“Close.” She muttered, grabbing my hand and walking me into the bathroom. The steam billowed out from the shower. “Get in.”
“Why?” I croaked.
“Because you smell like whiskey.”
“Maybe I like smelling like whiskey.”
She didn’t say anything, just stood there, arms crossed.
“You checking me out?” I took a step closer to her and stumbled. I steadied myself on the granite countertop and cursed.
Mil snorted. “Believe me, you couldn’t be any less attractive to me right now if you tried.”
“Is your plan to make me suicidal?” I closed my eyes so the room would stop spinning.
“Nope, although I think at one point it was yours. You do know that drinking that much vintage whiskey could get you killed?”
“I have a stomach of steel.” I belched and then ran over to the toilet and began showing her just how steely-like my stomach could be.
A cool cloth was placed on my neck as I continued to puke. “Why the hell are you being so nice to me?” I wiped my mouth with the same cloth and cursed.
Mil helped me to my feet and managed to look at me in the eyes as I stripped off the rest of my clothes and stumbled into the shower. She was behind me, helping me, like I was some sort of elderly person.
Apparently she wasn’t going to answer the question.
I don’t remember much of the shower, just that somehow I managed to get back into my bed—and that I was dry. Weird. Had she toweled me off?
Hello rock, meet bottom.
“I’m helping you…” Mil whispered as she pulled the covers over my shoulders and patted my head like a small child, “because even though I think you’re an a**hole… getting your heart broken sucks. Besides, I have a proposition for you.”
“Okay.” I turned over and lifted the cover. “But make it quick.”
“Yeah, you need to stop flashing me.” She put the blanket back on me. “Drink some water and we’ll talk in the morning.”
“Why talk when we can—”
She placed her hand over my mouth. “I don’t think I like drunk Chase.”
“Me either…” I grumbled.
“Go nighty-night, sleeping beauty. The morning will come soon enough.” Mil left the room and I fell into a peaceful darkness.
Chapter Fifty-four
Nixon
“How did it go?” I asked once Trace was back in my room. Her eyes were red from crying. Shit. I didn’t think it would go that badly. I mean… what am I supposed to do with that? Comfort her for loving someone else? Say it’s going to be okay even though my own damn heart was on the verge of breaking?
“Awful. Pretty sure he’s passed out drunk somewhere.” Trace walked past me and sat on the bed.
I opened my mouth to speak but she interrupted me. “If you say it’s going to be okay I’m going to stab you.”
I backed away from her. “I’ll just keep standing over here then and pray you don’t find my knife,” I joked trying to lighten the mood.
“You suck.” Trace refused to look at me. “Both of you suck. I feel like a plaything. Old, dirty, used…” Her breath hitched. “Damn it, Nixon!”
Whoa, when did she go from sad to pissed? I backed up again, and was against the door when she charged toward me, beating my chest with her fists. “Damn you!”
“Trace—”
“I give you everything and you have the audacity to go and ask to be killed! Who are you? Romeo? What the hell is wrong with you!”
“I—”
“No!” She pushed against my chest again. “What if it had been me?”
“Trace.” I shook my head. “That’s hardly the same thing…”
Her hands froze in midair as her face contorted. “But it is, Nixon. How can you not see it? I understand why you did it, but you…” She turned away from me and crossed her arms. “I gave you my heart… What if you would have truly died? Do you think I would have recovered from that? Ever?”
I came up behind her and wrapped my arms around her. “I knew you had Chase, knew if I pushed you toward him, you’d be fine. Sooner or later you’d forget me, Trace. You would have been fine.”
“Amazing.” Trace shook her head.
My arms tightened around her. “What is?”
“You can outsmart even the nastiest of mafia bosses and yet when it comes to love you have the intelligence of a flea.”
“Ouch.”
Her body slumped against mine. “I feel lost.”
“Let me find you.”
“I feel sick.”
“Let me heal you.” I kissed her head.
“I feel sad.”
“Let me be your happiness.”
She turned in my arms. “And if you truly die? You gonna expect me to follow you into death?”
“No.” I tilted her chin up. “I expect you to live a damn good life. I expect you to listen to me when I tell you there has never been anyone but you. No one. Only you, always you, forever you. And I’m sorry, but I won’t take back what I did.”
Her eyes widened as she tried to jerk free from me.
“Listen,” I commanded, tightening my grip around her body. “I wouldn’t take away one moment with you. I wouldn’t take away my decision to leave you, because in the end, it was the right thing to do. I will always save you. You need to know that… I will always choose you over me. Even if that means walking away, even if that means letting you and Chase be together. Trace, if it means that for the rest of my life all I have to live off of are the memories of your kiss? I would do it. Because it’s never been about me, but you and what I can do for you.”
