Page 34 of Isle of Pain

A sob escapes me and his face falls. “You don’t think they’re good enough,” he says and it sounds like a question.

“No, I love them, Nico. Thank you. That’s… so very strange and also thoughtful.”

“Then, why are you crying?”

“Because I don’t think anyone has gone through so much trouble for me,” I choke on the words, tears wetting my cheeks on their way down the floor. My shoulders shake with the force of my emotions and I put my face in my hands, hiding the shame of feeling so much.

“What do you need?” Nico’s rough voice filters through my meltdown. Eyes puffy and lips wet with salt, I say, “Nothing you can give me, but that’s okay.”

“You want me to touch you?”

His face is so open, genuine concern shines on his striking features. He worries the piercing on his lip and I dare to ask. With him, it always seems easy. “Can you just hug me? It doesn’t have to be long.”

Straightening up, Nico nods. Awkwardly, he wraps his arms around me, making me laugh in between sobs. My head lands on his chest, his heartbeat under my ear, soothing the maëlstrom of hurt in my soul. His posture is stiff but he doesn’t let go, giving me what I need yet again. When will I learn to give back? I’m selfish, demanding to be held when I know he doesn’t like to be touched.

“Can I touch your hair?” he asks, his lips above my ear, his cheek resting on top of my head.

I nod again and before long, Nico caresses my dark locks from my skull to my neck.

“It’s so soft,” he says but I’m not sure he’s talking to me.

With his touch, my eyes close and I breathe again, the sobs ceasing and disappearing like dust in the wind.

“Can I put my hands on your back?” I ask, eyes closed and taking in his dark scent, bitter chocolate and leather mixed with a hint of paint. It makes my mouth water.

“Yes.”

Softly, I let my hands rest on his back, trying not to move too much and letting him adjust to me this time, to the feeling of being touched by me. He squeezes me against him and I take it as a sign to do the same. His breath itches and I smile against his torso.

I’m about to glide my hands up and down his back when a loud bang echoes against the glass wall. We step apart to watch a curvy red-haired woman raising a bottle of wine in one hand and slapping the glass with the other again. Her eyes are wide and shocked. I’m pretty sure Nico has never allowed anyone to touch him like I just did. I’m greedy for more, and a little giddy that he let me.

“Open the door, assholes,” Giulia mouths before rolling her eyes and going for the door again, which Nico opens for her.

She storms in with flourish and embraces me in a warm hug that smells of home, but also of something new.

“I’ll be back, tonight,” Nico says before his eyes dip into the bottle and back to me. There’s no judgement in them but I know he knows I’ll be buzzed when he gets back. There’s no avoiding it. He won’t be there to distract me, and the temptation is too good.

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll be good,” Giulia says with a shake of her hand, dismissing him in his own home. I snicker as Nico shakes his head and takes off. “I swear to you, Marie, if you don’t fuck him I’m gonna lose so much money.”

I cough up at her straightforwardness.

“What?”

“Come on, babe. I have eyes. I don’t know what I walked in on, but you two are going to fuck, like I told Andrea you would. Nico hates to be touched yet he was hugging you like he couldn’t bear to let you go.” She keeps talking as she goes to the kitchen and pulls the drawers until she finds the bottle openerand takes two glasses out of the cabinet like she knows exactly where everything is. I shouldn’t be jealous but I am. Her and Nico are close and the three of them—with Andrea—are a unit I have no part in. “I bet him twenty grands that you’d fuck within a month.”

Wide-eyed and both embarrassed and excited, I ask, “What did he say?”

“That it would take six,” she laughs and hands me a glass before going to her haunches and cooing at Ember. “Who’s my favourite girl?”

All I wanted when I left Kalliste was to be away from my family, as far as I could and left alone to grieve and be with my wretched self. But Giulia won’t leave me alone, of that I’m sure. And I don’t think I mind that much.

19

MARIE

NEW ALLIES AND A BLOOMING TRUST

Ember is half asleep in Giulia’s arms, my cousin holding her glass of red wine aloft in her manicured hands, her perfect red waves of hair floating around her like a halo. She looks so gracious, even with her legs tucked under her comfortably.

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