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I grasped his face, the strong muscles jumping beneath the pads of my fingers as my lips met his. They were still for a moment until he cupped the back of my head, holding me close as his mouth hungrily devoured mine.
I lost myself for a moment until Kellan’s light touch on my arm pulled me out of my trance, reminding me I was running out of time. I pulled away reluctantly and pressed a chaste kiss on his nose before bouncing away.
Begrudgingly, I opened the door and slipped out, grabbing my bag before either of them could pull me back, not wanting to stir up trouble with my parents, not when we were so close to leaving. I wasn’t sure what I’d do if they held my job over my head and forbade me from seeing either of them for the rest of the summer.
“I’ll see you in a few days,” I murmured, keeping my voice low to not wake up the neighbors, and closed the door.
I blew them both a kiss as they drove off, careful not to press the gas too hard as they turned the corner. I waited until I saw the taillights disappear in the dawn light, the sun just beginning its ascent in the sky before I turned for my parents’ house. I wouldn’t think of it as my house, it hadn’t been for years, and in two short months, I wouldn’t have to come back.
Who knows, we could end up being friends once the weight of responsibility is lifted from their shoulders and I’m on my own, I thought hopefully. The events of last night brightened my mood as I walked up the narrow driveway, hoping for the best now that everything was looking up. A huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders, and I felt like I could finally breathe, could finally begin living life to its fullest in a few months.
We were really doing this and I didn’t have to choose. The thought still sounded foreign to me, but it was slowly sinking in as I remembered last night and how natural it had felt to be with both of them.
“Ah, Giana,” a tall man drawled with his back to me, facing toward my parents’ front door.
My footsteps stilled and I sucked in a startled breath. I’d been so lost in my thoughts I hadn’t noticed him standing there until he spoke. I attempted to place that voice I knew I’d heard before. He was dressed in a sleek, expensive suit despite it being five in the morning on a Saturday. “I’ve been waiting.” His lips trembled, hands bunching into fists at his side as his mahogany eyes took me in—so cold and possessive.
My heart panged with the sudden earth-shattering loss that rocked through me. I clutched my chest, struggling to pull in a gasp of air past my trembling lips. Because I could see the future I had never dared to even dream of, the one that seemed too good to be true, silently slipping away as I stared back at Tommaso Barone.
Chapter twenty-two
Merrick
Now
Ipausedonthestairs as the sounds of voices drifted down the hallway, her laughter ringing in my ears and piercing my chest. My hands gripped the railing tighter, nails digging into the already chipped white paint. Flakes floated to the ground but I didn’t care.
It was a sound I hadn’t heard in far too long, and even the times I’d seen her, there’d been nothing close to a smile on her face. Perhaps a sad one as a moment of nostalgia flitted past, but not the free sound that rang through the house now.
Despite how much I wanted to see her, to soak in the brightness of that smile, I couldn’t move. I frowned as guilt twisted my stomach. It was all my fault. I was so headstrong, so cocky as a teenager, I never took a moment to think about the consequences of my actions. But she had. She’d been forced to live with them for the past six years while I hated her for doing it.
She’d been the first person I’d given my heart to—hell the only person I’d dared to give it to. I’d thought she’d trampled it for a life of the danger she’d craved and the wealth he could provide for her. But in reality, she’d done it to keep me from getting myself killed, or worse, getting us all killed.
I pulled in a deep breath and pushed back those thoughts. Regardless of her insistence that Tommaso would’ve found a way to get to her either way, I couldn’t help but carry the burden of that guilt on my shoulders. That bruise on her cheeks was a glaring reflection of my faults, of what she’d had to endure to keep us alive. And every time I saw it, I had to remind myself I couldn’t just go in and put a bullet between his eyes.
That was the old Merrick, the immature one who couldn’t handle his emotions. But after being part of this life, I understood it wasn’t just Tommaso or his father, there was a power structure we had to dismantle from the bottom up. We had to do it strategically, otherwise, I knew what the consequences would be …
I glanced down the hallway, the sun beaming through the kitchen window, beckoning me forward, to where I knew I should be. So I pulled every ounce of strength I had and stepped off the last stair, not daring to stop until I made it there. I’d been avoiding her the past few days, as much for her sake as for mine, while battling the guilt coiling around my stomach for ever having doubted her in the first place.
But when Kellan told me about her coming to find him, the tattoo, and Spade taking her out last night, I knew I needed to face my fears. Not that I was scared of her—I could never be. I was scared of allowing her close to me, of giving her that power to utterly destroy me again. I barely survived it before, and I had no doubt if it happened again, I would dive off the deep end and into the abyss of darkness that had threatened to suck me in before.
I paused at the doorway and gazed in, focusing on her immediately. The sun beamed down on her from the kitchen window from her place at the table, a coffee cup poised in her hand as though she was about to take a sip but forgot.
Spade was speaking animatedly across from her about some sort of encounter at the bar, a run-in with some asshole that had decided to pick a fight with him. Kellan leaned against the kitchen counter, his eyes focused on her just as mine had been, a mix of awe and wonder in them as though he too couldn’t believe this was real. I hadn’t had this feeling since her eighteenth birthday when I thought it would be the beginning of the rest of our lives. She’d said she loved us too. I pictured the rest of my life as she’d said those three words, but that perfect picture had gone up in flames just a few days later.
“And then she tased him,” Spade choked out on a laugh, glancing back at Kellan. He seemed to remember himself then, that trance of happiness and disbelief fading as he turned back into the conversation. “You should’ve seen her, it was glorious. She stole my heart, then and there.”
He looked back at Giana, the same expression Kellan had just moments before washing over his features. Spade had already made it clear when he found out who Giana was, that he was interested—well, interested was an understatement. I swear he’d told that story hundreds of times already, and he’d been determined to find the wicked woman with the face of an angel as he’d described her. But when he found out that our Giana was one and the same, he added himself to the mix.
And judging by the smile that had spread across her face as she gazed back at him, her coffee completely forgotten at this point, she felt the same way. Although I wasn’t thrilled at having to share her with another man, I’d known Spade for the past four years, and over that time the three of us had grown as close as I was with Kellan. And I knew by the way he was around her that he was serious about her. And who was I to stand in the way of someone that made my devil happy?
“Merrick watched it on the cameras afterward, didn’t you, Mer?” Spade asked, a sly grin splitting his face. The question jolted me from my thoughts, my lips curling into a sneer at him for calling me out like that.
“You did?” Kellan asked, apparently hearing this part of the story for the first time.
But I didn’t bother looking at him, only at Giana as her gaze flicked to me. I wasn’t sure what I expected to see there, but it wasn’t the wicked delight that gleamed there or the smile that curved those delicious lips.
“He sure did,” Spade continued, but I didn’t bother to spare him a glance. The rest of the room seemed to fade away and it was only her there and that smile I’d missed so much, the one I never thought I’d see again. “I caught him watching it over and over again.”
