Page 29 of Revere: A Legacy Novel

His gun holster—and the Eagle inside—were set alongside the items before he pulled off his dress shirt. He discarded his pants to the bed, too, knowing the suit needed to go into the dry-cleaning bag. Once he was standing in nothing but boxer-briefs, he headed for the attached bath, needing hot water pounding down on his tired muscles.

It was a hell of a long day running from one side of New York to the other non-stop. Mostly, Cross liked what he did. Despite wavering between becoming a made man, or exclusively running guns when he was younger, he ended up with a happy medium. One he was fine with, and usually managed well. To an extent. It was still a lot of work; he was still exhausted a lot of the time.

It was also worth it.

He was good at both.

He figured that outweighed long days, short nights, and the stress that sometimes came along with it all.

Cross turned on the shower, and let the water heat up as he pulled a soft, white towel from under the counter. Standing straight, he caught his reflection in the mirror.

Rarely did he see his own face anymore.

He always saw two other things first.

One, the tattoo on his ribcage, and the scripted words that forever reminded him of where his heart would always be. L'amore é forte come la morte. He could stare at the words for far longer than he should be comfortable with, but that was only because they didn’t have to be comforting words to be true. Love wasn’t always comforting, after all.

And two, the scar on the top of his left shoulder. The healed wound had taken a good few millimeters out of his shoulder, leaving him with an indented scar that he could rest his finger along in the groove. It had faded a bit from the nasty red gash it had once been straight through his olive-toned skin. Now, it was more of a pink. While it didn’t hurt most of the time, it could still be tender to the touch when he was thinking too much about just how he had gotten it.

The only bullet ever shot at him, though it never killed him.

At the time, Cross had almost wished it did.

The noise of the shower droned on, almost making Cross miss the sound of his phone’s beep of an incoming message. He could have left the text to wait until he was done his shower, but he was supposed to be meeting up with Zeke in the morning for breakfast. Just in case his friend was canceling, Cross wanted to know if sleeping in was a good possibility.

He plucked the phone up off the nightstand to see a contact name scroll across the screen that made him smile. C.M. Catherine’s contact. He only ever gave people initials in his phone as their contact name, and sometimes their nicknames, as that just made people confused should they get a look at his list.

Unfortunately, Catherine’s text was not smile-worthy.

Not at all.

No on the date, Cross, it read.

He rubbed at the corner of his mouth with the pad of his thumb as he read the message a second, and then a third time. He could have responded—asked why, even. Instead, he put the phone back on the nightstand.

Sure, it sucked.

Really fucking sucked.

Still, if there was anything he knew about Catherine, it was that nobody was going to force that woman to do anything she didn’t want to do until she was ready to do it. Him, included.

She needed time.

He had already waited seven years.

What was a little more?

“Well, this is a strange sight,” came a familiar voice.

Catherine looked over her shoulder at the woman who entered the office, and smiled. “Oh?”

“Usually for our talks, you would be on the floor or staring at a wall. Never, ever sitting upright and waiting for me, Catherine.”

“Okay, that’s not entirely true, Cara.”

Her old therapist smiled as she took a seat on the chaise opposite to Catherine. “You’re right; I’m just teasing. How are you?”

“Really good,” Catherine said, “for the most part.”