She exhaled.
“When I wake up in the morning… I don’t think, wow, how can I make her love me more? How can I have my way with her? I, I, I? Not in my vocabulary. In fact, I’m a big fan of the letter u. I eat, I think of you. I drink, I drink to you. I cry, so you don’t have to. I’d die, for you to live. And I’d survive with a broken heart only if it meant mending yours.”
Her lower lip trembled as her eyes got glassy. “When did you get so romantic?”
“Been reading lots of Romeo and Juliet.” I winked. “Besides, romance isn’t something you work at—not when you find the right girl. When you fall in love, when you take that leap, it’s as natural as breathing; it’s as simple as that. I’m romantic because my heart demands I be nothing less than one hundred percent, for you, day and night.”
Trace sighed. “I don’t know what to do with that. When you’re an ass at least I can threaten bodily harm, but now…”
“Now?” I placed a feather-light kiss across her lips. “What do you want to do now?”
“I think…” She pressed her hands against my chest. “I think I want to start over.”
“I like fresh starts.” I grinned. “Firsts are good, too.”
She blushed. “Yeah about that… I was kinda caught up in the moment, and you looked so sad and—”
“Are you apologizing for sleeping with me?” I chuckled.
“Yeah. I think so.” Trace’s face took on a light pink as she covered her face with her hands. “Holy crap, I’m so lame.”
I kissed her nose. “You’re forgiven.”
“For?” She didn’t remove her hands.
“Taking advantage of me.”
She pulled her hands away from her face and opened her mouth, most likely to yell, but then my mouth was pressed against hers, muffling the words between our lips. In a frenzied kiss, I picked her up off her feet and slammed her onto the bed.
Her tongue tasted like home. I groaned in frustration as she grabbed a few tufts of my hair and tugged. Hell, I needed to calm the crap down before I lost complete control.
A knock sounded on the door.
I got up but Trace pulled me back down on top of her. “Ignore it.” Her teeth nipped my lip ring.
“Damn, that felt good.”
Grinning, she licked my lower lip and then kissed me again.
The knocks kept coming.
“Shit, don’t…” I got up from the bed. “Don’t go anywhere.”
“What am I gonna do? Hide under the bed?” she asked, breathless.
“Right.” I opened the door a crack and barked, “What?”
“It’s Luca. Arrangements have been made and he needs to speak to you.” Tex peeked around my body and gave me a thumbs-up. Would it be totally inappropriate to strangle him?
“Go,” I heard Trace yell from behind me. “I need to get ready for bed anyway.”
I groaned.
“You’ll be fine.” She patted my ass and stepped around me. “See ya, Tex.”
“Boots.” He grinned.
“Stop staring at her ass.” I pushed past Tex and managed not to punch him even when he didn’t deny that was exactly what he had been doing.
* * *
Luca was sitting at the dinner table with a glass of wine. He held the stem between his thumb and pointer finger, twisting and turning it on the table in annoyance.
I pulled out a chair and sat. “Make it fast.”
“You need a drink.”
“No, I’m fine.”
“I said”—Luca nodded to Tex—“you need a drink. Believe me, you’ll want one.”
“Aw shit.” I took a glass from Tex and licked my lips. “Bad news?”
“Do I ever bring good news?”
Valid point.
Luca took a long sip of wine. “It has been decided that Emiliana will step into the position of boss for the De Lange family. The families are asking that peace be reestablished between the five families here in Chicago.”
“So?” I shrugged. “We knew that would happen.”
“However…” His eyes darted between Tex and myself. “Not everyone is convinced she will do an adequate job. Therefore they have appointed your family as a type of…”—he lifted his hand into the air—“babysitter, if you will.”
“Babysitter?” Tex repeated. “What the hell does that mean?”
“You will teach her your ways,” Luca stated blandly.
“It’s not freaking Star Wars,” I spat. “I’m not Obi-Wan Kenobi and she sure as hell isn’t Luke Skywalker.”
“My thoughts exactly. You have too much on your plate as it is, Nixon. I would not ask this of you if it was not of the utmost importance.”
“Can’t Frank do it?” No way did I want to help Mil learn the ropes. She either knew how things worked or she didn’t. You can’t just learn how to be a boss.
“The rest of the families, Frank Alfero included, believe you’re the best for the job. All of you are young; you are the new generation.”
“Thanks, I think.” He was right, I did need a drink. I took a long sip of wine and stared at the wall. “That isn’t all, is it?”
“I’ve always liked you.”