Chapter Twenty-Five Tom
Chapter Twenty-Five
Tom
On Saturday night, I patted myself on the back for not checking his socials or texting him since Zeke sent me on leave. Grams was wrong. I didn’t break my word and didn’t crawl back to New York to beg for forgiveness.
Two weeks, Enzo and I hadn’t been in contact.
Finally, I was back in full control.
I lay in the guest room’s bed, pleased that tomorrow would be full of activities. I was taking Grams to church, then catching up on admin, and going to see an old pal for dinner.
Secure in the knowledge I was cured of the Enzo plague, I decided to check in on him. Not because I cared anymore—or ever, really—but because I’d soon recruit my informant, so it was worth seeing if there was any important news about the Ferrantes’ lives.
I opened my fake Instagram, typing the first letter of his name. His profile popped up instantly. I did not use this account for anything other than stalking him.
I hit his name and saw that he had posted a new picture yesterday. This one had gone viral. There were nearly fifty thousand likes.
He was shirtless, his abs on full display, with a black skull bandanna covering everything from his nose and below—on a rooftop somewhere in Manhattan, by the view.
Concrete jungle, but I’m a lion, not a mouse. #neednoone #memyselfandi
I swallowed hard. Was this directed at me? If so, I felt like shit, because I’d obviously hurt him. If not, I also felt like shit, because that meant he’d moved on.
I clicked on the comments section, well aware it was a stupid idea. The thirsty reactions were getting out of control, though that was nothing new.
What was new was that he’d started answering them. In real fucking time.
He’d never acknowledged his followers before.
HotStuff28: I think we might be in the same area…
ItalianSausage:
HotStuff28: I’m DJing down the block. Sick party. Wanna come?
ItalianSausage: Mayyyyybe. Send location.
What business did he have answering comments on Instagram at two in the goddamn morning?
Didn’t he have people to kill? The Camorra wasn’t going to run itself.
I was a second away from picking up the phone, calling Luca, and telling him his enforcer was flirting like a fuckboy all over social media instead of dealing with the Bratva.
HotStuff28 answered his comment.
HotStuff28: DMing you now
This was the worst form of torture.
I couldn’t control the shaking in my body. Fury blazed a path in my chest, and I had the distinct feeling I was about to do something very stupid, like finding out where this idiot HotStuff28 lived, paying him a visit, and teaching him not to hit on other people’s boyfriends.
Only Enzo wasn’t my boyfriend.
We weren’t even exclusive.
Currently, we were nothing.
I chose to be nothing to him.
I hurled my phone against the wall with a savage growl. It didn’t even sound human. I watched as it broke in two, the pieces scattered on the floor.
Fuck. Now what?
Control, my ass.
I was disintegrating.
No wonder Grams looked entertained the entire week. I wasn’t healing or getting over anything. I was turning inside out, hanging by a thread thinner than floss. What did it mean, and how was I fixing this impossible situation? I didn’t know.
But I did know I was calling his reckless ass.
He wasn’t going to meet the slimy asshole who didn’t even know him, who had no idea how he liked his cock sucked and how to hit his prostate and how he was self-conscious about his wrists and didn’t like it when people touched or even looked at them.
He didn’t know his favorite snack—dark chocolate acai balls—and his A/B plan, and that he had the cutest nervous tic, where he chewed on his inner cheek whenever he was overthinking.
It was two in the morning, and I’d just destroyed my phone in a fit of anger I swore to never feel again. Luckily, my grandmother had a landline. I quickly punched in his number on her cordless phone. Yes, I had it memorized.
He answered on the second ring.
“No one’s hot enough to call me this late at night.”
A relieved laugh clogged the back of my throat. Only Enzo could answer this way. God, I liked him.
I liked him a lot.
I’d been liking him for a long time, I realized. Probably from our first interaction at the Forbidden Fruit club about two months ago, when I looked into his eyes and saw surprising softness, untouched by the horrors he inflicted every day.
“Hellooooo?” Enzo yawned into my ear, reminding me he was still there. “Is this Chris?”
Chris? HotStuff28 was named Chris? Chris’s time on this planet had just been significantly reduced.
“It’s me,” I ground out irritably.
“Tom?” Enzo yawned again, sounding infuriatingly unsurprised. “Why are you calling me from this number?”
Why am I calling you at all?
“Broke my phone,” I muttered under my breath.
“What?”
“I brOKE MY GODDAMN PHONE, ENZO.”
This was my penance. The excruciating humiliation of admitting to him, and to myself, that there was something in my life that no routine, no rituals, and no logic could subdue.
And that this something was him.
Silence stretched on the other end before he spoke again.
“Um, you gonna expand on that?”
“I prefer not to.”
“’Kay…”
Another beat of silence. I needed to say what I called him to say. Rip off the Band-Aid.
I hadn’t let myself be vulnerable and open with anyone for so long, it felt like learning how to walk again.
