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She rolls her eyes. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“I didn’t hear any questions in there.”
“What about Taylor caught your interest?”
I don’t expect a dozen different answers to float up to my lips the moment the question leaves Mila’s.
Her warm eyes. Her luscious lips. How her moan sounds in a sweat-slicked car when the rain is pounding on the roof overhead…
But even as I rattle off the list in my head, I realize it had more to do with the way she’d fought back. The way she’d matched me, stride for stride, without any fear. The way she tempered that strength with enough vulnerability to make me understand what was fueling all her rage.
The way she’d opened up and let me in. The way she’d made me feel like a man. Not a mob boss. Not a killer.
Just a man.
“Well?” Mila presses. “I’m all ears.”
“Nothing. Nothing about her interested me,” I growl. “I was just horny.”
30
TAYLOR
It’s an ocean of flowers in front of me. Pastel pinks and eye-burning oranges and whites in cream, ivory, and eggshell. The color cacophony is making my head swim.
“Do you want to go carnations or gladioli?”
I blink at Mila, wondering why she’s here at all. She clearly doesn’t want to be. Not that she’s said anything to that effect. It’s just this distant look in her eyes that gives me the impression she’d rather be anywhere else than here.
I don’t blame her; I don’t want to be here, either.
The display window hasChapman’s Floral Boutiqueprinted in elegant gold script across the glass. I’ve passed this place before, more than once. Three years ago, I walked in to buy Mom flowers for her forty-sixth birthday. They were so expensive that I walked right back out, with only a single red rose in hand because it was all I could afford on my college-student budget.
I’d filled a champagne flute with water and stuck the rose in there. Celine and I put it on the side of her breakfast tray, and I vowed that I’d go back to Chapman’s one day and buy Mom a proper bouquet of flowers when I could afford it.
Now, here I am.
Too little, too late.
“Taylor?” When I don’t turn around, Mila steps in front of me, forcing herself into my eyeline. “I need you to make some decisions here. What kinds of flowers do you want on your mother’s funeral wreath?”
I cringe and shake my head. “I don’t care,” I whisper. “You choose.”
“She’s not my mother.”
“Well, maybe if she had been, you’d have been a fuck-ton nicer,” I snap viciously before I twist around and walk to the opposite end of the store.
I stop in front of a trough filled with orchids. They’re gorgeous. Whisper-soft and ethereal. But as beautiful as they are, my eye goes to the yellow sunflowers sitting next to them in a rough cement vase.
A tear slips down my cheek.It’s a dark world sometimes. I think it could use some brightening.Mom’s words, not mine. As always, I hated them whenever I heard them. As always, she was right.
“Here.”
I look down and realize that Mila is offering me a tissue. I take it gingerly and wipe away my tears. I’m so wrecked right now that I don’t even care that I’m crying in front of her. I don’t give a damn who sees me sobbing. Her or her brother or the whole damn world—let them all watch.
Let them all know I loved her.
“I’m sorry,” Mila says in the awkward, curt voice of someone unused to apologizing. “I… I’m not good with this kind of thing.”
