He nodded with a sexy smirk. “Yeah. I’d like that.”
Though I wasn’t enticing him for sex, I did still lean up towards him for a goodnight kiss. He immediately wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me close to him and lowered his face to mine. Standing so close, I could feel his heart pounding in his chest, and I wondered just how difficult it was for him to get through the night.
“Thanks again,” I said. “I know that this dating stuff isn’t easy for you, but--”
“Not in the past,” he said. “Dating you… That’s much easier.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” He kept me close to him as he talked. “I’m still unused to it, but I promise I’m working on it. Honestly, I’m afraid that once I get used to it, I’m gonna wanna whisk you all over the place.”
“All over the place whisking sounds fine with me,” I replied and he chuckled. “I’m gonna go before, you know, I won’t go.”
He nodded with an understanding look on his face. “I know what you mean.”
I craned up to take one more quick peck, then before things could gettooheated, I unlocked my bedroom door and slipped inside, already missing Gio when the door was closed to his gorgeous face.
It felt like I was up on cloud nine, or maybe even past it. Gio was such an unexpected presence in my life, and for as much as he was changing to meet me, I was changing too. I hoped that he could feel it.
Immediately, I kicked off my heels and pulled my cell phone out of my purse. I flopped down onto one of the couches in the living room and called Lorie. The fact that Gio actually admitted that he was my boyfriend was the kind of thing that I had to squeal about with my best friend. We still hadn’t spoken since I saw her at her apartment complex, and I knew she didn’tlovethe idea of me and Gio together, but now that some of the weeds had been cleared away from my understanding of out relationship, I was hoping I could be a little bit clearer about how I felt about him with her as well.
“Hello?”
“Hey!” I greeted. “How are you?”
“I’m doing okay…” The tone of her voice was dark and muted, almost like she didn’t want to be talking to me, but I couldn’t imagine that was the case. “What’s up?”
“Nothing much. I just got home from a date with Gio. Our first one actually,” I said.
She cut off a scoff as it was leaving her mouth. “Your first date in the entire three months you’ve been there? Aren’t you guys like… dating?”
“Yeah. I know things have been a little undefined and weird.”
“I’ll say. The first time you called me from his house, you were hiding the fact that you’d been kidnapped and taken there.”
That was technically true. I’d told her that I was dealing with an emergency and then called her back a few minutes later and wrote it off as a bathing suit emergency. It felt like years ago when it really had been just a few months. Why did it feel like I’d known Gio, and Milli, and even Tamryn so much longer than I had. Was it just because these people treated me so much more like family than my actual family did.
“I’m sorry about that,” I said. “The details aren’t important, things were just more complicated than I thought at first. Gio actually saved me from a really bad situation.”
“With your brothers?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m sorry for just throwing all that stuff at you about them, but I thought you deserved to have all the facts.”
“But I don’t,” she snapped. “I don’t have all the facts. You’re always giving me just enough information as you ask me to do these things I’m not comfortable with!”
“I’m sorry --”
“Are you?” She let out a sigh. “I don’t think you are, Avion. You’re an entirely different person than the person I knew. I mean… What are you even doing? You called to gab about your date with this guy like he’s just like any other guy?”
“He’s definitely not like any other guy.”
“It’s as if you don’t realize how dangerous these people are!”
Now it was makingmemad. I was trying to be patient with Lorie because Ihadthrown her into some pretty crazy situations, but if she thought I wasn’t taking it seriously, she was beyond wrong. “Lorie, you have no idea how much I realize how dangerous these people are. I’ve had Merrick Raines’ hand around my throat. I was shoved into the back of a car tied up by my own scarf! I was at that police raid the other day, and I nearly got shot, and a couple of weeks before that, I was just standing in Gio’s office and actuallydidget shot. I know exactly how dangerous these people are!”
“Then why are you staying with them?!” she yelled. “You’ve had multiple chances to escape, and you haven’t! If they’re that dangerous, you shouldn’t be there!”
“I’m here because you know who else is pretty fucking dangerous? My brothers! My father! My brothers actually tried to kill me and my father gave me to Gio as a collateral to satisfy a debt I’m sure he has absolutelynointention of paying! These people are no more or less dangerous than the ones I’m related to by blood. At least these people actually care about me!”
