Divorce Me Once, Your Loss

Ryan Armani

Brianna

“Can you handle it all?” Aliyah asks over the phone, her voice betraying her worry.

“I don’t think I can,” I tell her candidly, “I’m afraid I might not be able to carry through with everything.”

Although my vacation was cut short because I had to attend to ‘marital duties’ for an extra six months, Aliyah decided to extend hers and stay an extra week bathing in the bliss of Hawaii sun. I always wished I had Aliyah’s carefree easygoing life instead of my complicated own and this here is the height of my wishes.

To stay there in Hawaii away from my past and the people that it brought with it.

“You don’t have to,” she says, “you can opt out at anytime, Bri. Your mental health should always come first, you should always come first.”

“Thing is . . .”

I think of the emotional scars the Armani family inflicted on me, the tears, the therapy I had to go through to come out of it okay . . .

“I wish it were that easy, Al. It’s not. They have to know. They have to pay.”

They are not the only ones that have to pay, however. I know that. My father also has a huge hand in the trauma I had to endure and I am coming for him when the time is right.

I hear Aliyah sigh from the other end of the line, “And Nico?”

“What about him?”

“Is the man still as –”

I can’t hear the rest of her words because there is a sudden and rapid knock on my door that lasts for about a millisecond before the door swings open with a force that almost has the power to break it off its hinges.

“What the hell?!?”

“What happened?” Aliyah asks over the phone, “Girl, what the – ”

I automatically hang the call up.

I don’t want her getting any more worked up about me than she already is and besides, the interruption in my room looks like it needs all my attention anyway.

The man standing at my doorway is not a face I recognize. He has a black, huge backpack slung over one of his shoulders and for some reason he looks as shocked as I feel at the sight of me wearing only a tank top and panties on top my bed.

“Who the hell are you?” he asks me, taking my appearance in one full sweep.

Don’t blame a girl for trying to be comfy in her own goddamn room. It’s not like I expected to see another person on this part of this house and the almighty Nico NEVER comes to my room.

Ever.

“I’m about to ask you the same question,” I retort, “who the hell are you?”

“What?” he drags his eyes from his legs back to my face.

“You’re in my room.”

Confusion floods his face. “What do you mean your room — oh,” he smiles, recognition hitting his features as he steps further into the room.

“You’re the missus,” he extends his hand, “Mrs. Armani.”

I accept his outstretched palm, noticing the callousness in them. “And you are . . . ?”

“Ryan. Nico’s cousin.”

Right. The cousin I never got to meet.

“Sorry about the door,” he points nervously behind him, “used to be my room at some point.”

Understandable. When I moved here I decided to make a pick from all the rooms vacant and I chose the one closer to the lush gardens below solely for the sake of the rose and lavender scents drifting through the windows and no one said I couldn’t have it so I occupied it immediately.

“Yet you knocked,” I tell him.

“Yeah, the door was closed. I never leave my door closed so I figured the cleaning crew were back,” he sent me a smile, “you like the flowers too huh?”

“I’m guess you do?”

“I’ve always been into flowers,” he replies.

For some reason standing here talking to him with my legs unclad and my panties out in the open doesn’t make me feel self-conscious.

“I’m guessing you want your room back?” I’m obviously not going to give it back but my mother taught me politeness before she died.

“Nah,” he shakes his head ruefully, “you can have it. It was always more woma – damn, no one told me the new wife is hot.”

For some weird reason his smile is tugging at mine and before long I feel a small smile tugging at my lips.

“I’m guessing there’s a lot they didn’t tell you.”

He is tall, almost as tall as Nico with a dark stubble and dark hair that is the signature color to the Armanis but unlike the rest of the Armanis, his smile is a second nature to him.

Unconsciously, I notice he is still gripping my hand and I clear my throat dramatically, “You’ve got to let go, Ryan.”

“Not yet,” he jokes, “I’m just gonna—”

A voice cuts whatever he is going to say short. “Ryan?”

Nico stands in front of my doorway, staring down at us like we just dropped off from an alien ship.

For some reason I can't explain at the moment, I feel guilty standing here with my husband’s cousin dressed in nothing but panties and a top with my hand gripped by his.

It’s stupid because Nico doesn’t care about who I spend my time with so there’s no point feeling guilty about it, but the guilt is there anyway and I pull my hand away from Ryan’s drawing Nico’s gaze to the movement.

He scowls. “I had no idea you were back.”

“Just got in,” Ryan replies shifting the position of his backpack “Imma go pick a different room, I see y’all gave away my room.”

He pats Nico fondly on the shoulder before strutting off, leaving us standing there in an awkward silence.

We haven’t spoken to each other after the heated encounter at his office last week and even though I played it off coolly, to be honest, seeing him that angry scared the living hell out of me.

Nico Armani is a dangerous man.

A pissed as hell Nico Armani should never be dealt with.

For a second I thought he was going to hurl the glass straight at me instead of the wall and although I’ve never seen him hit a woman, I don’t know him well enough to decide if that is a limit for him that he could never cross.

In order to break the awkwardness between us since he hasn’t moved an inch since Ryan left, I decide to make light of the situation, “Finally, a member of your family who isn’t far up their asses.”

He walks further into my room, breaking the self-imposed trance. “You’re flirting with my cousin, now?”

I roll my eyes. Leave it to Nico Armani to think the worst of any situation.

“Trust me,” I tell him, “if I was flirting with him you wouldn’t have to question it. You’d see it from a mile away.”

“So you were not flirting with him?”

“No.”

“Right. You just happen to entertain him in your room dressed like that.”

“I’m entertaining you in my room, Nico, would you say I’m flirting with you?”

He smirks and steps closer, “I don’t know, Brianna, are you flirting with me?”

For one second I get lost in those eyes staring back at me and whisper the words, “I don’t think I am . . . ” like a first-class i***t.

His eyes roam my face and for some reason my breath catches in my throat when his eyes land on my lips.

He raises a knuckle to brush my cheek with a feather-light touch as though he is scared to touch me.

Then his fingers move to my hair and suddenly my mind is traveling back to the moment in the helicopter when he held me on top him and kissed the s**t out of me.

He leans in slowly and just when I think he is about to kiss me, he tilts his head so that his breath lightly fans my ear when he says, “Get dressed. We have a public representation to attend in an hour.

And with a self-satisfied smirk, he leaves me standing there, wondering and absolutely hating the fact that my stupid body reacts to him the way it does.