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“Christ, Rafe. What happened to you?”
Something beyond the glowing cherry catches my eye. I tilt my chin to look at my car. Penny’s awake now, her face lit by the light of her cell screen. The little brat is slurping on a soda.Mysoda. A smirk pulls on my lips, but I bite it back.Shehappened to me.
I blow out smoke against the night’s sky and give my brother a less complicated answer. “Bad things happened, brother.”
“So, make a plan and fix them.”
My gaze slides to him. “What?”
“That’s what you do in this family, you make plans to fix things. When Tor’s last broad overdosed in the bathroom of the Visconti Grand, you drove her back to her apartment and wrote her suicide note. When Benny got held hostage by the Turks because of those dodgy shotguns he sold them, you flew to Istanbul and negotiated his release.”
“The cunt still hasn’t said thank you,” I grunt.
“Hell, even when I set fire to Uncle Al’s Rolls Royce, you somehow got me out of that mess, too.”
His heavy footsteps echo as he walks up the steps and joins me in leaning against the doors. I pass him the cigarette and he takes a long drag. He’s right; I fix things. But that usual fire that burns through my veins when things go wrong has been replaced with a river of acceptance, cold and lethargic. Fate has won, and rock bottom feels solid under my wingtips. Just as Fate promised to give me all the success in the world, it also gave me my doom card. The Queen of Hearts brought me to my knees, and I can’t find it in me to care.
Maybe it’s because when I’m on my knees, she sits on my tongue.
“I don’t even remember you being superstitious as a kid.”
Angelo’s remark tightens my throat, sweeping away all thoughts of Penny’s pussy. “And I’m not superstitious now.”
He laughs. “You think I don’t see it? How you side-step ladders every time we check on reconstruction efforts at the port? How you toss salt over your shoulder every time I invite you to my dinner table?” He passes me the cigarette. “I might have our father’s temper, but you have Mama’s beliefs.”
I grind my molars together, then blacken my lungs with smoke. “You only see half the shit,” I mutter. “If it was happening to you, you’d believe in bad luck too.”
Out the corner of my eye, I see him nod. “I believe in bad luck, brother. But I also believe what Mama used to say.”
I turn to him. “The good always cancels out the bad?”
He smiles sadly. “Nah, the other one. Bad things don’t last forever.”
Grinding the cigarette under his shoe, he follows my stare to my car. To Penny, who catches my eye through the windshield. She stills, like a deer caught in headlights, then with a shit-eating grin she takes an extra-long sip of my soda.
Something sweet and sickly blooms in my chest. She can have my drink. Fuck, she can have it all. There’s nothing I wouldn’t give her, and that’s the problem.
The realization stabs me in the gut and twists clockwise. Angelo’s been right too many times tonight for my liking, but he’s also right about that.
Bad things don’t last forever. They can’t. Not my game with the Queen of Hearts. Not an enemies-with-benefits relationship—especially not between a girl who believes love is a trap and a man who chose the King of Diamonds.
This won’t last forever. And then what?
I’ll have to pick myself up from the ashes and start afresh.
Restlessnesshauntsmelikean itch I can’t scratch. A disease I can’t cure.
Sighing, I drop my forehead against a porthole and watch the raindrops as they race to the bottom of the glass. Is this what it feels like to be a fool in lust? It’smaddening.
My body hums with an excited electricity, as though I’m forever plugged in at the mains. My mind keeps finding new Rafe-related things to obsess over. As I wait for this stupid lasagna to bake, it’s his possessive grip on my hips as he came inside me an hour ago. Before that, it was how he licked me from clit to nipple in one desperate swoop of his tongue.
Shuddering, I pad over to the oven and crack the door to check on my creation again. Cooking isn’t what I’d planned to do with my afternoon, and not because I’m shit at it. No, I was meant to go dress shopping with Rory for the staff Christmas party, but the weather is too bad to drive the speedboat.
Shame. I needed that shopping trip like I need air. As if filling my lungs with something other than this man would make the world stop spinning. Throwing the oven mitt on the counter, another more rational thought comes to mind. Maybe I’m so light-headed because the weight of Martin O’Hare was heavier than I’d realized. Of course, I’m going to look at the man who took that burden from me through rose-tinted glasses.
Within our mahogany-clad bubble, we’ve slipped into somewhat of a routine. We fuck all morning, then Rafe cooks eggs and sourdough toast while making angry Italian phone calls. Afternoons are lazy and lust-fueled, a blur of readingFor Dummiesbooks and endless games, where the loser succumbs to the mercy of the other. Nights are spent on the mainland in the warmth of Rafe’s car. He conducts business while I fall asleep to the low hum of the heater, full of burgers and deliciously sore.
I rise to my tip-toes to grab two plates from the cupboard, and as the inside of Rafe’s hoodie grazes against my bare nipples, they tingle from the friction. Breathless, I drop to my heels and lean against the counter, trying let the heat pass without me doing something stupid, like stomping into his office and demanding he puts his mouth on me again.
