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He sits on the bed beside me and hands me something. I take a deep breath. Shut my eyes. Force myself to open them again.
Moment over. I can’t delay the inevitable anymore.
I accept the envelope without looking inside. I don’t need to look to know what this is. My last payment. For our last encounter.
“Your future is in there, Corbella,” he says, with a nod at the envelope between us. Yet neither of us is willing to tear our eyes from the other. “This is it for us. We’re done now.”
I knew it was coming; I’d been bracing myself for it ever since I came back to my senses. And yet hearing that tears a whole new hole inside me. My heart feels like it’s bleeding out within my chest, this hurts so badly.
But I won’t let it show. I owe him that much. He has enough to deal with now.
“Thank you,” I murmur, turning away from him, pushing off the bed. I need to leave while I still can, before I lose it entirely.
“Look in the envelope, Cor,” he says.
Still not meeting his eye, I tear it open. Pull out a check.
Then I freeze in the middle of his bedroom, naked and still damp with sweat from our exertions, and not even caring what I look like, because my brain is overloading with confusion.
The check is for one million dollars.
I spin around, mouth open, gaping at him. “Gio…”
“That’s everything you need. To pay back your stepfather, get yourself out of debt.”
My head is shaking. It takes me a moment to realize that, and another moment to force my vocal chords to work again. “Gio, I can’t accept this–”
“You can. You have to.” He locks eyes with me, narrowing his. “If you don’t, I’ll just wire the money automatically anyway. I have a direct deposit set up, if you recall.”
My cheeks flush. “But…” He watches me without response, waiting for me to finish. I don’t even know where to start. All I can think to ask, after the silence between us stretches thin in anticipation, is, “Why?”
I can’t hold the tears back any longer. It’s all too much. His generosity, his care for me, the unfairness of our situation, the horrible reality that this is the last time I’ll ever see him, ever look deep into those dark eyes of his and lose myself in his gaze. The tears spill over and trace down my cheeks, even as I clutch the envelope to my chest.
“Why do this for me, Gio?” I ask again, still crying, shaking my head, unable to understand.
In one smooth motion, he closes the distance between us, folds his hands around my shoulders to hold me steady. “Why are you crying, Cor?” he counters, his brow knit in confusion.
It takes me a moment to clear my throat enough to answer. While he waits, Gio pulls me into a tight hug. That doesn’t help. I press my face into his chest and take deep breaths, until I have this surge of angry emotion under control.
“I just…” I swallow hard and draw back enough to look up at him fully. “It’s our last time together. After this, we won’t be client and escort anymore, won’t see each other, and I just realized… I’m about to lose the one man I never expected to fall in love with.” I close my eyes, wincing at the admission.
But instead of backing away like I expected, Gio tightens his arms around me. Lifts me off my feet, and kisses me full on the lips, hard, like he’s forcing all the bad feelings away.
When we break apart, I’m staring at him in even more shock than when he handed me a million dollar check.
“Cor.” He shakes his head, laughing. Then he kisses my cheeks. Kissing away the tears still glistening there, I realize. “I love you, but sometimes you can be completely obtuse.” He grins.
I blink hard, frowning. “But you said…”
“I said this was our last night as escort and client. We’re done. I’m paying off your debt–so that you can be free of those shackles.” He touches my cheek lightly, fingers tracing my cheekbone. “I do enjoy tying you up, Corbella, but I don’t want this pretense between us. I don’t want to pretend this is purely a business deal. I’ve fallen for you, too. I want to make this thing between us real.”
There are tears at the corners of my eyes again, but these aren’t sad tears. My voice sounds choked when I respond. “You mean… You’re saying…”
“We can be together now. Truly together, in a real relationship. No more escorting.” He leans in to rest his forehead against mine. We’re so close that I can make out every change of color in his iris, the dark brown that fades to little sunbursts of yellow near the center. “Be with me, Cor. Truly with me.”
“Yes,” I whisper. But that doesn’t seem like nearly enough. “Yes, yes, yes,” I repeat, louder each time, until he’s laughing and I’m shouting. I wrap my arms around his neck, reach up to kiss him, and he lifts me off my feet again as we both sink into that kiss.
Just like that, my entire world changes. The worst thing that ever happened to me, it turns out, led to finding the best man I never saw coming. Already, I feel secure in his arms, knowing that no matter what life throws at me next, I have the best possible man I could ask for beside me, ready to withstand the storm at my side.
When we break away from the kiss, I leave the envelope on the nightstand. I’ll send it to my stepfather tomorrow. Clear this debt hanging over me once and for all. Tonight?
Tonight, I am all Giovanni’s. And judging by the devious smirk on his face, and the way he’s shoving all the toys off the bed to make room for us both to sprawl across it, I’d say he has more than a few celebratory ideas of his own to show me just how completely his I am…
Epilogue
I sit at the back of the coffee shop, watching the new kid behind the counter, the one who took my job 6 months ago. Diana says he’s great at the gig, though of course, she misses having me around to gossip with 24/7. I moved out of her place last month, into Gio’s irresistible mansion of a house. She told me she didn’t blame me, but I could tell by the way she kept hugging me as I packed that she was sad to see me go.
I’ll miss my roomie too, though of course, I have absolutely no regrets about moving into Gio’s. He’s been more than a dream–he’s been a godsend.
I take a slow sip of my café latte, reminiscing with vindictive pleasure about the day after Gio’s declaration of love. When he handed me that check and I signed it over to my stepfather. The look on Anthony’s face was priceless. Literally worth a million bucks to watch him gape at that check, bug-eyed.
That expression tided me over for
the past few months. All throughout the divorce, once Gio and I met with Mom and explained exactly what a horrible person Anthony was. All through the proceeding threats he sent us–Anthony might be well connected in the underworld, but Gio has connections of his own. More than enough to keep us safe from that psycho.
But what was even better was the feeling of watching his arrest footage on the evening news just a few days ago.
Apparently that asshole was a little too impressed by how quickly I made back the million I owed him. He decided to step up his game from pharmaceuticals and get into the sex trade business. Specifically, trying to buy women to sell. Luckily, one of the first girls he tried to “recruit” (by drugging her and taking her to a hotel room where he’d auction her off, no less) turned out to be an undercover cop specifically planted to try and catch assholes like him.
Not going to lie, I really enjoyed watching the news footage. Over and over again. The stunned expression on Anthony’s face as the cops led him, cuffed, into a police cruiser, was very familiar.
The only thing I regret, if I regret anything, is that Mom had to be dragged through the middle of this. She very quickly saw that we were right about him, but I wish he hadn’t broken her heart along with all the other lives he broke.
Speaking of Mom. I glance at the clock over the coffee shop door. Weird. She was supposed to meet me here half an hour ago. I offered to pick her up on my way over from Gio’s, but she insisted that she’d make it to the coffee shop on her own, since she had some errands to run first.
Oh well, maybe those ran overtime.
I’m still daydreaming about how enjoyable it was to see someone get what they truly deserved, when the bell above the shop door tinkles. I glance up, then tilt my head in confusion at seeing Diana and my mother walk in arm-in-arm. Of course they’re friends–Mom calls Diana her second daughter–but I don’t understand why they’re both here, when Di doesn’t work until Friday.
I stand up to hug them both, and shoot Di a strange sideways look. “Did you pick up an extra shift?” I ask as I slide back into my seat, and Mom takes hers beside me. Diana pulls up a spare chair and plops down next to us.
