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“You really are the perfect woman, aren’t you?” he asks, his hand sliding up my back until it lands in my hair, gripping and tugging gently. I smile at him, my pretty siren’s smile, and then take what I want.
* * *
“Are you going to be here in the morning?” I ask, my voice sleepy, my head settling onto his chest. This bed is one of the few things I kept from my old apartment. It’s too big for the room, making it so I can barely walk, but with Dante’s large body next to mine, I’m happy I brought it. I can hear the deep breath he takes as he processes my question.
“One day, beautiful girl,” he says, and his words sound the way I feel. Let down.
“But not tomorrow?" I ask, but I already know the answer.
“Not tomorrow.”
“Why not?” I ask, and my eyes close, weights attaching themselves to my lids.
“Because I need to give you everything before that can happen.”
And when I wake, his side of the bed is cold, but the pillow I’m holding still smells like him.
Twenty-Six
-Lilah-
Two weeks. That’s how long this goes on. How long I’ve been sleeping with Dante in my bed. This mysterious man who comes at night and leaves in the morning. The man who has me sweating in my sheets, moaning his name, writhing, and then cuddling up into his side.
The man who is never there when I wake.
I should be used to it by now, this obscure back and forth. I’m not. I wake up lonely every damn morning, wishing I had the guts to demand he stay. Or at least put an end to it. I need to put on my big-girl panties and listen to my common sense instead of my vagina or, unfortunately, my heart.
But each night, I come home and pray he’s there, pray he comes before I go to bed.
There have been a few nights when I went to sleep without him beside me, sure that we were done, only to be woken up with his head between my legs, no time to even question how he got through my deadbolt or how I slept through the sound of him entering my apartment.
In my defense, most nights, as I’m driving home, I’m hyping myself up, ready to tell him this is over.
And then I’m in his presence again, and he’s pulling me into him and whispering that he missed me, and the world settles.
That feeling of home that I’ve never truly had settles.
“This is weird, isn’t it?” I ask, drawing lines in the hair on his chest. His hand stalls in my hair, and when I tip my head up to look at him, there is confusion on his handsome face.
“Weird?”
“This. Us.”
“Us.”
“Are we an . . . us?” Oh my god, this might be the most embarrassing moment of my entire fucking life, and I once barfed on a banquet table in front of dozens of high-profile donors when I was twelve. I had a fever, but my dad had a fundraiser, so he dosed me up with cold medicine and dragged me along.
On the bright side, he never questioned an illness again.
The hand in my hair moves, tightening, forcing me to look at him.
“There are a lot of things in this world you can question, fiorella. This? This is not one of them.” His lips press to mine gently, and the panic settles.
“Why do you only come at night?” I ask long minutes later after wondering if I should even do so, but the words come out before I can stop them.
He sighs, but not in a way that tells me he doesn’t want to answer or that he finds me annoying. Instead, it's in a way you sigh when you don’t know how to answer.
“I have meetings in the mornings." The words feel like a lie. A lie I’ve been forcing myself to buy, to overlook for two weeks. “I don’t want to wake you.”
