“You said Massimo never shouts at you,” Nera mumbles next to me.
A small smile pulls at my lips. “He doesn’t.”
I notice him then. Emerging from behind the trees, eating up the distance with his huge strides as he hurries toward the bench where Nera and I are sitting. The sleeves of his gray shirt are rolled up, revealing the bulging muscles of his inked forearms. When he stops before us, his nostrils flare and his chest rises and falls in quick succession as if he’s sprinted through a marathon. The expression on his face is one of outright fury. But the deep wells of his dark eyes look more than slightly terrified.
“Angel,” he says as he grits his teeth, all while he spears me with a glare. The tension is rolling off him in waves, but his voice is back to the throaty soft timbre he alwa
