Epilogue
MASSIMO
“I don’t know, Massimo. I don’t like the idea of something happening to Emilio again.” It’s a fair statement. My idiot twin has been hospitalized twice from motorcycle accidents. Sofia sees the worst of the worst. But she also doesn’t want to hold us down or back. I get it. “What if . . .”
She can’t even say it.
Neither can I.
Death.
It’s something that haunts every biker. We all know of someone who’s paid the ultimate price, usually at the hands of some other driver.
But we’ve had this discussion many times since Em totaled both bikes.
Having been to the dealership multiple times, it’s always the same. She frowns, sighs, and walks away.
Today was no different. Yet now, she’s leaning against the glass window, rocking a tiny bikini that Em got to match his banana hammock. I’ll thank him again for all the spillage when we go back out to the pool.
“Baby, come here.”
My arms are outstretched to her. She doesn’t move.
“Please?”
Still doesn’t.
Just looks at me.
“I’m serious. I want both my boys to be safe. I just got you both. I don’t want to lose you.” Her teeth sink into her DSLs, biting the lower lip and looking sexy as all hell. “Just as you don’t want to lose me. It’s what you fear but still haven’t told me why.”
It’s true.
Anytime Cecilia comes up in conversation, I push it away.
I don’t want my pain and hurt to taint what is good between us.
But I’ve put it off long enough, and she’s let me.
It’s only fair that, with all the weeks that have gone by, I finally tell her.
Em’s been on my ass about it too. Says the longer I wait, the more fucked up it is.
“Will you please come here?”
I pat my thighs, wanting her to straddle them. It’s my favorite position and her favorite seat in the house. Her lip loosens, and she obliges. It’s the one thing we both love and need. My hands settle on her waist as she climbs onto my lap.
Once she’s seated, legs tucked on either side of my thighs and her hot mound sitting flat on my cock, I relax.
Pushing her curls away from her face, I plant a kiss in the hollow of her breasts and gaze at her.
I love her so much it hurts. But I know this is real.
She’s not using me or leading me on. She’s a thousand percent here with me. With Em. She makes my world better.
“I know I should’ve told you by now. It’s just . . .”
“Hard.”
I nod, even though hard isn’t the real word for it. Hard feels weak. Whiny. The truth is darker than that. It feels pathetic. Like I let her pull me around on some invisible leash, and I didn’t even fight it. It embarrasses the hell out of me.
“I was blind. Thought that she loved me. Because I loved her. Trust me, it wasn’t the case.”
My voice scrapes down to something raw. I focus on her legs around my hips, so I don’t have to look her in the eyes yet.
“She used me,” I get out past the heaviness in my chest. “Not for my heart. For my wallet. My name on campus. My family.”
A muscle jumps in my jaw. I haven’t said this out loud before. Not like this.
“Every time she wanted something, I made it happen. New clothes, shoes, or purse, Weekend trips. Workout classes she didn’t show up to.
Parties she had to be seen at. She’d bat those baby blues, and suddenly, I’m draining accounts my parents didn’t know about.
Then she’d tell people I always gave her what she wanted because I was a real try hard.
A simp. A pushover. Maybe I was. But I wanted to spoil her.
She was my girl, and that’s what guys do. They spoil who they love.”
Her fingers move slowly over the back of my neck, like she’s erasing the words as fast as I say them. My chest unclenches just a fraction.
“She cheated,” I whisper, because the word still tastes like metal, even after all this time.
Even with Sofia sitting on my lap, gazing at me with so much love.
“More than once. Always ‘it was a mistake,’ always ‘I won’t do it again.’ I forgave her.
Over and over. Because she’d cry and tell me it was a one-time thing, stress, or school, or pressure, and I didn’t want to lose her.
Then she made it clear that I was the problem.
Too intense. Too clingy. Just emotionally, whatever. ”
Her thumbs are catching a tear at my cheekbone before I even realize it has fallen.
“Papito, you’re not. You have a huge heart, and I love that about you.”
My lips twist, wanting to believe her but needing to get this out. Because I’m never bringing it up again. Cecilia is firmly in my past. Sofia is solidly my future.
“But she didn’t see it like that. She dropped me right before finals. Started dating some other guy with a family crest on his signet ring. Two months later, she was engaged. By the time summer hit, she was married on his family estate. She even invited me to the wedding. Like a dumbass, I went.”
