I can’t move on until Carlos’s killer or killers are found.
Hands grasp my wrists and bring my arms around a thick waist. A finger skims over my bottom lip. I blink and lift my head. Bobby stares back. Large palms cup my face, and he dips his head. Time slows. My thoughts fade. Bobby’s eyes are all I see. I can’t think. I’m speechless.
“Remember what happens when you overthink? When I leave you speechless?” He moves closer. His pupils dilate. His thumb caresses the arch of my cheek.
I open my mouth to say, “I do.”
His mouth on mine takes the words from me and robs me of breath. I slump into his embrace like my bones have turned into jelly. My arms circle his neck. Bobby deepens the kiss and swallows my moans.
“I need you,” I murmur between our kisses. “Please, Bobby.”
I’m needy. Desperation lines my words. I couldn’t give a care anymore. I’m not my mom, looking for her next hit, her next high. I get up every day, even when I’d rather drown in my sadness and memories of Carlos or be weighed down by regret for what happened to Braxton. I get out of bed and attend my classes. I go to work. I volunteer at the community center. I am not needy or desperate.
I’m in love with a man I shouldn’t be with, and it kills me that my love for Bobby could be his death sentence. I have to see my father. He needs to know I’ll never visit, and I’ll send back every plushie he’s ever sent me if he ever hurts Bobby. I’ll tell Gwen about us and hope and pray that she’ll forgive us. What’s that saying? It’s better to ask for forgiveness than for permission?
What’s done is done.
I’ll bring Bobby with me to Sunday brunch and ask Ty and the crew for their forgiveness, too, but I’ll never ask for unanimous approval.
Love doesn’t need a vote. Like José said, I’m a grown woman. I’m not that sixteen-year-old girl who overdosed on her mother’s drugs. I’m not that seventeen-year-old girl who distracted a guy with her happiness, and he missed the curve in the rain squall. Having straddled life and death when I OD’d and when Braxton crashed the car, I can handle everyone’s judgment and disapproval over who I choose to fall in love with.
Ty said the doctors told him that I coded twice from blood loss during surgery. Long bone fractures can cause significant blood loss. Who knew? Then I heard, “Live for me, Ever.” The words were garbled at first. The other times, the person’s voice was hoarse or the words hitched, like the person had been crying.
My eyes fluttered open. Carlos’s face filled my vision. “Live for me, Ever.” He repeated the words. Tears fell from his eyes as he sat next to my hospital bed.
“Why do you care so much? You barely know me,” I asked, my throat scratchy from the ventilator tube that kept me breathing until I came out of anesthesia. Then, when I came to after I’d overdosed. The doctors pumped my stomach and kept me from descending into unconsciousness again with reversal drugs.
“One day you’ll save a life. Live, Ever.”
Except I couldn’t save him. He saved me, and I failed him.
I’m floating. Moving. A door opens. Light fills the bedroom. I’m set on my bed, my weight depressing it. Plushies pile on me.
Bobby tenderly picks up each of my father’s gifts and stacks them on the floor and against the large bookshelf across from the foot of my bed. How he has them stacked is . . . Laughter shoots from me. We’ll have an audience for our lovemaking.
Bobby’s lips quirk. “Not an obsession, sweetness. You definitely like plushies.”
“Gifts from my father,” I admit. “His men leave them on the back porch, inside my car, or in Gage’s truck. They’ve been doing this since I was born.”
“He loves you.” Bobby gets on the bed and brackets his arms alongside my head.
I skim my finger over the scar on Bobby’s eyebrow. “My father is a dangerous man.” I lift my head and tell him something I’ve never told anyone. “He was an enforcer for the McCabe family. My great-great-grandfather was a McCabe. My grandmother married an Italian. My father was recruited. Loyalty means something to the McCabes. They’re indebted to my father for doing their dirty work. He has his own men who have sworn loyalty to him, in the McCabe name,” I say near Bobby’s ear, afraid the walls could be listening and would pass on my confession to any of my father’s men who stop by the rental unannounced and hiding in the shadows.
“Am I supposed to be scared shitless?”
“Yes.” Why wouldn’t he be? “I’m not telling you a clean and wholesome bedtime story. I’m giving you the violent version where characters are missing their limbs and their heads!”
Bobby kisses my nose. I turn from him. His tenderness will not placate me. “He’ll kill you, Bobby.”
“If he does, he wouldn’t be an honorable man. Honor is important to him. So are his promises. He gave me his permission to see you, Ever.”
“What?!” I push him off me. “When? When the hell did you visit him? Why didn’t you tell me? Why would you risk your life like that?” I get off the bed and point a finger at him. “One of these days, your overconfidence will get you killed.”
Overconfident. Dressed and looking stunningly handsome and important in a blue suit. He was in Ravenna for a business trip. Ravenna.
That’s where my father is.
I know, baby.
