Ache For You

41

Why that should give me such a thrill, I don’t want to know.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

He makes a small gesture indicating the rolling hills and woods around us. “There’s a lot of property here.”

“Are you saying it’s good for burying a body?”

“Say the word and you’ll find out.”

We stare at each other in a strange kind of violent, intense Brad-hating bubble until Brad clears his throat.

“Uh, you guys? Still here.”

Matteo says through gritted teeth, “You were going to marry this i***t?”

“I know, right?”

We turn our heads and glare at Brad.

He takes a step back. “Uh, okay, I’ll just . . .” He points down the driveway. “I’ll just wait for you over there.”

He takes off walking at a brisk clip. Watching him go, the limo driver says, “Good hair, though. Robert Redford hair. You know Robert Redford? He’s my favorite American movie star. Good actor. Good teeth. Great hair.”

When he sees the look Matteo sends him, his eyes widen. He jumps back into the limo and takes off down the driveway, roaring past Brad with a wave.

“If you’re not back in five minutes, I’m coming to get you. I won’t be responsible for what happens then.”

I lift my eyebrows, taking in Matteo’s expression. His gaze is on Brad. The look in his eyes has gone from murder to g******e.

God, I’m so sick. I’m actually finding this show of protective machismo incredibly hot.

“Hey. Psycho.”

Matteo cuts his eyes back to me.

“What’s this caveman thing you’re doing?”

“He hurt you.”

“Yeah? So? How is that your business?”

His jaw works back and forth as if he’s grinding walnuts between his molars. Finally he says, “We’re family.”

“Ex-family,” I correct, watching his face. “You’re the one who so helpfully pointed that out to me.”

He draws a breath through his nose, straightens to his full height, folds his arms over his chest, and stares down his nose at me.

“Oh, this again? The snooty silent treatment? Great. That’s just great. That’s exactly what I need right now.”

I hate myself for how my voice wavers, but I hate myself even more for letting anything he does affect me. It shouldn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter!

So why does it?

“Go be with your mother. She needs you more right now than I do.”

Dashing away the water springing up in my eyes, I turn and start to walk away. Matteo takes hold of my arm and turns me back.

He drops his head so we’re nose to nose. “Did you just say you need me?”

I frantically try to recall the specific words I just spoke, but with him so close and his damn delicious, brain-melting scent in my nose, and the scream trapped in my throat, and the tears filling up behind my eyes so fast, I can’t.

I whisper, “I don’t know what I just said. This is the worst day of my life. Last week I had the second worst day of my life, caused by that douchebag waiting for me at the end of the driveway. My brain isn’t really working right at the moment.”

We stare at each other until he exhales. He looks at my mouth, then briefly closes his eyes. When he speaks again, he sounds exhausted. “Let me get your other shoe.”

He leaves me standing there while he fishes my shoe out of the bushes. Then, when he comes back and kneels down in front of me in the gravel, it’s all I can do not to fall flat on my face.

He gently takes my ankle in his hand and slips my foot into my shoe. Then he looks up at me.

And my heart stops. It just stops, like you hear stories of when people first glimpse the love of their life . . . or in that split second after they stepped off a curb and realize they’re about to get hit by an oncoming bus.

Yeah, probably more like the second one.

Matteo kneels at my feet with his big warm hand wrapped around my small cold ankle, and just looks at me while I stare back at him with a nonfunctioning heart and a barely functioning brain and try to remember how to breathe.

His voice thick, he says, “No matter what he says, remember who you are.”

Before I can ask Who am I? Matteo has risen and is walking away with stiff shoulders and his hands clenched into fists.

I watch him until he disappears into the house, then I turn and walk down the driveway to where Brad awaits. He’s pacing again, kicking at the gravel like a four-year-old.

I stop ten feet away, fold my arms over my chest, and send him a death glare.

He exhales loudly. “Okay. Okay, um . . . you’re mad. I know you’re mad. And you probably never want to talk to me again.” He’s still pacing. Pacing and wringing his hands, which is so unlike him I frown.

He glances at me, quickly glances away, then shakes his head and laughs. It’s a horrible laugh, the kind that isn’t funny at all. The kind that bursts out of you like a groan or a bark, or like the sound an animal makes when it’s in pain.

Honestly, it freaks me out a little.

“Brad, stop.”

He stops in place and looks at my feet. He inhales, his chest heaving, then finds the nerve to meet my eyes.

I’ve never seen anyone with that wild, awful look in his eyes. It’s similar to the look he had when I was walking down the aisle toward him at the church, but there’s more than sheer panic there. Now I see pain and fear and visceral dread, like someone being tortured.