud of hesitation crept over her. This was dangerous.
Having unattached sex with Milo was turning out to be harder than she’d anticipated.
He was right: nothing they did would ever mean “nothing.”
But what did it mean? She couldn’t entertain the fantasy of having a relationship with him. Wounds could be healed, but betrayal? She had to know more. Had to dredge up the past.
“I have to ask . . . where’s your dad now?”
A string of cheese dropped onto Milo’s chin, and he wiped it off before flicking his gaze toward her. His expression remained neutral, but the vein at his temple pulsed.
“In prison.”
Questions burned her throat. She let that information settle as she scarfed down the rest of her slice.
Angelo Baxter hadn’t exactly been a shining father, from what she remembered.
He’d always been so hard on Milo and Tasha, but more so Milo.
On more than one occasion she’d witnessed the older man backhanding his son, or cutting him down.
Milo might not have been flat-out physically abused, but she suspected emotional abuse had been part of his daily life.
Yet, Milo had always strived to earn his father’s pride. Had he ever attained it?
“I don’t even remember the last time I saw your dad.” She reached for another piece of pizza. It was a flimsy thing to say, but she didn’t want the conversation to die. Not yet.
“What about your uncle?”
She snorted. Her stomach bunched into knots. The atmosphere in the kitchen was no longer heavy with passion but with tension. She hated talking about her uncle, but if it opened the lines of communication between Milo and her, she would.
“I haven’t seen him since the Alban heist.”
“You were working that for him?”
Taking a bite more viciously than necessary, she nodded.
“Yup. That was our big-ticket parting heist. For years Dani and I tried to get away from him, but every time we’d tell him we were done, he’d come crawling around a few months later saying how sick Aunt Mae was.
That she needed this or that, that they didn’t have money for food or had been evicted. ”
Milo got up and circled the island. “Water?”
“Please.”
He filled their glasses at the fridge. “I’m not surprised. Sebastian was a con man. I still can’t believe he had you girls stealing so young.”
Memories circulated through her mind. By the time she was fourteen, she’d robbed a liquor store and stolen a car for her uncle.
It wasn’t long after her sixteenth birthday that he had Dani and her doing heists with him.
Teenage girls weren’t suspicious, especially when it came to drug dealers or other criminals.
She and Dani had revolted against him often.
Their sweet, beloved Aunt Mae was the only reason they hadn’t run away sooner.
By eighteen, Serena had been so deep in that life that she didn’t know any different.
Sometimes, she fantasized about what life would have been like with her mom.
Catalina wouldn’t have allowed Sebastian to manipulate them—she would have protected them.
Serena’s heart throbbed in her throat. Her mom wouldn’t have wanted the criminal life for them.
If only she hadn’t been addicted to drugs. If only she hadn’t died. Their life would have been so different. She and Dani would have been loved. Cherished. Happy. Not used and brainwashed.
“Yeah, he was great at manipulating. After the Alban heist went down, Dani and I totally cut him out. We left our apartment in the middle of the night and changed our phone numbers. He must have been livid.”
“You haven’t heard from him since?” He passed her a glass of water.
“Nope.”
“And Aunt Mae?”
“She passed away a few months before the heist.” Serena chortled. “Uncle Sebastian even used her death to trap us. With the medical bills and funeral costs . . . it wasn’t hard to believe he needed money. We agreed that job would be the last one.”
“Do you think he tried to find you?”
“Probably for a while,” she said, shrugging. “I can’t see him having much purpose anymore, with Aunt Mae gone. Even when he asked us to do the Alban heist, he was different. Resigned, you could say.”
Milo leaned forward on the counter across from her. The deep greens of his eyes roamed over her face. “I’m sorry about Mae. She was the kindest lady I’ve ever met.”
Fondness burned a fuzzy halo over her skin.
She missed her mother’s sister almost as much as she missed her mother.
Serena had never wanted to burden her with what their uncle made them do, but Mae wasn’t stupid.
