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I tried to ignore the cold pit in my gut. “Then where could he be?”
“Exactly.”
I sat down behind the big desk. I saw a photo in a frame of him, his father, and his siblings, their kids, and spouses, around a Christmas tree. There was a small wedding photo of who must’ve been his Mom with his father, by the looks of it, and beside that photo was the engagement ring he’d given me. I’d left it in Tessa’s car and she must’ve returned it to him.
I leaned over and picked it up and looked at it sparkling in the light.
Dario was in the doorway now, “I’ve gotta go outside and talk to someone. Stay out of trouble, please?”
“I will,” I told him as I put the ring back down. I stared at the picture of Tommy and his family around the Christmas tree. They were all smiling and looking happy, except him. He looked like he was forcing a smile for the camera but his eyes looked dark and broody. He looked like gangster Tommy in the photo, not ice cream parlor Tommy. I stared at the wedding photo of the young and pretty dark-haired woman in the white dress and veil standing beside the happy-looking youthful Thomas Ferrano Sr. I wondered if he was a criminal back then or if somet
hing changed him to become that way. I wondered what might’ve happened to Tommy to make him swing back and forth like a pendulum between good guy and bad guy. If he made it back could I find a way to keep it swinging in one direction versus the other or would that be totally out of my control?
** ** **
Sarah couldn’t talk me into more than a few bites of food for dinner. I just wasn’t hungry. I knew I hadn’t eaten much the last few days but how could I? I went to bed early, zoning out in front of the television and feeling myself drift before it was even dark outside.
The next day dragged, too. Dario was miserable. I heard him snapping at Sarah and at one of the guards. I hid out in the bedroom all day, trying to watch TV, read, I helped Sarah cook dinner. I tried to keep busy. I didn’t know what to think.
If Tommy was gone, what’d happen to me? If he was gone, how would I feel? I didn’t know how I felt about him. I felt numb about him, confused about him. I cried myself to sleep that night because I couldn’t cope. I couldn’t cope with the worry, the stress, the fear of the unknown, the flashes in my mind of him being sweet to me.
** ** **
“What’s this?” I heard in the dark, “Unauthorized sleepwear!”
I jackknifed straight up to sitting. Tommy was on his knees on the bed leaning over me, “You’re here,” I breathed and his lips were on my jaw and then my lips. He took my face in his hands and kissed me long and deep. I put my arms around his neck and he kissed me again and then backed up and then off the bed,
“I need a shower badly, baby. I’ll be back in five. Get naked!”
He backed up and threw his t-shirt over his head onto the floor and was undoing his pants as he headed to the bathroom.
I sat there in the dark, heart thumping loudly and then a minute later, without putting any thought into it, I padded to the bathroom and it was already filled with steam. I took off my pajamas and opened the shower door and stepped in behind him. I guess I had an inkling of how I was feeling after all.
Tommy
She was here, in the shower with me, voluntarily, happy to see me, her arms around me. I flinched at first as she’d come in so quietly it startled me when I felt her reach around and put both of her arms around my waist. She put her cheek on my back and squeezed.
Seeing her sleeping in my bed when I got home gave me the oddest most possessive but yet happy feeling, like the first time I’d come in and found her sleeping in my shirt but multiple-fold after all that had happened. Now she’d come to me in the shower. She gave my back a soft kiss. I put my hands on the wall to brace myself because I was a little overwhelmed at that. Then I felt her soaping up my back. I closed my eyes and absorbed it, all of it.
I was never so tired in my life but I just had to be inside of her. I turned around and got her front up against the wet shower wall and drove inside of her so fast and so hard that I saw a flash of shock in her eyes as I spun her and heard her gasp in surprise as I entered her. The sharp intake of breath was just enough to give me a little tiny bit of that rush I wanted, that I needed.
Tia
I wanted to take care of him the way he’d taken care of me the other night because I could see he was exhausted and filthy and I didn’t know if he was traumatized, too.
But now he was trying to consume me; it really felt like that. He was driving into me hard and kissing the back of my neck, holding my hair off to the side. The harder he pushed and grunted the tighter he pulled at my hair and it wasn’t easy to stay upright in the wet shower. I almost lost my footing and then he caught me and gently took me down to kneeling on the floor of the shower and he got back inside of me from behind and held onto a breast with one hand as he drove in over and over and then reached around and rubbed his middle two fingers around and around my clit.
It was hard on the knees and all I could do was brace my hands against the slippery wall, reaching up to hang onto the built-in soap dish, but I still went off quickly, feeling that awesome ripple throughout my body and a moment later he finished. For a moment we were both on the floor of the shower. He turned me around and then pulled me onto his lap and just held onto me. He was trembling. I wrapped my arms around him and put my cheek on his head and we stayed sitting on the shower floor like that for a long time before he stopped shaking and pulled us both to standing, reached up and soaped up his body and I shampooed his hair, up on my tiptoes watching him with his eyes closed and his lips parted as my fingers massaged his scalp. Then, after he got under the water and rinsed off, he grabbed me by the hips and pulled me against him and held me for another few minutes under the shower stream. After what felt like forever, he turned the tap off. We left the shower stall and wrapped ourselves in towels and then he took me by the hand and led me to bed.
I felt like I was too wet to be in bed but had no choice, really, because he pulled me to him and I think he fell asleep three seconds after his head hit the pillow. We slept under the blankets still wrapped in wet towels, with sopping wet hair, and wrapped around one another.
Tommy
When I’d gotten home at 4:40 AM my brother was still up, looking like shit and looking a bit flipped out since I walked into my own house with my gun drawn. I’d gotten smuggled across the border, taken a commercial flight home with a fake passport, and then hopped a cab to my storage unit, grabbed a gun, then cabbed it home and greeted Nino at the front gate with my gun drawn. I had to make sure all was okay at home. He’d let me in and tried to convince me that all was well to get me to put the gun away but I didn’t until I saw Dario. When I saw my brother sitting at the kitchen table I knew all was okay. For the moment, at least.
I’d wanted no one to know when I’d arrive, what flight I was on, when I was on my way. No one got to know anything until I got there. I wasn’t just being paranoid; I was being smart. Who knew who else in our organization had flipped to the enemy’s side and who would seek retribution for what I’d done at Castillo’s? I’d done the job I needed to do and it was done so now I could come home to her and to my empire. If I hadn’t felt like I’d earned this before, which I knew I’d already done, I certainly felt it’d be uncontested now. I saluted him; he put his phone down and looked relieved. I put my gun back into my waistband and I said, “Gotta go to bed, man. Tomorrow, okay?” He nodded, and smiled, “Welcome home, bro. She’s been anxious for you to get back.”
I’d smiled back and climbed the stairs.
