Page 97 of Worth the Trouble

“Good morning.” I nuzzle against him.

He wraps his arms around me tighter and presses his hips against my ass, digging his hard dick into it. “Morning, sweetheart.”

I roll until I’m facing him, and he pulls my leg up over his hip.

“Can I ask you a question?”

He holds me close, cupping my face with his hand like he does often, rubbing his thumb over my lip and toying with my reactions. “Anything.”

I pull my lip between my teeth and bite the spot he was just toying with. I swear I can taste him on me. I smell him in my pores. Spice, danger.

Sacrifice. One I’d willingly make if I thought it could change things.

Rome’s eyebrows pinch, and he pulls back slowly as he tries to read my face. His hand falls to my hip, and he runs his thumb in the sweetest circles over it.

“Do you ever get tired of music?” I ask, letting out the sigh I’ve been holding.

“Music, no.” He leans in and gives me a kiss on the forehead, brushing my hair off my face. “It’s in my blood. It’s my home. I don’t know where I’d be without it.”

“What do you mean?”

Rome pauses with his hand on my shoulder, watching me, and even if he’s still right here, I feel his eyes become distant as he travels somewhere in his mind that doesn’t seem to bring him much comfort.

“My mom was a singer for a local band,” he says. “I’ve only heard a couple of really old recordings, but they were good. If things had gone differently for her, she might have been able to make something of it.”

He’s absentmindedly tracing circles on my shoulder, and his eyes are fixed at the spot on my skin, like he’s making a pattern of his memories on me.

“She met my dad and got pregnant. And from what he said, she was happy about it, even if she shouldn’t have been. She was willing to give it all up for me. Not that she knew it’d also take her life.”

I open my mouth to say something but think better of it, snapping it closed when his eyes focus on mine. Hurt swirling with loss, still fresh in the wounds deep inside him.

“My father hated me for killing her, even if it was just acomplication.” He says the word like even he doesn’t believe it. Like his father convinced him that his birth and his mother’s death are his fault. “He made sure to remind me of that every way he could. Said if she had to suffer for me, he’d make sure she got her justice. He was a drunk, and a druggie, and a piece of shit.”

Rome shakes his head and my hand trails down his chest, over the ink laced with scars. And even if I’ve seen them before, now they seem to cut deeper into his flesh. They leak into the places Rome doesn’t talk about. But while he seems to think it makes him impossible to love, I can feel his heart beating through them.

I trail down until I place my hand over the most ragged scar that stretches the length of his side and stomach.

“That was when he pushed me into a glass table,” Rome says, nonchalantly, like it’s nothing out of the ordinary for a parent to do that to their child.

I may not be emotionally close with my parents, but they would never physically hurt me.

Rome pulls me closer and looks me dead in the eyes. We’re so close I can feel the pain spilling out of him.

“He tried every way possible to break me. But you can’t break something that was never together in the first place. I’ve always been pieces since the day I was born. Never meeting the only person who might have given a shit about me. So I held onto the only things I could—and music was that. It was in her blood, and if it was in mine, then I still had something in me that wasn’t him.”

Reaching up, I cup his jaw in my hand. “She isn’t the only person to give a shit about you. The band does. And… me.”

He places his hand over mine, and we’re in the bubble of pillows and blankets and morning sunshine streaming through the window. A scene that makes even Rome Moreno appear reachable.

“You,” Rome says, looking into my eyes with such intensity I can hardly stand it. “You’re like music. Something good in all this fucked up chaos.”

“I’m not all good,” I remind him.

There’s darkness swimming inside me that I don’t talk about. A few times over the years I almost gave into it. At least then I wouldn’t have to feel the restriction, and I could just be free. Rome’s been the first person to quiet it in a long time.

Rome smirks, bringing my vision back into focus. It’s a beautiful mix of wicked and playful, and I want to keep his smile in my heart for bad days. Something to look at when things don’t feel worth getting through.

“You’re good for me,” he says.

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