I felt like a bottle of shaken champagne. The second I was uncorked, it’d be a mess of bubbly rage. “We don’t do this—”
“I just want to make sure you aren’t fucking this up, Con.”
“Me?” I gave a laugh because it was fucking ridiculous. “I’ve been going after this woman hard—”
“I think you were too hard on Isabella. I think you prematurely ended that relationship.”
“Asshole, I didn’t even know you at the time.”
“All I’ve heard is your side of the story, and I still think you’re in the wrong.”
“Wow,” I said as I shook my head. “Now it all comes out.”
“She didn’t know he was your brother and, of course, was so confused by the whole thing. She was fucking twenty-three—”
“I’m not going to rehash a decade-old relationship, Rocco.” It was dead and buried, and I’d moved on long ago.
“Why won’t you tell me?” he asked. “I thought we were closer than that.”
“Not saying we aren’t.”
“Then why?” he pressed. “Because you might be wrong?”
“Fuck you. I know what you’re doing.”
He sat up from the couch, forearms on his knees, leaning toward me with the coffee table between us. “Just fucking tell me.”
He wasn’t going to let this slide, so I decided to save us both the time and just tell him. So I shared the details of that afternoon,storming into her apartment and chasing off that little cunt like the pussy he was. And then what she said to me at the end of all of it.
Rocco was quiet when I finished.
“I’ve bent over fucking backward for this woman since I met her. One minute, she’s there with me, and then the next, she pulls away. I’m just fucking sick of it. So many women would be happy to take her place in my bed.”
“But you don’t give a shit about any of those women.”
“Well ...” I grabbed my glass and took a drink.
“You’re being too hard on her.”
“I didn’t ask your opinion!” I yelled, my voice reverberating off the coffered ceilings.
“Was her ex abusive? Did he hit her? Did he do anything to give you any indication that he was there to physically cause her harm?”
All I did was stare, fighting the urge to get up and punch him in the face.
“You didn’t storm in there because you were worried about her. You went because you were jealous.”
“I was not fucking jealous.”
“Jealous and fucking insane. You barked at him like a dog?”
I looked away. “You should have seen him run.”
“So this poor woman, who’s already nervous just getting into the car with a bunch of dudes and guns, has you storm into her apartment and verbally assault her ex who stopped by to deliver somepicturesshe’d left behind. And then you reveal that you’ve had a security team watching her for who knows how long? And you wonder why she was upset?”
I was gonna do it. I was gonna punch him in the goddamn face.
“Con.” He raised both of his hands slightly. “I don’t get you, man. You’re a smart fucking dude, but sometimes you get tunnel vision and you can’t see the whole picture. She said she wished you were normal in a moment when her way of life was under threat.”
