So Kelly being so resolute about the whole thing, not only about seeing the scars but about touching them as if that part of me was no different than the rest…
It was so considerate, so warmhearted.
So caring.
My eyes started to sting again, and I had to rub at them to make it stop.
Shit.
Okay, enough of that.
I glanced down at Kelly. Parts of her were obscured at this angle. I could see the top of her hair, divinely mussed and smelling of flowers. The tip of her dainty nose. Half of one breast. The crook of her arm that laid above the covers. But even though I couldn’t take in all of her at once right now, she remained beautiful. Stunningly so. And innocent, too.
She’d shared that innocence with me, even gave me an irreplaceable piece of it.
Kelly was such a good person. Inside and out. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t seem to quit thinking about her, even when I tried. I wanted to be with her and stay in her presence as much as possible. All the time. Twenty-four seven. Which struck me as weird, frankly. I’d never wanted anyone around all the time before.
Even the women I used to bang, hot as they could be, had gotten tiresome at a certain point. I hadn’t felt anything like what I felt for Kelly since I’d been a teenager with Emily. And even then, the attraction I’d felt for her hadn’t been this strong. This felt like more than attraction anyway. Being around Kelly felt like a requirement. Like a necessity.
And sex with her was just… damn. I’d never experienced anything like it. And I didn’t think it was only due to her being a virgin, either. There was something inherently different about her, about the way I felt when I was around her. I didn’t think I’d ever get enough of her. Not if I spent the rest of my life worshipping at the altar of her body.
I wanted to hear her giggle again like she had when I’d been inside her. I wanted to see her smile. I wanted to continue to tease her and by teased by her. I wanted to stare into those green starburst eyes of hers until nothing else existed. And then, I wanted to go to sleep beside her and wake with her in my arms.
The thought of that, of being with her like that, forever, made my face break into this massive grin. It made me happy. And something occurred to me that I knew was the absolute truth.
I loved her.
She stirred. “Did you say something?” she asked, and I froze. Had I said that out loud?
“No,” I told her, because I hadn’t meant to. But then I changed my mind. “Yes.”
She blinked and sat up, providing me with a bird’s eye view of the best sight ever. She smiled at me, and it was as if my wish to see that smile had made it happen.
“Which is it?” Her eyes sparkled, playfully. “No or yes?”
“Yes,” I said, feeling certain. “I said something. I said that I loved you because I do.”
Her eyes widened. “You do?”
“Yep.”
She reached up with her hands and placed her thumbs side by side to the dent in my chin. Then, fanning out her fingers over each side of my face, she lowered her lips to mine, bestowing on me a soft kiss. “I love you, too.”
And then we proceeded to show one another that we meant what we’d said.
I let Vinnie know that I’d need to rent out the cottage suite indefinitely, and over the next two weeks, Kelly and I met there at every opportunity.
Around the obligations of work and family—it took Kelly at least an hour every morning to take care of her mom—we spent as much time in each other’s arms as we could. When tucked into our private little getaway we ate together, showered together, and watched innocuous shit on television or YouTube together.
It was like our own special paradise.
We slept there every night, even if we weren’t able to get in until the wee hours of the morning and had to leave before dawn. But it was worth it. So worth it. It felt like we’d discovered this magical p
lace where everyone and everything but the two of us had been forced to stay outside of those walls.
Her cop brother didn’t matter. My being a member of the Italian mafia didn’t matter. The fact that she didn’t know that about me didn’t matter.
She acted as though I were this good man, someone upstanding and decent. And I really liked her believing that about me. She didn’t know all the atrocious things I’d done either for my father or on my family’s behalf. She didn’t know that I was a murderer, a drug lord, and a money launderer. And she sure as hell didn’t know that she was assisting in that last enterprise.