“How have you been?” I cleared my throat.
“Great.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really.”
He wasn’t giving me an inch. And I couldn’t fucking blame him.
“I’m back on my PTSD meds,” I said.
“Good,” he answered. “That’s…good.”
“And alcohol.” I cleared my throat. “Not gonna touch it again. My therapist thinks it’s a terrible catalyst.”
“Yeah,” he said noncommittedly. “Makes sense.”
He wasn’t going to make it easy for me. After what I’d done, I couldn’t blame him.
“Enzo, I…” I sucked in a breath, determined to push the words out.
“You were right, back in my apartment. I don’t want us to see other people.
I haven’t been seeing anyone else, not since we got together, and not for a while before that.
” Not since that night at the Forbidden Fruit, when he first acknowledged my existence, and I became obsessed with his soft eyes since.
“And I can’t handle you so much as looking at someone else, let alone flirting or doing more. ”
He was quiet for a few seconds, and I wondered if he was still on the line.
“You said you don’t do relationships,” he finally said.
“That was before.”
“Before what?”
Before you.
“I changed my mind.” My jaw twitched in annoyance.
“You want to be in a relationship with me?”
“I am in a relationship with you,” I corrected him primly. “You’re my boyfriend.”
“I haven’t agreed to be your boyfriend.” His tone melted into something flirtatious and coy, but my heart still tried thumping its way out of my chest violently. I wasn’t stupid enough to think I was out of the danger zone.
“We eat together, we drink together, we fuck together, we squabble, we talk about almost everything. We’re boyfriends whether you like it or not.”
“We only fucked once,” he pointed out.
I glanced at my watch. “Give me about an hour, and I’ll change that.”
“And we don’t watch trashy TV together.”
“I don’t watch trashy TV.” My voice was hard, my tone final.
Utter silence resounded on the other end.
Groaning, I massaged my eyelids. “But I guess I do now.”
“Oh my God, it’s gonna take me forever to catch you up on Love is Blind. We need to start tonight.”
I didn’t know if he was laughing with me or at me. But I was certain I was too ass-whipped to actually negotiate a better situation for myself.
“Anyway,” he carried on. “All those things still don’t mean we’re boyfriends, just that we’re getting along.”
“We can’t stay away from each other.”
“We stayed away from each other for two whole weeks just fine,” he countered.
I tossed my head to the pillow and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Why are you doing this?”
“Getting back at you for all the times you made me chase your grumpy ass, mainly,” he singsonged.
“Do you want to be together?”
He swallowed audibly. “I think so.”
Fuck. We were not in the same headspace. I didn’t think I wanted to be with him. I knew. In fact, my brain had very little to do with that decision. It was another organ that led the way.
“And do you want to be exclusive?” A lump the size of Ohio lodged itself in my throat.
“Fuck yes. Hands off my man.” He chuckled. “So…you finally admit to stalking my Instagram?”
“You had no business flirting with that fuckboy,” I growled, fresh anger drowning all my senses.
“Relax, I didn’t even answer his DM.”
“So who the fuck is Chris?”
“Some made-up dude I conjured on the spot to make you mad,” he purred. “I knew it was you. No one is unhinged enough to call me so late at night.”
I sat back against my pillow and took a ragged breath. Oxygen hit the bottom of my lungs for the first time in two weeks.
“Where are you, anyway?” Enzo asked. “That it’ll take you an hour to get here?”
At the mention of my coming to him, I sprang into action and started putting my clothes on. I’d come up with an excuse for my hasty departure tomorrow morning.
Tomorrow, I’d do a lot of things.
But tonight, I’d have Enzo.
“Staten Island. Stayed with my grams a bit.” I shoved my bare feet into my shoes.
“Oh. Is she okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. I just needed some time away from the city. Listen…” I was already stumbling down the hallway, fumbling with my keys, leaving the duffel bag with my stuff behind. “I’ll be there in about fifty minutes.”
“Sounds good.”
“But…”
“Yeah?”
“Stay on the phone with me while I drive.” That was when I realized I was using a landline.
It forced me to hang up on him for the duration of seventeen seconds, which I found abnormally and disgustingly difficult to endure.
I went back to the guest room, grabbed my old phone I’d never bothered trading when I got a new one, and pushed out into the crisp winter air of the night.
I called him again as I unlocked my car and slipped inside.
Enzo answered before the line even came to life. He inhaled. “You know, your obsession with me is adorable, Tomcat.”
“Shut up.”
“You just told me to speak to you.”
“I told you to stay with me. I’m perfectly content listening to you breathe.”
“Denial is not just a river in Egypt, my dude, and you’re drowning in it.”
As I floored it, I could see my grandmother peering through her bedroom window, cast in yellowish light, watching me running back to the city. She grinned like the cat that got the canary.
I raised her a slow middle finger and shook my head, laughing.