I don’t know the details, but it’s obvious Angelo does, and whatever this man did to his wife earned him a meeting with me.
“You want him gone?”
“Yes,” Mariella answers. “But only when you’re up to it.”
“I’ll do it this weekend.”
“No.”
The sound of Gabi’s voice pulls my attention from the phone, and when I glance up at her, she’s scowling at me.
The entire room falls silent as we stare at each other, and admittedly, it gives me a hard-on thinking about how she frets over me.
If it were anyone else, I’d be irritated. But if she’s concerned, it means I’m not completely dead to her.
“What’s the matter?” I lean back in my chair, tossing her a lazy smile. “Worried about me?”
“No.” She blushes. “It’s just common sense. You aren’t?—”
She stops herself before she says I’m not up to it in front of everyone else.
“It’s just not a good idea right now.”
“Do you have better ideas for how I should be occupying my time?”
“Okay, enough.” Mariella shoots me a look. “We’ll discuss this later, Romeo. Does anybody else have anything they’d like to address right now?”
Gabi averts her gaze while everyone else agrees there’s nothing else to discuss.
Mariella adjourns the meeting, and Gabi pulls out her phone, typing on it furiously. Mine vibrates in my pocket a moment later, but I don’t have to check to know she’s textinghim.
While everyone else catches up on idle chatter, she slips from the table. I silently will her to look at me, but she doesn’t.
Instead, she gives me her back, walks down the hall, and shuts her door.
15
GABRIELA
I lie in bed,staring up at the ceiling as the memory of Romeo kissing me plays through my mind on repeat. A well of unwanted feelings springs up inside me, and I try to shove them back down.
He didn’t just kiss me. He really kissed me.
And I responded.
Guilt and confusion war inside my head as I try to reason it away.
Romeo likes to mess with me, but it didn’t feel like that was what he was doing. If he were messing with me, it would have been extraordinarily cruel, even for him. But the thought that it could be anything else makes it hard to breathe.
My heart remembers what it felt like when he broke it. I can’t survive that again. There’s no way I can even entertain the possibility of putting myself through that a second time.
The only logical thing to do is avoid him and forget it ever happened. But for some reason, that thought makes me feel equally unsettled.
There’s also Eros to consider.
Even though he’s been ghosting me, we have something, though I’m not quite sure how to define it.
He’s said things to me that transcend our casual relationship, like the fact that he doesn’t share. Or that I belong to him, and he’s the only one who gets to have me.
