Page 147 of A Dangerous Kind of Love

“Do you even watch baseball?” I ask, not looking at her.

“It doesn’t matter. I want to hang out with my friends.”

“And that includes Trenton?” I finally glance at her, then back to the road. “The same guy you were hanging all over at the club?”

She lets out a breath, frustrated. “Oh, get over yourself. It was a hug, and I hadn’t seen him in a long time. We’re just friends, and you know it.”

She pauses.

“And if I remember correctly, that night very much ended in your favor and many nights since then.”

I exhale, dragging a hand down my face.

“You’re right,” I say. “I’m sorry. I’m a jealous bastard.”

“I recognize that,” she says, her voice softer now, “but if you want me to keep believing you’re the guy I think you are, you’ve got to let up a little bit, okay?”

I nod, my throat tightening just slightly. She’s right. I can’t be Mr. Amato with her. I have to be Michael.

“And anyways,” she adds, “you’re going to be out of town on Thursday, right?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I’ll be up in San Francisco.”

“Okay.”

She shifts closer, her hand moving to the back of my neck, her fingers brushing along it in a way that pulls me out of my head. She doesn’t say anything else, just sits there, eventually reaching over to turn the radio on and singing along as though everything between us has settled.

When we pull into the garage, she waits. I come around and open her door, and when she steps out, I take her hand. In the elevator, I glance over at her.

“Are you mad at me?” I ask.

“No. You apologized. Why would I be mad?”

I shrug. “You have every right to be.”

She looks at me a second before answering.

“I don’t want to be mad at you, Michael.” She sighs. “I like having you in my life. You make me happy.”

I nod, but I can’t hold her gaze for long, not when she’s looking at me like that. Because I lie to her every day. She doesn’t know who I really am, what I actually do, or the things I’ve built my life on, and every day I don’t tell her, it gets harder. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I know eventually she’ll find out.

The next few days don’t ease up. They get worse. Every time Luca or Marco walks into my office, it’s another problem tied back to Donnelly. Harbor Street keeps getting delayed because inspectors suddenly don’t want anything to do with the project.

Two shipments get held at the docks longer than they should’ve been. One of the warehouse supervisors swears somebody asked questions about our unloading schedules before disappearing the next day.

None of it is enough on its own to cause real damage, but together it starts feeling intentional. That’s the problem. One issue is coincidence. Three starts looking organized.

Luca and Marco are in my office constantly with the door shut while we go over the same names, the same schedules, and the same timelines, trying to figure out where the leak is coming from. Every conversation ends in the same place: somebody close enough to my organization is talking, and we still don’t know who the fuck it is.

I should already have answers by now. Instead, the pressure keeps building. People at the docks are getting nervous. Harbor Street is turning into a headache. Shipments that normally move clean are suddenly getting slowed down just enough to be noticed. Nothing catastrophic has happened yet, but that almost makes it worse. Somebody is pushing, and every day we don’t figure it out gives them more room to keep doing it.

It leaves me restless in a way I don’t tolerate well. There’s nothing to act on, nothing to shut down, nothing to put my hands on and end. That kind of thing doesn’t stay at work. It follows me home, sits under my skin, waiting for somewhere to go, and then I walk through the door, and she’s there.

Katie doesn’t ask anymore. She doesn’t need to. She’s in my house every night. Her things are everywhere now, mixed in with mine, her presence impossible to ignore. She looks at me the second I walk in, and it’s immediate. There’s no hesitation or distance. She’s in my arms. That’s all it takes.

I don’t ease into it. I don’t give myself time to think. My hands are on her the second she’s close enough, pulling her into me, backing her up until she has nowhere to go but into me. She gives it right back every time.

Every night this week, I’ve had her exactly how I want her. I take my time with her, make sure she feels it, make sure her attention stays right where I put it. On me. On my hands. On my mouth. On the way I say her name when she starts to lose focus. She responds to it every time.