She’d known her husband better than anyone.
It seemed she’d always put her head in the sand about how he provided for them.
“Me too.” She stretched her spine against the back of the stool. “Angelo hasn’t reached out to you?”
Milo looked down. She hated that she had to make him uncomfortable, but if they didn’t talk about their past, they couldn’t move forward.
“He called me about six months ago. I was supposed to see him and, well, I guess I just got busy with the house.” A vein jumped in his arm and he kept staring at the counter.
“That’s not true. It’s hard not to resent him.
All those years of never adding up in his eyes, always seeking his approval and never attaining it. ”
Yet Milo let Angelo come between us.
Bitterness swelled in her chest but she forced it down.
Like he’d said, he’d been young then. A kid.
Of course he’d done whatever his father had wanted.
Her fingers ached to cover his knuckles.
Words singed the tip of her tongue. Did he resent Angelo for coming between them?
Milo’s actions had been solely his own, but she knew of the deep yearning he’d always suffered for his father’s affection.
He might not hate Angelo for turning him against her, but she did.
“When will he be out?”
Milo shrugged, the movement sullen. “I think he has another year at least.”
“Did he ever talk about Sebastian ratting him out?”
Milo finally lifted his head. His green eyes sharpened on her, but his lips tipped up, taking the edge off his expression. “Why do you want to talk about this? It doesn’t exactly conjure up good memories for either of us.”
“No, it doesn’t. I can see it’s uncomfortable for you, but we have history together. If we ignore it, it will just swell between us.”
He didn’t take his gaze off her, but his eyebrows lowered. “Hash it out now and clear the air, is that it?”
“Exactly. We’re ready for the job—all we need now is for time to go by so we can move in. We might as well pass the time efficiently.”
He laughed. “Efficiently, huh? Not sure I’d call it that, but all right.
Yeah, he talked about Sebastian. A lot. He cut my dad out of a million-dollar job, almost had him killed, and then ratted him out.
I hope Sebastian is ready for his release.
I’ll bet you anything that’s the first place Angelo will show up. ”
Serena stared at the flecks of silver in the quartz countertop. Talking about the murder of her uncle should upset her, but it didn’t. Her senses buzzed with anger. If Angelo killed him, Sebastian had asked for it.
“I’m surprised he’s stayed alive this long. He has more enemies than a rat.” She turned to Milo. The words she wanted, no, needed to ask churned in the depths of her belly.
She’d shaken the bottle—but did she want to open it?
She curled her fingers against the cool surface. She didn’t want friction with Milo, but this was something she had to do. “Why did you do it?” The words blurted from her mouth with the force of a bat striking a baseball.
His jaw popped open, and all the fire left his eyes. She didn’t need to explain. He knew exactly what she was talking about.
Why he’d left her.
“I told you . . .” He groaned and hung his head. “Dammit, Serena. I don’t want to think about those days.”
“Why?” Oh god, she was really pushing it.
But who was he to shut her out? He’d broken up with her in the middle of the street.
Tears had flowed down her cheeks, and her arms had stretched toward him, and he’d stalked off and never turned back.
Never reached out to her. Her chest ripped open with fresh, raw pain.
She’d buried those feelings under resentment, had forced Milo from her heart since that day. Yet here she was . . .
She studied the top of his head. Dark strands whipped every which way from his fingers tearing repeated tunnels through his hair.
A few gray strands mixed in with the black.
Time had passed. Over a decade. But instead of feeling sympathy for him—who knows what he’d been through in those years—she only ached more for the years lost.
“Milo.”
“I was weak. My dad beat the shit out of me and told me if I stayed with you, I was dead to him. I don’t know what’s wrong with me . . . why I always craved his approval. I should have told him to fuck off and run away with you.”
“Did you love me?” Her voice broke on the words and tears stung the backs of her eyes. No, no, no. She wouldn’t cry. She needed an honest answer.