And dammit that almost made me feel sorry for him. I had a soft spot for stutters.
“I always wanted to say I’m sorry for that, but they switched you to the other class after that, and Dante told me if I ever got within five feet of you for any reason that he’d pound me into next year.”
That I believed.
“But I’ll say it now. I have no excuse for myself. I’m very, very sorry. I know how it was for you. I know it wasn’t easy. I didn’t have any friends myself, and I was a weakling and a coward. I don’t even know why, but I was trying to fit in and picking on you seemed to be the thing to do.”
That I also believed.
“Like I said, I have no excuse. To this day I’m ashamed of myself for it.”
I didn’t know what to think of his apology. I wasn’t used to them. I just felt strange. Conflicted. Did he expect to be forgiven for a few short sentences of remorse many years after the fact, sincere or not? Would I be crazy for holding on to a grudge for all these years, or a complete doormat for accepting his decades late apology?
I decided (begrudgingly) that a late apology was better than none at all. He was far from the worst of the goons I’d had to deal with back then. At least he’d left me alone after one offense.
And I had kicked him in the balls really, really hard.
“Apology accepted,” I told him quietly, if begrudgingly. I wasn’t used to forgiving people. It was a muscle I’d never had to use before.
I couldn’t say it felt particularly pleasant to work it out for the first time.
Still, I was rather proud of myself. I’d made it through one confrontation that had gone kind of well, all things considered.
But then Dante.
He appeared just as I was about to move on with a feeling of accomplishment.
He stepped up beside me, wrapped a proprietary arm around my waist, and leaned down, down, down to short, terrified Tommy.
“What did I tell you, Tommy?” his voice was quiet and menacing. “That looks closer than five fucking feet to me.”
Tommy stammered out an apology and took off.
I was sitting somewhere between exasperated and annoyed as I shrugged out of Dante’s hold and turned to look at him. “I had that under control,” I told him. “He’d just apologized and then you scared the crap out of him.”
He was completely unrepentant as he shrugged his broad shoulders. “You are talking to the wrong guy if you think you’re ever going to get me to feel sorry for any of the punk kids that terrorized you.”
Well, now. How could I get mad at him for that?
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN
“You can’t buy love, but you can pay heavily for it.”
~Henny Youngman
PRESENT
As much as it was torture to see Dante, it was always sort of inevitable. A fact of life. At some point we’d find each other, clash again, and run away, trailing blood in our wake.
But Nate was different. I hadn’t seen him in years, and in my mind I’d never thought I’d have to face him again.
Also, he’d never wronged me. There was nothing I could pin on him aside from my own guilt at how I’d treated him.
I didn’t know what to expect. But if I’d had to guess, him walking up and enfolding me in a big tight hug would have been far from the first thing I’d have come up with. And that’s exactly what he did.
I was returning to the theatre room after a trip to the restroom when I ran into him.
I didn’t know what to say to him. I didn’t know what to do.
“It’s been too long,” he murmured into my ear.
Still recovering from the shock of him, I was only just then returning his embrace.
“How are you?” I asked him softly.
“Not too bad,” he said in that almost delicate voice of his that hadn’t changed a bit. It was a voice made for reciting poetry, soothing and lyrical.
We pulled back and looked at each other. I smiled tremulously at him. It really was nice to see him, particularly nice since he didn’t seem to hate my guts like he probably should have.
He looked close to the same. His angular face was handsome, his features symmetrical. He’d always been a skinny kid and he’d grown into a slender but graceful man. He was tall but not towering at just under six feet.
His blond hair was longer. He wore it in a kind of artfully messy way where it fell into his face, but it looked like that was the design of it.
I brushed one silky strand behind his ear.
“I don’t even know how you do it, but somehow you’re more beautiful than ever,” he proclaimed with his sweet smile, touching my cheek. He had a way of saying things with such vulnerable sincerity that you couldn’t help but be moved.
How had I ever thought that this sweet soul should be relegated to the role of casualty? Why had I thought that was okay?
Because Dante.
Because war.
Still, I’d take it all back if I could, if I’d had any clue the extent of the damage I was doing.
Nate held both of my hands in his and just looked at me for a while. “I can’t tell you how good it is to see you,” he told me.
“Really?” I asked him.
“Really. Truly.”
I caught Dante watching us from across the room.
I tilted my head to the side. The man still managed to fascinate me. Right then he was losing it. His hands were in fists and he was trembling.
Nate followed my gaze. He jerked a bit when he saw who I was looking at. “He still won’t talk to me,” he informed me wanly. “Won’t come near me, and he says that if I try to go near him, I’ll be sorry. I believe him.”
“I’m sorry,” I stated simply.
“It’s not your fault. I made my choices. I’m accountable. I love him like a brother, but looking at it with a bit of perspective, I don’t think it could be any other way. There can be no peace between two men when they’re in love with the same woman.”
I flushed and looked away. “I’m sorry,” I repeated lamely, a wave of guilt washing over me.
