Page 86 of Duty

He’d thought …

Maybe she’d call.

Maybe she’d come back around.

Maybe, maybe … maybe.

It killed him to let her walk out of his place like that with her head full of assumptions—not all of them wrong—and leaving them hanging in the fucking wind like she did. But what could he really do?

She was her own person. She could make her choices. He had to respect them even if all he had wanted to do was everything and anything but let her go.

So, here he was two months later, and he still hadn’t figured out how to let go of the blonde, tattooed woman he wasn’t allowed to have. Kind of fucked up in a way, but it was just one more thing on the pile of shit that had become Andino’s life.

He reached his front door, and hesitated to grab the knob because of the flyer stuck in between the crack in the doorjamb. He pulled it out, and his gaze drifted over the New Year’s Eve party announcement for a familiar business.

Safe Haven.

Yeah.

The world was having a good laugh at him.

Or God.

Someone.

It wasn’t unusual for clubs to print out thousands of flyers, and pay someone a set fee to go and tape the promotion to every door they could find within ten miles. It just so happened to be Andino’s fucking luck that his house was about ten blocks away from Haven’s club.

He looked over the details again, and considered …

Should leave her be.

She’s not like you.

Don’t let this life touch her, Andino.

His mind—as punishing as it was—happened to be right in a lot of ways. Haven was untouched by his life, and the mafia. She wasn’t like him in a lot of ways, but he found comfort in the fact that she was familiar enough that he wanted her.

God.

He wanted her.

Crumpling the flyer in his hand, Andino glanced down the street and watched the falling snowflakes fill the air in heavy, white sheets. His mind was the smart part of him—logical, in control, and always pushing to do the right thing even when it felt wrong to him. His heart, though, that was a whole other matter.

Thing was—Andino hadn’t even realized his heart had a fucking voice until Haven showed up in his life.

His heart wanted something different than his mind, of course.

It’d been two months.

He should leave her be.

Hadn’t she made her choice?

It was just too damn bad that Haven hadn’t allowed Andino a choice, too. That was the thing—there had been two of them involved in whatever they were, and only one of them made the decision to walk away.

That hadn’t been him.

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