“I mean… you seem like you’re beyond school. Too iconic for it.”
“Iconic?”
“Like you came from a different world—one far more exciting than mine.”
I press a long kiss to her forehead. “You’re fucking adorable, you know that?”
She blushes and snuggles into my chest, injecting a year’s supply of endorphins into my bloodstream.
My fingersacheto touch her. It would feel like the mostnatural thing in the world, but to her it isn’t. If I could kill Callum McAllister all over again for what he did, I would. But the fucker is dead, and the thing about homicide is, you can’t really go back and do it again—differently, more insidiously, or more violently. What’s done is done.
“Do you think you can trust me?” I whisper into her hair.
She’s still for a long time before she answers. “Yes.”
“Do you think you might one day let me touch you?”
There’s another long pause, then her response surprises me.
“Maybe. I’d like to try.”
My chest expands and I curl strands of strawberry blonde hair around my fingers.
“Soon then,” I say softly, not wanting to scare her.
I feel her mouth smile against my skin and my lids slide shut. Then we both fall back into a warm, languid slumber.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Pfeiffer
I wake again an hour later.The clock on the wall says it’s getting close to midday, and I need to get home to my father.
But, for a moment, I lie completely still, tucked against the warm breadth of Fiero’s chest, listening to the low rhythm of his breathing and the distant hum of Manhattan far below the windows.
The rest of the world feels suspended here—safe. Which is absurd, because there’s nothing safe about Fiero Bellucci. He’s one of the deadliest men in Manhattan. If I wasn’t convinced of that when everyone in this club first told me, seeing the machete he killed my uncle with was proof enough.
And yet, despite that, my body melts against his instinctively.
Strands of distant knowledge are connecting in my mind. The familiarity that bordered those early interactions with him are beginning to make sense. Even if my brain doesn’t remember much about the high school years, my body seems to.
You don’t recognize me, do you?
The more I recall his question, the more unsettled I feel.ShouldI remember him? Were we friends? Were we more?
I frown slightly against his skin.
Berman High.
I try not to think about those years but his words followed me into sleep. Snapshots of moments reared their head in my dreams. Walking down the long busy hallways, the sound of laughter amidst lockers slamming. The smell of fries in the cafeteria. The secrets shared by girlfriends I never let get too close.
When I think really hard, other faces appear, piece by piece. It’s painful, but I let them come. Jason Marino was mostly unforgettable, so he emerges first. He was the loudest in class, with a booming voice that ricocheted off the walls. Brandon… I don’t remember his full name… he was always close behind, trying to grasp a bit of the attention that Jason drew.
I remember the girls more by their place in the hierarchy than by name. Apart from Sabrina Daly. She was the queen bee and used to be my best friend until my uncle started putting his hands on me and I shrank away from the world. She was always a little too obsessed with how she looked and being the ring leader. When I stepped back, a gaggle of girls filled my shoes—their names I can’t remember.
I picture the classroom, trying to recall where everyone sat, but all I picture is a sea of blurred memories.
I press my fingers into my eye sockets and try to rub them awake, then a flash of something forms in the recesses of my mind. An image. The back of the classroom. It was where the complicated kids sat. The ones who didn’t say much but watched and observed. I guess no one reallywantedto be at school, but there were those who came for the social climbing and the camaraderie, and then there were the ones who came because they had to.
