Enforce

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Waiting for the light. Taking hers in order to fill my dark.

  Tex

  I groaned and flipped over onto my stomach. The nightmare was getting worse. Swear, it felt like the fires of hell were licking at my heels. The only time I ever saw my father's face was in my nightmares — and I hoped to God it stayed that way.

  With a curse, I got up from bed and went over to the window. Campus was quiet. I'd stayed in our special Elect dorm that night while Nixon went back to the house to get more bloodstains out of the carpet — no, for real. He'd had to replace the whole damn thing once he shot his father. The stains had apparently dripped down the hall, thus the need to get the blood out.

  Mo came up behind me, wrapping her arms around my middle, leaning her chin against my back. "What's wrong?"

  So many damn things I couldn't even keep the pain straight.

  I couldn't give the princess the future she deserved, and the very fact that my father's blood ran through my veins made me want to vomit.

  "Run away with me," I challenged, refusing to turn around and see her pity-filled eyes.

  Instead, I focused on the moon, wondering if he was staring at the same one, wondering if one day he was going to come after me and rip everything I held dear right out of my hands.

  Mo laughed, her lips curling around my skin in a kiss. "Alright, where would we go?"

  "Anywhere but here." I sighed. "And I think it's safe to say Sicily's out."

  She reached around me and pulled my face down to her lips. "Tex," Her lips were warm, tender. "It's college. Stop being so dramatic."

  "Who says I'm being dramatic?" I frowned.

  "It's three a.m., you're staring out your window after a great night full of mind-blowing sex, and you still don't look happy. Is..." Her eyebrows knit together. "…is it me?"

  "Hell no," I growled, pulling her into my arms. "Don't ever let me hear you say that again."

  She nodded but didn't look convinced.

  So I kissed her — hard.

  And when she didn't respond right away, I lifted the shirt from her body and tossed it onto the ground. Naked from the waist up, just the way I liked her.

  "Mo, look at me."

  Her eyes blinked open.

  "The problem in this scenario will never be you. Mo Abandonato is always the solution, never the problem."

  She wrapped her arms around my neck as I lifted her into the bed and hovered over her. "And Tex Campisi, what is he?"

  The problem. Always was and always would be — the damn problem.

  "Horny," I answered. "And right now… the only solution… is you. Get it?"

  She rolled her eyes and let out a laugh while I pulled the mask firmly back over my face.

  I was Tex, funny, happy-go-lucky Tex.

  But deep down inside? Vito Campisi was just dying to get out. I figured the more I starved that part of my soul — the more it dissipated.

  I had no way of knowing.

  That I was dead wrong.

  No way of knowing that the fire never really got put out, not when you left the coals, thinking they wouldn't simmer back into a burn.

  "Tex." Mo let out a little moan as I jerked the shorts from her waist and buried myself deep within her.

  It was a metaphor for my life: the deeper you go, the further you fall. Right?

  "Love… you."

  "Love you too." Our foreheads touched, and in that moment, my world was perfect again.