My heart clenches remembering myself standing outside that church like a fucking idiot, trying to breathe. Em ended up getting trashed and peeing in the fountain in front of the circle drive. It was the only good thing that happened that night.
“She gutted me.”
Sofia’s forehead presses to mine, curls falling around our faces like a curtain shutting out the world. Her mouth brushes the corner of mine. Soft, not asking for anything, just there. Her fingers slide into my hair, not pulling, just holding.
That’s all it takes. My throat closes.
“I thought . . . if I’m less, maybe next time someone will stay,” I murmur against her lips. “Be easier. Quieter. Take up less space. Don’t need. Don’t ask. Don’t expect anything. Just take whatever scraps she’ll give me.”
She cups my face in both hands like she’s framing it, forcing me to look at her. And something warm settles low in my gut. Her beautiful eyes always make me melt. I’m so gone for her.
“Massimo,” she says my name like it’s a promise. Warm breath against my cheek. “Don’t shrink with me. I don’t want an easier or quieter version. I was told to be small too. Look how that ended. I’m loud. And you love it.”
My mouth actually twitches into a grin I didn’t plan.
“Yeah. I love it way too much.” The memory tugs at me, and I huff a laugh. “First day I saw you in those big-ass gold hoops? Red markers stabbing the board? Drawing stars all over your name. I think I knew then. Em knew the second he opened his eyes. Staring at these DSLs.”
My thumb tugs on her lower lip, stealing a kiss, and she pushes me away.
“You two need to stop calling my lips that. They are—”
“Perfect.” I shake my head, thumb brushing back and forth over her pillowy lips until she pushes my hand away. “I knew then you were gonna boss the hell out of me. Same way you’re doing right now.”
She opens her mouth to argue, but I quickly add to what I’m saying.
“You do and don’t you dare say you don’t,” I warn, my fingers curling into her waist when she squirms against my cock. It’s torture and perfect all at the same time. “But you make everything better, baby. I’m so happy with you. So happy that you’re into what we’re into.”
She blushes a bit. Even with all the nasty shit we do to her all the time. And the even filthier stuff Em and I have planned tonight.
“And the tattoos? They’re for her?”
That makes me instantly frown.
“No, baby. They’re definitely not for her. They were a promise I made to myself to . . .”
I sink back a little, my hands still on her hips, needing a second just to breathe through all that heaviness. She waits. She always waits when it matters.
“The ink…” I gesture vaguely at my arm. The black lines, the bold angles winding down my skin. “It wasn’t about her. Not really. It was about everything I didn’t want to be again.”
Her eyes drop to the ink, tracing it the same way she does when we’re lying in bed.
“I started getting tattooed after she left. Every piece is a promise I made to myself. That next time I fall, I’d fall with my eyes open. That I wouldn’t be so na?ve.”
My thumb brushes along one line just under my bicep.
“This one? It’s about surviving shit that should’ve broken me. Reminding myself, when she walked away, I didn’t crawl back to her. Didn’t beg her for another chance. I took it on the chin. Like a man.”
I drag her hand over the ink that wraps from my shoulder down to my forearm.
“Like a road map to my future. One direction only. No turning back for what didn’t choose me. And that map led to you.”
Her breath catches, soft and warm against my face. But her hand tightens in mine.
“Yes, it did, Papito. This map and your wild brother found your way to me.”
I kiss her for that.
For being soft and sweet, loud and bold, and everything in between. There are so many sides of her, I love them all. The pain once owned by Cecilia in my heart has been carved out and made new by Sofia.
“And no looking back. Not to my past and not to yours.”
Her ex.
Em and I did go trolling for him. Ready to beat his ass and suffer the consequences.
Em loves to fight for fun, money, or simply revenge.
He even dressed all in black to blend in, since he can’t run fast with his leg still in the boot.
We never did find him. But the cops did.
Busted him for drugs, possession, and selling.
It made her temporary restraining order super easy to make stick.
She felt guilty for ‘piling on’ and almost didn’t go through with it.
Em, in his own over-the-top way, convinced her to do it.
Laying out the worst-case scenario and scaring the shit out of her.
I wanted to beat his ass for doing it that way, but then he stuffed his body into a Superman costume.
Where he found that, no idea. Said he’d leap thick thighs and tiny tits in a single bound to save her. That did it.