Page 92 of Vengeful Eyes
“No one is ever going to touch our girl. If they manage to get through Torino, they’ll have me and Quinn to deal with.”
The image makes me smile. This girl is going to have a hell of a hard time, and I can’t even imagine the idea of her ever dating. Not with New York and Chicago's mob bosses as her father and uncle. “You have to give her a chance to grow,Benjamin, or you’ll smother her. Promise me.”
“Not going to fucking happen, Hope.”
My eyes roll, and I look back at the ocean, saving that argument for another day.
“What's the odd mood been about all afternoon?” I ask, reaching for his jaw. “You haven't seemed very happy.”
He surprises me by lifting my feet up into his lap, his fingers pulling my sandalsoff so he can rub my feet. I'm so stunned by the move I just stare, mouth open with words I can't find.
“Happiness is a hard concept for me,” he mutters, looking out to the waves. “I love you. I love our girl. You make me happy. That what you needed to hear?” He shakes his head, a small chuckle coming. “Always with the words.”
“I can’t always trust your actions. You can be volatile and…” His eyes flare to life as he turns back to me, anger at my forthright tone because I'm making him talk to me. “See? There, Benjamin. You're like those damn beads on your wrist, constantly turning and churning. One wrong turn and I'm on edge, waiting for an explosion. I don't want that. Be happy for yourself. Me.” My hand drops onto our daughter inside me. “Us. We all need that.”
“I won’t stop being who I am. Not even for you.”
“I’m not asking you to. I fell in love with everything about you. Just be happy here. Be you here and leave the city where it stands.” I sigh and put his hand on my stomach, my own covering his. “This is home. Relax.”
He's silent for a while but his fingers remain over the very thing that's brought us truly together. I wish I could say that we'd still be an us without her, but I'm no fool. This baby growing is our second chance, a way of finding each other because of a common goal. What might have happened if not for her, I’m not prepared to give any more thought to. And I'm glad of that because without her, I wouldn't have seen who he really is under the harsh exterior. She's opening up the part of him I only glimpsed, those stolen moments when he couldn’tnotlet me see. I guess time will show how real that is.
He steps back, taking his hand away and bringing it to his top button. Slowly, painstakingly slowly, he pops the first of the buttons on his shirt.
“This is me.” He continues removing the buttons and giving me sight of his glorious chest. “All of me.” The material slides over his skin, revealing his tattoos for me to stare at. He turns around, letting me see his back. The movement of his muscles brings the tattoos to life, almost causing them to move with him. “This is where it started. The symbol I chose to always bear.”
He runs his hand over his chest, across his shoulder and down his left arm, before facing me again. “When my mother took me from here, everything changed. I changed. The boy I’d been was dead from then on. He had to be. This skull represents the death of me as a boy, and that death has guided my life going forward. And now I am what I am because of it, Hope. Nothing more. Nothing less.”
He traces the flames that lick and dance up his sleeve and engulf the large black skull that dominates his pec. It’s the most intimidating of the tattoos he has on his skin. The skull looks haunted, in pain. Just like him.
“This was the first one. The start. I mourned for the boy I could have been and struggled with the rage I felt. It’s all that drove me. My mother told me I couldn’t be that boy anymore, so I wasn’t. I became something else. Someone more.” He stalls, finger tracing his skin. “But I never forgot, Hope. It’s etched into my skin as a reminder. Each kill, each death, I carry with me. This skin is a walking fucking picture-book of how my life changed that day.”
As I listen to the words, I study the myriad of skulls, smoke patterns and black lines, a candle the single source of the flames and smoke that cover over half his body. The candle already burned and dead, the flame snubbed out. Is that a metaphor for the life he lost? I can’t help but look over each and every picture, every shadow and feature, looking for the hidden meaning behind them.
“You wanna swim?”
What?
I turn my eyes to his and see a glimpse of a shadow behind his eyes. Before I can process further, he continues to remove his clothes. All of them. He closes the distance between us, reaching for me, and pulls me to standing.
“You want to go swimming?” After what he just revealed, I’m a little stunned.
“Yeah. With you.”
“It'll be freezing.”
“You going soft on me?” His fingers start pushing the dress off my shoulders, bra strap going with it until the lot tumbles to the floor beneath me. “That's not my girl. Where’s my wild cat?” She's about ready to drop a baby, that's where she is.
I smile, though, as my feet move to close the distance between us, my hand resting in his as he starts backing himself over the deck and to the steps that lead to my slice of beach heaven.
“I can't believe I'm doing this. Look at me for God's sake.”
“You always do as you're told. My good girl. And I am looking at you. You're beautiful. I'm always fucking looking at you.”
Sand squeezes between my toes as he keeps walking backwards, towing me with him into God knows what. Swimming. Naked. As the sun has just dipped beneath the ocean, the sky is silver and grey, and the romance of what we’re doing overshadows everything else. Everything he’s just told me. The final piece of him I’d longed to know but feared to ask.
All this time here and he's never swum once, never even mentioned it.
“You'll have to hold onto me. Swimming is not my forte,” I mumble, watching as the gentle waves start lapping over his feet. The squeal that comes out of my mouth the moment the frigid water hits me is ridiculous, and I suck in a breath, dancing to try avoiding it.
