My hands went to my hips as I stared toward the dim garage, music floating out. “Take it…”
I was looking at the same place where I had spent many hours, but I was seeing it in a totally different light. Mitch had tried to make light of my parents’ relationship because it was different from his—he and Violet shared an easy-going relationship. He flirted. She flirted. His skin and her skin were not connected to a deeper part of the soul.
A man from the bar could slap her on the ass, and she and Mitch would laugh about it. If she was okay with it, he was okay with it—that type of fucking disrespect to not only her, but to him. To the union they shared.
It was different. A more modern-day approach.
Matteo and Marciano never truly accepted Mitch. They were cool with Violet and most of their children, but Mitch—he was on the outskirts of their approval. Maestro didn’t mind him. He didn’t love him either. Mitch was a distant part of our lives. I was the one who always saw things his way.
Until that moment.
When the fucking truth came crashing down on me.
I shared the same type of relationship with my wife as my old man shared with my mamma. One without the other made no fucking sense.
She couldn’t live.
I couldn’t live.
We lived only together.
Before that, we seemed to live to find each other.
Mitch would think the same of our relationship—it would draw too much trouble, it already had, and if it was too much trouble, it should end. Though years back, he and his brotherhad a falling out that didn’t end well for this brother. A lot of bitter feelings existed from childhood, but also from Violet.
My grandfather, Nonno, was the reason Mitch even had a marriage. If Nonno wouldn’t have given them an ultimatum, Mitch never would have fucking manned up and married his woman.
I crossed the street, slowing my pace to a jog, until I entered the dim garage. The air was cooler but still muggy. The concrete floors were shiny, and the incoming rays of the sun made them glisten, even though the rest of the room was overcast.
Mitch had a ’68 Mustang Fastback over the pit. He bought collectable cars that needed work, restored them, then flipped them for a profit. Violet was good at finding cars collectors wanted. The Fausti family included. The glistening candy-apple red Mustang he was working on was a surprise for my wife. She could keep it in Natchitoches, or we could take it to Wyoming.
My fingers slid along the slick paint job, imagining her cruising with the windows rolled down, her cowboy hat pressed to her head, her long hair waving in the wind, the radio turned up to some old country song she loved for me to sing to her as she sang along. Her tank top would showcase the freckles on her shoulders; her cut-off shorts would highlight how cut and firm her thighs were. The perfect spot for my hand to rest, our hands linked. My hand was massive compared to how slim her legs were. The end of summer air would be sweet with the scents of fresh cut grass and the leather of the seats. Her apple, pear, rose scent, sometimes with a citrusy zing, would float through the car, driving me fucking mad.
Mad enough to take a bite out of her myself.
A bite out of her juicy ass.
My mouth watered thinking about how she fucking tasted—so fucking sweet, and so mine. I could spend my life licking herfrom head to foot, spending most of my time between her legs as if it was a meal I would never tire of having.
Let the world call me mad.
I am fucking mad.
Mad over a woman who knocked down every wall inside of me with one look. The feeling of it was branded inside of my heart. How the world had exploded around me when our eyes met for the first time through the kaleidoscope of colors that haloed her.
The sensation of it was like the one I had when Guerriero would try to buck me off his back and to my demise. A stomach-plummeting fall of hundreds of feet down into the gorgeous Tyrrhenian Sea.
It fucking thrilled me.
The ride.
The race.
The ability to hold on when another man couldn’t.
“If that’s not a Brando Fausti face, I don’t know what is. Takes me back years, when we were your age. Not that your old man has changed all that much. He just has silver in a couple of places he didn’t have before. Not like me. I’m fucking crusty.”
I’d heard Mitch enter the garage but chose to ignore him, allowing the thoughts of my wife to run away from me—so I could give them all fucking chase, earning their place in my life.
