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“What if it isn’t?” he asked, and the silence after his words was heavy.
“Isn’t what?” Vega clarified.
“All it is. What if I want more than casual?”
Vega considered that.
“You know what, I will believe it when I see it. But the threat stands. Don’t hurt her, no matter what this ends up being.”
Little did she know that I was going to be the one doing the hurting.
Hurting him.
And myself in the process.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Cesare
“What?” Gav barked, making my head jerk up, and making me realize I’d been staring at my phone for the better part of the morning.
Waiting for a call, a text, something.
“The fuck?” I shot back, looking up at him as he stood next to the kitchen table, a coffee mug in his hand, glaring down at me.
“What is it? You’ve been a moody-fucking-ass for a couple of days now. What is it?”
I wanted to object, to insist that I hadn’t been.
But the fact of the matter was, he was right. And you knew you were down when someone as grumpy as Gav was calling you out on it.
I hadn’t told him about Mere.
Why, I don’t know.
As a whole, as a family, we shared shit. Especially the kind of life-changing shit that was getting yourself involved with someone in a more serious way.
I hadn’t been blowing smoke up Vega’s ass when I told her that I wanted more than casual with Mere.
I couldn’t explain the impulse, the way I wanted to spend more time with her, how I wanted to take her out to eat, to walk in and out of the shops with her, to see her across the table from my old man, my brothers, and my sister.
I just knew that the feeling was there.
Even after having had sex with her.
That, in a way, had been the final test.
Normally, when the sweat was dry, all my interest dried up as well.
But I just wanted more.
More sex.
More nights standing at the island eating shitty freezer pizza and bullshitting with Mere and Vega.
I’d been so immersed in my enjoyment of the night, that I was pretty sure I must have missed something with Mere.
Because I’d given her my number. Because I’d taken hers. I’d even reached out first.
And hadn’t heard shit back from her.
Maybe she was mad that I hadn’t stayed the night? I mean, I wanted to. I just figured that maybe it would be better for her if I didn’t push that right away.
Had that been a miscalculation?
Did she think I wasn’t serious about wanting more from her because I hadn’t stayed?
Fuck.
This was all too damn new to me.
I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing.
“I dunno. I’m frustrated,” I admitted.
It was the truth.
But I knew that Gav would think I meant I was frustrated about Dennis’s disappearance yet again. Not about Mere. Who I hadn’t so much as mentioned, except for the basics about her working at the shop.
“Yeah, know the feeling. You know Lore made her sauce for pasta night at Aunt Meg’s last night?” he asked.
Lore, our sister, the baby of the family, was the best cook in the entire family—though we would never tell our aunts or cousins this—but she never cooked.
If we were lucky, we got to taste one or two meals a year from her.
It was a big deal to miss one.
And her fucking sauce needed to be bottled and sold to the masses, it was so damn good.
Still, I could only bring up a small amount of disappointment over missing out.
“Look, it’s shipment day, isn’t it?” Gav said, making my head pop up again.
“Yeah. Why?”
“Go to the shop,” Gav suggested. “Talk to those guys. See what the fuck is going on?”
I didn’t have direct contact with the guys who unpacked the shipments. That was Dennis’s area. But with Dennis missing, yeah, that was the next rational step.
And my enthusiasm to do so had nothing at all to do with the woman in that shop.
Not a damn thing.
“Right,” I agreed, nodding, glancing down at the time on my phone.
I had about an hour before they showed up.
I wanted to rush through my shower and getting dressed, but Mere liked me neat and put together, so I took the extra time to make sure everything was looking good, sprayed on some cologne—because it hadn’t escaped me that she liked to take deep breaths of me when she was close—then made my way out.
If Gav noticed I was in a better mood already, he said nothing as I got in my car and drove into town.
I parked at the end of the street, and made my way down, feeling a strange flip-flopping sensation in my gut, and a fluttering feeling in my chest.
I glanced through the door as I got close, and could have sworn she glanced up and saw me, but I must have been mistaken because she suddenly turned and went into the back for a moment, then came back out, holding a couple of flowers that she set down on the desk.
