Chapter 6
DAMIANO
She’s back. Here. With me. My beautiful girl. I won’t fuck it up this time. I will be completely honest from here on out. She deserves my honesty, and she always has. I was an idiot.
After a couple episodes of Flesh and Teeth, I can feel my medications making my mind fuzzy. But I have to talk to her before she goes.
“We have something to discuss.” I take her hand. “I need to apologize.”
Seth meets my gaze and sets his tablet on the table. “I’ll be going, but I’ll leave this here in case you want to use it later. Madison, it was good to see you.”
She seems surprised by his soft tone. “Yeah, uh, you too.”
Once he’s out of the room, Madison looks at the door and whispers, “Do you think he wants to be friends again?”
“Of course he does. He always has, bella. He’d be insane not to.
” I fully face her. “But that’s not what I need to talk about.
I need to say I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I wasn’t honest, and that I put you in that position with Alessia.
I hope you’ll let me explain. It won’t be an excuse, but I do want to give you all the information so you can understand why I was a complete asshole. ”
Madison shifts uncomfortably in her seat. “We don’t need to do this now. Let’s wait until you’re feeling better—”
“I can’t wait another minute.” I clear my throat. My eyelids are getting heavy. “If you’re willing to listen, I very much want to speak.”
“All right.” She lifts my hand and kisses it. “I’ll listen.”
I already feel forgiven, but she deserves the truth, the whole story.
“Alessia divorced me while I was wrongfully imprisoned. We haven’t been together since before my arrest. I have no interest in her romantically or sexually, and I haven’t in a long time.
I promise, Madison—I swear—I’m helping her only because her ex-boyfriend is abusive.
I have given her guards, and an apartment in my building. She doesn’t live with me.”
She leans over and kisses my cheek. Her flowery scent fills me with comfort. “I get it. But we need to back up a little…you were wrongfully imprisoned?”
It’s been a very long time, yet the betrayal and the lost years still hurt. However, I shove the emotions down and give Madison the straight facts.
“Someone hurt a woman in my city,” I say.
“The description of her assailant matched me. I did happen to be in the area at the time, and the police latched onto me as the assailant. They never looked further—I believe because one of the officers was interested in Alessia. Once I went to prison, they started sleeping together. She asked for a divorce a few months later.”
Madison squeezes my hand. “I’m so sorry that happened to you.”
“It isn’t you who caused any of it.”
“Just the same.” She gives me a sad smile. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you more of this, earlier. It would have eliminated misunderstandings.”
“Hard to eliminate straight-up falsehoods from your ex-wife’s mouth.” Madison’s green eyes flash with outrage. “She said she was your wife.”
“I have bad luck at times. Alessia walking in at that moment and telling the lies she told. The incident in Italy and the wrongful conviction. The truck driver running a red light, just when I was going through an intersection.” I give her a smile.
“But then I have such good luck, it makes up for all the bad. Such as now. You are giving me another chance, aren’t you, bella? ”
“I believe I am.” Leaning forward, she presses the sweetest of kisses to my lips.
* * *
MADISON
As I walk out of the hospital, I reflect on everything Damiano said to me. I’m mildly irritated that he didn’t just tell me all of these things to begin with.
It’s probably an occupational hazard. He’s used to having the answers and holding the advantage. Also, maybe part of it is left over from his time in prison. I bet it was extremely hard to find people he could trust—especially after being betrayed by the police and justice system.
I just wish I’d known.
Maybe he also didn’t tell me because of my reaction. Even knowing he and Alessia are divorced, I don’t feel great about him giving her an apartment in his building. Would my feelings have been different if he was up front about their situation from the start? I’m not sure.
It’s impossible to know.
A man in a black jacket approaches as I move through the parking lot toward my car. I keep an eye on him, because the way he’s moving seems intent. Either he’s going to try to sell me something, or ask me for help of some kind.
“Madison!”
I turn to see Seth waving at me from the other side of a row of cars. When I look back, the other man is gone.
“Hey!” I start toward Seth. “What’s up?”
We meet in the middle of the lot. He tugs me toward him as a car drives past.
His hazel eyes lock on me. “Look, I know you probably don’t want to do this, but Damiano made me promise to ask. And he can pretty much get me to do anything right now because I feel so fucking bad he’s in that hospital bed.”
I grin. “Yeah, he took advantage of that to get me to forgive him.”
“So you do—forgive him, that is?”
“I do.”
His hazel eyes soften. “You get that same look in your eyes thinking about Damiano, that you used to have when you were around Kyle.”
I blink in surprise. We’ve barely talked about Kyle, and now he’s bringing him up out of nowhere. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He jams his hands in his pockets. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Okay,” I say slowly.
“Look, so Damiano has tickets to a Surf Rats game this Saturday. A private box. He wants me to take you if the docs don’t clear him to go. I’m telling you now, before he puts you on the spot. You can say no, totally fine.”
“Wouldn’t you rather take someone else?”
“No.”
He says it so quickly, so abruptly, my brain short-circuits.
“Well.” I pause, trying to think. “I don’t have plans on Saturday. Sure, I’ll go to the game with you.”
“And it might turn out Damiano can go after all.”
“Of course,” I say. “Either way. Seth, I’m not opposed to hanging out with you. It seems the other way around—that you don’t want to be around me.”
“It isn’t like that.”
I stare hard at him. “I didn’t think you were a liar, Seth.”
He leans forward, tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. My stomach does a giant swoop, half-glee, half-lust.
His voice is a raspy whisper in my ear. “I’m not lying. The problem isn’t that I don’t want to be around you, Madison. It’s that I want to be around you too fucking much.”
* * *
SETH
I’m ready to bribe Damiano’s doctor to clear him for today’s game with the Surf Rats.
And fucking Damiano, home from the hospital, seems to guess my feelings, because he starts acting even more tired and groggy.
Like he can’t possibly leave his penthouse.
He falls back against his pillow on the couch. “You’ll have to go without me.”
Asshole.
“Maybe I should send Alessia up to help you,” I say, “since you’re feeling so ill.”
He sits up quickly. “Oh, no, I’m—I’m fine. Not fine enough to leave, though. I don’t want to disobey the doctor’s orders. But you have fun with Madison, okay?”
“Yeah, okay.” Like having a semi-hard cock for four hours is going to be “fun.”
“No, Seth. I mean it.” He leans forward. “Have fun.”
“Don’t plant that idea in my head, you dick. I’m not doing that with her.”
He shrugs, all innocence. “I’m not sure what you are talking about, my friend.”
I flip him off and leave to pick up Madison at her place. I can’t believe this guy sometimes. Just because I’m back in San Esteban and I’m not biting Madison’s head off, he seems to think I’m ready to fuck her.
She’s a friend. She’s my former sister-in-law. That’s all.
But then she steps out of her house wearing a knee-length skirt and a graphic tee with zombies on it, along with a pink Surf Rats baseball cap. She looks so fucking cute and sexy, my heart stops in my chest.
I’m in for a long day.