“Don’t be. The past is the past, and I’m doing much better now, I promise.”
“Yeah?” I looked back at his face.
“Yes. I mean it. I’m doing well enough that I wouldn’t mind a phone call from you every now and then.”
I nodded slowly, still studying him. “All right. I can do that. I’d like that.”
His smile brightened, and he took out his phone. “Tell me your number. I’ll call and you can save mine.”
I spouted mine off, and a beat later, heard my phone vibrating in my little clutch that I had draped crossways over my torso.
“Sounds like I got it,” I told him. “I’ll be sure to save it.”
He held one of my hands in both of his. “We’ll leave it at that. I don’t want to agitate Dante any more than necessary. I hope to hear from you soon.”
“You will,” I promised.
We air-kissed cheeks, and he slowly moved away.
Dante avoided me like the plague after that.
I was fine with that. It was rare when I got to observe him from afar, so I took advantage.
He seemed particularly standoffish, and not just towards me. Or at least, the majority of it wasn’t. His family got the honors on this particular occasion.
The way he looked at his mother when she came near him was almost worth being here for. I got an absolutely diabolical kick out of it.
She was a level of bitch that I liked to refer to as fuck that.
As in, upon seeing her, your best option was to say ‘fuck that’ and flee in the opposite direction.
Even at a funeral. Especially at a funeral.
I wasn’t sure what she’d done lately, the sky was the limit with her, but she seemed to have permanently alienated her only child.
I wasn’t surprised. She seemed to me to be capable of anything.
I honestly didn’t think I’d have a hard time avo
iding her. She hated to acknowledge that I even existed.
I didn’t factor in the one annoying little detail.
I had something that she wanted now, and of course she’d figured it out right away.
She strode right up to me so suddenly that I didn’t even have escape as an option.
Adelaide Durant was hell on wheels disguised as a delicate flower of a woman. She was pale and petite with masses of pitch black hair and eyes the same ocean blue as her son. She had an ageless beauty that seemed to take less blows from time than was fair. If the smooth lines of her face hand been made of karma, she’d look like a withered old hag by now.
Her hobbies were golfing at the country club, playing chess, and ruining lives.
She was a master manipulator. Like mother, like son.
“Give me back my ring.” She got right to the point, her tone sharp with impatience.
She thought she could still intimidate me.
Didn’t she know she had nothing left to damage me with? She couldn’t hurt me anymore with Dante. He wasn’t my soft spot to wound anymore.
I smiled. Over my dead body would she get that ring in her clutches. “It was never yours. It was Gram’s, and she gave it to Dante, who gave it to me.”
“Give it back to Dante. It’s not right for you to keep it. Even someone as low-born as yourself should know that.”
I shrugged and gave her a rueful smile. “Nope. I guess I’m too low-born even for that.”
“You’re a fool if you think I will let that stand. Don’t you know anything? I never lose, especially not to a piece of trash gold digger like you.”
I looked at Dante, who’d just walked up behind her. “It looks like your son wants a word with you. I’ll leave you to it.” I gave him a bright smile. “Excuse me. I apparently have some gold digging—things—to do.”
Without an ounce of remorse I escaped to the theatre room.
*****
The screen in the theatre room had started to show a documentary about Gram, one of the few docs about herself that she actually liked.
Currently some TV producer was being interviewed. He’d just been asked about when Gram met Grandpa.
I had that story memorized. It’d been one of her favorites.
She’d been a bratty starlet who was too jaded to believe in love. He’d been the heir and grandson of the man who had founded one of the most successful department store chains in the states.
He’d set eyes on her at an industry party and become instantly smitten.
Here’s where the producer being interviewed went into detail about how Gram lit up a room, how she drew people to her like bees to honey, especially men.
But Grandpa hadn’t been just any man. He was beautiful. He was larger than life. And, after hearing her tell one of her famous stories to a crowd at the party, he was determined to make her his.
According to Gram and the pictures I’d seen, he was the near spitting image of Dante, so it was easy for me at least to see why she hadn’t been able to resist him.
And his courtship of her had been famously tumultuous.
Gram herself was interviewed on the doc at that point, with a soundbite about Grandpa. “He was the most determined, stubborn, ruthless son of a bitch I ever met. I didn’t stand a chance from the moment he decided he was in love with me,” she told the interviewer, followed by her delightful laugh.
My eyes filled at the sound.
“And when did he decide he was in love with you?” the unseen interviewer asked.
She laughed again. She was at least sixty in the video but still vibrant, still beautiful, still absolutely gorgeous with vitality. “Well, the first time he set eyes on me of course. Have you seen me?”
Even the interviewer was laughing at that and I was smiling through my tears.
“How did he court you?” they asked her.
