“Watch yourself, Don.”

“Isn’t it?” He spit, and for the first time I realized just how deep and how old this conversation was. I had known, somehow, that this hadn’t been entirely about me when Valentina had stared me down on those stairs, but I hadn’t really processed how far from a me problem it was. “Tell me that’s not why you couldn’t have waited, why you couldn’t have just said what you were doing.”

“You’re just like father,” she scoffed, “I’m not a fragile little flower, Don, I can handle things myself.”

“Don’t twist things around. I am nothing like our father, and you know it. No one in PortCity thinks of you as fragile.”

“I see it every day, you walk eggshells around me-”

“Because you're about as fragile as a bomb waiting to explode, Valentina. You go half-cocked and make decisions that we should rightfully be making together and scrape through by the skin of your goddamn teeth.”

Each time either of them raised their tone my body shuddered, and I wrapped myself tighter together. It reminded me too much of being a little kid, stuck between mom and my step dad, and I certainly wasn’t a child they could play ping pong against in their little feud.

“I went along with it just as much as she did,” I interrupted, hoping to defuse some of the tension from Valentina who looked dangerously close to tears. I couldn't tell if she was just angry or if she was working through her emotions in some other way, but I didn’t know that I could handle seeing her cry. “I could have waited.”

“Would you have?” His eyes on mine were uncomfortably knowing, and I wondered how Valentina dealt with his insight on a regular basis, “Do not think I have forgotten our conversation from earlier.”

I rolled my eyes, “I wasn’t trying to kill myself.”

I immediately regretted the word choice.

Valentina’s shoulders slumped with surprise, her questioning voice getting lost behind Don’s shouted hiss, “How do I know that?”

“I told you,” I looked Don square in the eyes, mustering all of the truth I could in them, willing him to see it for what it was, “I might not know how to live for myself, but I sure as hell have other people that I’m still living for.”

“That is not enough for me.”

His voice was gruff. Valentina was uncharacteristically silent, her eyes darting between me and Don like she was watching a sparring match. Her gaze narrowed on me, but I shrugged it off, shaking my head.

“Well, it’s going to have to be. Because for now it’s enough for me.”

I turned my back to him, snatching the cloth and letting the water run down my neck and back where it was sorest. Cuts and scrapes burned my skin, but I ignored them, dipping my body back into the jacuzzi size tub and rinsing the dirt and blood out of my curls.

Don sidled up to Valentina, the two of them talking in hushed, foreign tones. They shot their glances at me, talking heatedly, but I refused to acknowledge the fact that they were talking about me like I was a child or a loony they couldn’t trust with kitchenware. I was just too tired for that shit.

When I was done, I stood, unplugging the bath. It was Valentina who came to me with an unreasonably large towel, wrapping it around my shoulders as I stepped onto the cold tile. As I passed Don he grabbed my hand, pulling me hard into him. He kissed each of my knuckles, his warm breath smelling like cinnamon.

“Will you sleep with me tonight? In my bed?”

The frost around my heart melted down into my toes. His eyes were so fucking raw, so real that I couldn’t deny the terror lurking behind them. It twisted something low in my gut that had nothing to do with sex or pleasure.

It hurt, because I knew that look like the back of my hand. I told Don that it wouldn’t matter if I knew how to live for myself because I had others to live for, and it was true. I just hadn’t realized that he and Valentina had been roped into that list just yet.

“Yes,” my free hand went to his cheek, rubbing gently across his lips.

He turned his head, kissing my palm as he went, “Come.”

I let go of his face, reaching my hand back to Valentina, dragging her along with us into Don’s room. He didn’t object to it, and neither did she, so we curled up together. I laid facing Don who seemed to need the reassurance that I was here a little more right now, wrapping my legs around his naked ones. Valentina didn’t complain though. While Don’s arms pulled me close, gripping my thighs and waist to him, she buried her face into my hair inhaling deeply.

The warmth of their bodies and soft breathing lulled me into a sleep that I held me so captive I didn’t once feel them move from me not even when they left the next morning.

Tags: Ashley Michele Paranormal
Source: readsnovelonline.net