“Out.”
Sienna sits in my bed propped up with pillows. A book rests against her bended knees. She’s wearing a pair of dark-rimmed glasses.
I’m usually covered in finger paint with my hair pulled up into a ponytail. Oh, and glasses. Sometimes I wear glasses.
The memory of the night we shared before we knew the truth about each other bursts into my mind. A simple night. Onemeant only for us. No obligations, no pressure, just making each other feel good.
She’d been so carefree, so sweet and innocent.
Much like she seems now, reading through a thick book. With the only light in the room coming from the small lamp on the nightstand, it casts her in a golden glow.
I shut the bedroom door behind me, and instantly her body goes rigid.
“You’re home.” She looks at me with her large round eyes, even from behind the frames I can still see the sweetness of her.
I lean a hip against the dresser. “You’re reading.”
When she says nothing in response, I gesture to the book. “I thought we were stating obvious things.”
Her mouth kicks up a little at the side. Not enough to claim it as a smile, but it’s a start.
“I wasn’t expecting you. I’ll move my stuff.” When she adjusts her position, I see the massive piles of papers taking up my side of the bed, along with her laptop.
“What is all that?” I grab at my tie, loosening it and pulling it from my collar.
“Old notes from when I was taking the New York teacher licensing test.” She scoops it all up into one pile and puts it on top of the laptop, then brings it all to the dresser.
I flip the cover of the book she was reading over. “You’re studying for the Illinois test?”
“Yeah.” She leans back against the dresser, arms folded loosely over her stomach.
She’s wearing a thin pair of pajamas bottoms and a shirt with long sleeves. It’s a messy combination, especially coupled with her hair wild in the ponytail.
She’s gorgeous.
“I can get some substitute jobs right now, but if I’m going to go through all the background testing and everything, I might as well just get my license transferred over.” She shrugs.
“You don’t have to work.” I close the book, move it to the nightstand. “If you want to that’s fine, but you don’t have to. I’m going to take care of you.”
“Well, maybe if you could phrase that in a less mafia-enforcer sort of way, I would have a better chance of believing you.”
Her expression doesn’t change when she says it, but there’s a light in her eyes that makes me understand she’s teasing me. At least a little.
“I just mean what’s mine is yours. That’s how marriages work.”
“Not all marriages,” she says and there’s a sadness to it that makes me wonder what she witnessed growing up in the DeAngelo home.
Her brothers were real bastards. Despite any awful things I or my brothers may do, we don’t hurt innocents. Her family preyed on them. How much of that had she seen, been a part of?
“Have you been staying at your club these past few nights?” She asks, but there’s another question just beneath that one.
She wants to know if I was fucking around, have I been with anyone else while I’ve been staying away from home?
“I thought you didn’t care where I spent my time.” I sink onto edge of the bed, pushing aside the fluffy pillows she has piled up against the headboard.
“I don’t.”
“Liar.” I rest my hands on my knees. “That’s strike one.”
