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Grateful for a window seat, I turn to look at the airport rolling by as we prepare to take off.
I need to see my father and my brother.
I need to regroup and get my head back on straight.
I knew it last night, the moment the words left Ares’ lips.
I really fucking like you.
Those words are not part of the plan.
Him being in my bed is definitely not part of the plan.
Yet, somehow I’ve strayed off path, and last night had been a stark awakening.
His words scared me. They make me want to retreat.
But when he’d reached for me in the shadows of a new dawn breaking into my bedroom, I had reached back. Even as he rolled onto me, I had opened my legs for him and searched for his mouth as he slid into me. And when he’d made love to me in the dull light, I had raised my hips to meet his as our soft moans fused together in the shadows.
I close my eyes. I can still taste his kiss on my lips and smell the soapy scent of his skin, and my chest aches with longing.
I really fucking like you.
Oh, how I wish you knew you shouldn’t.
During the two-hour flight to Boston, I manage to sleep, which is good because I barely slept at all last night. I had tossed and turned restlessly in the heat of Ares’ warm body, my dreams haunted by my stepfather and my brother, and the fucked-up situation I’ve landed myself in.
But despite the small amount of rest I get during the flight, when I land in Boston, I feel worse. Even the familiarity of my hometown doesn’t help. Instead, I find myself missing the small-town feel of Flintlock and the people I work with at the Spicy Crawdad, wishing everything could be different.
Wishing I could fall in love with Ares.
Wishing there was something more for us.
I push the unwanted thought away because I’ve fucked everything up, and there is going to be a price to pay.
It’s a given that I won’t get away unscathed.
I accept that.
But I will do everything in my power to ensure it is as painless as possible for Ares.
Stepping into the rainy Boston day, I hail a cab and take it to the cemetery, immersing myself in the familiar landscape I’ve driven past a hundred times in the last twenty-two years.
My father’s grave rests near the row of sugar maple and weeping hemlock trees on the far side of the cemetery. When he was alive, he was everything to me. My best friend. My protector. The one person in this world I could count on.
Then he was gone.
Killed by a rival crime syndicate when I was only thirteen years old.
I had never known a pain like it and to a naïve daddy’s girl, it felt like I was living in a nightmare.
Less than a year later, my mom married Donnie—one of my father’s lieutenants—and a new nightmare began. Within twelve months, he was visiting my bedroom late at night.
As I kneel before my father’s grave, I start pulling the weeds and dead flowers from around his headstone. My heart is a heavy weight in my chest as I wish for the billionth time he was still alive.
A few feet away, my brother rests in his own grave. His is a simple headstone with his name carved into the marble. There are no flowers. No trinkets. No sign that anyone has been there in weeks, months even, and they probably haven’t been.
I’m the only one who visits his grave.
