Page 19 of Life

“Why did he end the text with a T?” he asks.

I pick up a slice of pepperoni, giving myself a few moments to think about lying or being honest. “I used to call him Tony the Tiger.” Honesty wins.

Eli stops mid-chew and stares at me before he swallows, tips his head back, and laughs. Hard. So hard he starts coughing and hacking. He lifts a napkin to wipe his mouth. Even his eyes have a sheen of wetness from the intensity of his laughter.

“Really?No es cool.”

He continues chuckling and then finishes by slapping his muscled thigh. The damn thing strains against his pants, outlining some impressive quads. I glance away and take a huge bite of my pizza. Unfortunately, I’m too hasty in my desire to stuff my face, because the bite lodges itself in my throat and I start to gag. Eli notices my issue when I curl over myself.

“Shit, you choking? Fuck!” He pats my back hard until the piece is dislodged, and I spit it into my napkin.

He rubs up and down my back in slow, mesmerizing sweeps, lulling me into a comfortable silence. I need a man’s touch like I need air to breathe. My defenses begin to crumble along with my posture. The weight of holding myself up after a grueling two days of loss, fear, and anxiety is beyond what I can manage anymore.

Without preamble, I curl toward Eli’s warmth. He closes his arms around me where I nuzzle right into his neck. Being in his embrace is so right, more right than I’ve ever felt in any man’s arms, even Tommy’s.

God…Tommy.

What would Tommy think of me now, taking comfort in his brother’s arms? Would he be angry, disgusted, devastated the way I would be if I found him being held by another woman? But that’s never going to happen because Tommy is gone. Dead. And he’s never coming back. He’ll never hold me again. Never kiss me. Make love to me. Everything we had fell out the window with him.

The tears and pain rip through me like a chainsaw into the trunk of a tree. I sob against Eli. The sobs then turn to anger as the tears slip down my cheeks. I pull back. “It’s not fair! Tommy was good. Kind. Everything I’m not. He shouldn’t have even been there. He did it for me. For me! Because he knew I couldn’t live without the only family I have left,” I croak as he pulls me back against his warm chest.

“Thomas was a good man. The best there was. I agree. But he wouldn’t want you blaming yourself. He chose the life of a cop because he had honor and grit. He wanted to help make the world a better place. And he took out that killer with his last breath. There is no sorrow or disgrace to be had. He died doing what he loved. Protecting who he loved. You.”

I blink several times, trying my damnedest to stop the flow of tears, but they won’t go away. “And now what? Now, Antonio is back. To claim his revenge? He’s been gone for five years! Why now?”

Eli shakes his head. “Babe, I don’t know. All I can promise is I’m going to do everything in my power to protect you. But you have to be honest with me. Tell me what started all of this.”

I swallow and push my hands through the waves of hair that have fallen in my face. “Does it matter? He wants me dead, and he’s patient. He’s waitedcinco añosafter all. What’s another few days, weeks, months?”

“Something tells me he’s not going to wait that long.” Eli’s jaw tightens and squares. The scruff on his chin going down to the very top of his neck gives him an even stronger bad-boy appeal. The twin sleeves of tattoos complete the look a hundredfold.

Those tats hypnotize me, and I run a finger over a thick tribal branch that weaves from his wrist up his forearm. “Why do you think that?”

His nostrils seem to flare as I lift my gaze to his face. He rubs a hand over his chin and mouth.

“Because, babe, if I’d had you, I don’t think I could stop wanting you, either.”

On those words, I skitter away toward the other end of the couch. “Tell me about you and Tommy. Why didn’t I know about you?” My voice shakes like a dead leaf on a branch. “If you tell me, I’ll talk.¿Bueno?”

He leans back against the leather couch, looking like a man who’s comfortable in his own skin. He stretches out one arm along the back of the couch and lifts up one of his legs, crossing the other at the knee. Eli is wearing pristine white socks. There isn’t even a smudge on the bottom of them. Must keep his boots clean. For some odd reason, his feet fascinate me.

“All right. Growing up, Thomas and I were inseparable. We were the Redding twins. Made a point to look alike, talk alike, do the same things. This afforded us the ability to screw with adults. You know, pure fun for two boys.”

I smile, lift my knees up to my chest, and rest my chin on the crevice in between them.

“’Cept when we were teenagers, it became clear we were not into the same things. I loved motorcycles, rock music, working on cars, getting into girls’ pants, you know…” He smirks.

“Yeah, I can imagine. And what about Tommy?”

He smiles huge at the mention of his brother as a teen. “Straitlaced as they come. Honor Roll all through school. Never so much as touched a girl until prom. I blew off prom to go drinking with some high school buddies of mine and bang sorority chicks. Not Tommy. He’d been with the same girl all through school, and at seventeen, he’d saved up his cash, booked a fancy hotel room where he took his longtime girlfriend to give her the night of her life. They both lost their cherries and were solid as a couple all through school.”

“Wow.” I think back to how long it took Tommy to take me to bed. Weeks of dating before he even so much as attempted to bed me. I’d made several advances, but he’d always pushed me away. He said he wanted the moment we took our relationship further to be special. And it was. “I can see how Tommy would be sweet like that. Then what happened?”

Eli grabs a slice of pizza and eats half in one bite. He takes his time chewing and looking off into the distance before he sucks back most of a beer. The bottle dangles between his fingers as he swirls it around. “Girl ended up going off to college in another state. He was destroyed. Didn’t trust women for a long time after that. But then he got me to sign up for the police academy with him.”

“You were a cop?” I ask, absolutely shocked.

He snickers. “What? I don’t look like cop material to you?”

---