“You name it. I couldn’t even walk into my house because of the flowers for a good three months. Little gifts sent to me everywhere I traveled, little thoughtful things that let me know he had bothered to learn my tastes. And of course some not so little things,” she wiggled her brows, “well they were little, but they came in light blue boxes from Tiffany’s if you know what I mean. But the gifts were just a small part of it. They were thoughtful and cute, but it was the man himself that was impossible to resist. He gave me his time, and insisted I give him some of mine, which wasn’t easy to arrange at that time, but we did it. And then—the way he looked at me when I told a joke, the way he smiled, and laughed, and always had a comeback that surprised a giggle out of me.”
“How did he win you?”
“By making me fall for him. How else? There are not many men that love the way he did. I just don’t think many humans are capable of that kind of devotion, but once you get a taste of it, especially if you’re a vain thing like me, it’s completely addictive. I didn’t stand a chance. He made me less jaded, less insecure. He softened me in a way that I needed at that point in my life. The industry has been wonderful to me, don’t get me wrong, but just then the harsher aspects of it were turning me brittle. He brought me back.”
I quietly got up and left the room.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT
“Love is the whole and more than all.”
~E.E. Cummings
PAST
We were in my grandma’s trailer, on the sofa getting hot and heavy again, and every farther bit we went only led to more. It was a one-way street, the progression of it. Once the top was off, it came off every time, once the bra was off, it came off whenever we were alone.
I was straddling Dante and rocking against him as he felt me up, kneading at my flesh, and soon that was not enough either.
I pulled my mouth away.
He let me, but I could tell that he really, really didn’t want to.
I smiled at him and took my shirt off.
His breaths grew into jagged pants, and I loved the way his hungry, adoring eyes drank in the sight of me.
To reward him I took off my bra.
“Jesus,” he muttered before bending down and taking one sensitive tip into his mouth.
This I could hardly take. I needed something, more, anything, but couldn’t articulate any of it because I wasn’t quite sure what it was.
So I just kept rocking on top of him while he licked and sucked at my sensitive breasts, his hands cupping them, kneading them, feeling at every inch of flesh I’d bared until he had it measured and memorized, all the while making noises like he was losing his mind.
Eventually he laid me on my back and brought his lips back to mine.
“Take your shirt off,” I told him. I needed to feel his skin against mine, his chest against my breasts while they were still wet from his mouth.
He straightened and did it, then paused for a moment, his hands going to the button of his pants.
I’d known he was growing by the day, getting less lean and more bulky, but it wasn’t until then that I saw just how muscular he was now. Looking at him then I saw not a trace of the boy I loved. Instead I saw the man he was becoming. A man I knew even then that I’d spend my life being infatuated with.
I watched unblinking, legs sprawled apart, wearing nothing but my shorts.
He squared his jaw and took his hand away then crawled back between my thighs still wearing his jeans.
I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or disappointed.
This was even better than before with him on top rubbing hard between my legs, our chests smashed together, his mouth hot and hungry on mine.
His hands explored me again, reaching every place they could with our mouths melded together.
He shifted off me and slid his fingers slowly, tentatively up my inner thigh.
I squirmed, hands in his hair, kissing him for all I was worth.
When I didn’t stop him, he reached higher, grazing his fingertips up into the legs of my shorts.
I stiffened a bit but still didn’t stop him.
/> My shorts were tight, and his big hand going into the leg hole made them tighter, but somehow he managed to get it in there and then he was grazing my sex lightly with his knuckles.
I was intimidated, but it felt good, so I rubbed myself tentatively against the top of his hand.
He moaned into my mouth and turned his wrist until he held me in his palm.
I rubbed and rubbed against him until his hand was slick from the contact.
“Jesus,” he muttered at me. “You’re wet.”
The way he said it, like it was so significant, was foreign to me, but his tone just about did me in.
He started pushing one of his thick, blunt fingers into me and I stiffened like a board, my nails digging into his scalp.
“Mmm, God, oh God,” he breathed at me, pushing the finger in deeper and deeper, until it started to hurt.
I whimpered when he just kept pushing. He stopped at my noise but didn’t pull it out.
He didn’t budge either, just stayed where he was, panting on top of me.
“Does it hurt?” he finally got out.
“A little. What are you doing?”
He moaned and started moving his finger, pulling it out slightly then moving it back in again, though not as deep this time. “Just tell me if you’re not ready, okay? I just want to feel you with my finger. I just want to push in a little deeper, okay?”
I was not ready, but I found myself saying, ”Okay.”
He pushed it deeper until he’d reached that spot, and he was hitting against a small barrier and the pain thrummed inside of me again. He moved his finger lightly from side to side, feeling at it, exploring me without delving any deeper.
I was sure we’d gone farther than I was ready for, but I couldn’t bring myself to stop him.
The desperate noises he was making as he felt me for the first time were intoxicating.
I’d have given myself to him right then just to keep him in that state.
For love. For passion. For calculation. Take your pick. Each one applied.
He started thrusting in and out, in and out, stopping just shy of the barrier, but it wasn’t the best angle with how his hand was placed and after a few frustrating minutes, he pulled it out with a curse.