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Reality hovered just on the edge of our bubble, threatening to pop it and the safe haven Lino's home had become for me. So when he tucked me into the front of his body, moving with mine to the edgy pop song I knew he probably despised, I didn't fight it.
I settled in against him, letting him guide me through the motions that didn't come naturally to me. My musical ability as a singer hadn't translated to rhythm.
"I want to sell your house," he murmured in my ear. "You don't need it now that you live with me. We can get you a good price in this market." Seduced by the movement of his body behind mine, there was no fight left in me when I murmured to him.
"Okay." It wasn't like I wanted the house where I'd been raped, anyway. It wasn't a battle worth fighting for.
Lino was.
And I intended to fight.
Twenty-Two
Samara
Lino sighed as he stood from his place in the chair at the island when the doorbell rang. He seemed determined to get some work done, avoiding me where I sat on the couch reading in favor of being in the kitchen. It was unusual for him, considering the way my stomach had started cramping up, and the separation left me feeling unusually teary. It neared the point that a jewelry commercial could set me off. I knew what loomed on the horizon, and I hated it as much as any woman. I could see him through the arched doorway, but only if I really turned my body to look at him. I did it more often than I liked to admit, enjoying the way his forehead scrunched just the slightest bit as he focused on whatever consumed his time.
I could only imagine what that was. Yavin kept me in the dark as much as Lino did, but I also wasn't totally naive or idiotic. I knew they were criminals, or at least, connected to criminals. I hoped they kept their hands clean, but the best way for me to help them through whatever they did do was to stay ignorant and give them a respite from all that. Knowing the truth, I worried I would lose that for Lino. That he would no longer see me as separate from the life that I knew often weighed on him and made those distinguished lines form at the outer corners of his eyes sooner than they probably should have.
They did nothing to detract from his breathtaking looks, and somehow in spite of them he didn't look any older than he actually was. I just knew him well enough to recognize them as they formed, because in all my life, he was easily my favorite person to look at. My favorite sight in the world, and I loved that he had become the first thing I saw in the morning and the last thing I saw at night.
"Samara baby! Where are you?" Ivory’s friend Sadie shrieked, giving Lino a hasty kiss on the cheek as she hurried into the house and left him floundering at the door momentarily.
"What did I do?" he asked the ceiling, closing the front door. "Seeing as you have a guest to keep you entertained, I'll just move this to my office and give you some privacy," Lino said, turning to me. He glared at Sadie in fake annoyance, but the warmth he gave me when he strolled into the living room and kissed me briefly let me know that he was happy I had a friend to socialize with. Someone checking in on me.
"I can’t believe you didn’t call me! I had to hear the news from Ivory when I’ve been rooting for the two of you for decades, I tell you.”
“It’s been a crazy few days,” I admitted, rubbing a hand over the back of my neck. With my hair tied up into a bun on top of my head and my glasses on my face, I felt disoriented. Sadie somehow always looked flawless, even when she showed up without makeup.
“Alright bitch you’re forgiven, show me the ring!" she squealed, flopping down onto the couch next to me. She snatched the book out of my hands, sliding the bookmark off the coffee table into it in a very considerate move that kept me from clawing her face off. Then she turned my hand over, staring at the three bands on my ring finger. "Oh my God they're beautiful," she whispered.
"Aren't they? He did good."
"Well duh, only the best jeweler for the Bellandi's I tell you. How are you liking married life?"
I laughed in her face, because aside from the rare kisses and the cuddling at night, nothing had changed between Lino and me. He was everything I could ever want in a partner, but then, he always had been. "It's good. I mean, I'm sure you know that it wasn't exactly normal circumstances, but we make the best of it. Hopefully we can eventually take it to that next level, but for now it works."
"You haven't had sex?" she hissed. "I thought for sure you would have bagged and tagged that shit by now girl!"
Shaking my head with a laugh, I decided to admit the truth to Sadie. Given her occupation, there was something I'd been meaning to ask her, and I suspected that it would require honesty from me. Unfortunately. "We will. I just think I need time to get there. He's giving me that time, but I don't know how to tell him when I decide I'm ready."
"You need time to get there? Samara, you have wanted to fuck that man since you hit puberty," Sadie teased, studying my face when I didn't laugh. It wasn't like what she said was untrue in any way. I had, even if it hadn't been quite so casual as Sadie made it sound.
I'd been obsessed with him. As a teenager, every time I saw him shirtless to go for a swim in the pool it felt like my ovaries had seized and I'd had to tell them to back off. "Connor hurt me," I admitted in a rush. "I'm not over it, and I don't know if I ever will be. If it were anyone other than Lino, I don't think I'd even consider going there."
She narrowed her eyes on me, suddenly serious as she tried to read between the lines. Her nostrils flared, and her jaw tensed when she saw it. "That fucking piece of shit," she hissed. "Is he dead yet? I want to kick his corpse."
Only Sadie could make me laugh in the face of my demons, and I leaned forward until my face hit her shoulder and muffled the sound. "Not yet."
"Good. I'd really hate for him to be decomposing and shit. I do not need the nasty that is Connor on my shoes. My shoes are too fucking pretty for his innards. Even my gym shoes, and I swear sometimes those already smell like they're dead."
"Thank you," I wheezed into her shoulder, knowing she'd turned up the ridiculousness that she was for the sake of my awkwardness. It was a unique gift of Sadie's, making everyone else feel more comfortable by embarrassing herself. Or at least, the way she acted would have embarrassed a normal person.
But not Sadie.
She was a ride or die kind of woman.
She took no shit, kicked ass, and took names. And apparently didn't like to kick corpses once they started decomposing.
