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I thank God he’s alive. And then I thank God I didn’t tell him my secret. Because I didn’t know there was another Visconti brother. But I do know that man.
AHHHHH
I reach out to grab something, anything, to steady myself, and my fingers brush over something hard and hot, but before they find purchase, I’m spinning. My back slams against something solid and knocks the air from my lungs. What the hell?
“If you stick your tongue out at me again, I’ll cut it out of your head.”
The way i laughed and said ok
I was right: Angelo Visconti can pick you up with one arm without grunting. “Water,” I announce as he wraps an arm around my waist, hauls me to his side, and lifts me a few inches from the ground. I lean back against his forearm to stare up at him. Gotta make sure he’s listening.
OH OK THEN
“Wren.” Angelo comes to a stop under the heat lamp, his eyes humming with quiet amusement. “You’re welcome at our house anytime. Anytime, but not tonight.”
There’s a stiff second before the penny drops. When it does, the shells of my ears grow hot. “Oh,” I mumble, fiddling with the shoulder strap of my SOS bag. “Yes, of course. Well, um, just make sure she’s hydrated.” “Yes, boss.”
IM WEAK
“You know I’m going to ask.” My smile wobbles. “And you know I will politely decline. Thanks for the offer though.” In the few months he’s lived on the coast, I can’t count how many times he’s offered me a ride. My answer is always the same.
GOD I LOVE ANGELO
“Don’t change the subject. When are you going to start driving again?”
OH I THINK I KNOW WHAT SHE DID
Passing the time until my favorite niece finishes partying, because she insists on risking her life by walking the forty-five-minute journey home down a dark, scary road instead of driving.”
Thats why she was walking when she found gabe
The proof’s in the pudding: I’ve been walking this route nearly every weekend, and nothing bad has ever happened. The closest I’ve ever come to danger is that night.
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Im utterly confused
The armchair lets out a lazy groan, and a face emerges from the shadows. Ink. Scar. Green.
Shut the fuck up
“You always leave your front door unlocked for anyone to walk in?” His voice is a rough drawl, unhurried and certain.
Concerned Are we
My brain kicks back in, bursting with vivid snapshots. Me being pinned to my cream carpet by a wall of muscle. A tattooed hand muffling my sobs. Everything I’ve been saving for The One, from my first kiss to my first time, ripped away from me by this monster.
A set of knives. Now would be a good time for my body to work, even just part of it. My feet, my voice, or my common sense. “Choose one.” My eyes snap back up to his. “W-what?” “I warned you.” My pulse aches from throbbing as I remember his earlier warning. Stick your tongue out at me again, and I’ll cut it out of your head.
Oh ok
They say your life flashes before your eyes when you’re about to die, but when my gaze finds the black sky beyond the pink porch light, all I see is one sentence. Five words, twenty-nine characters, including spaces. A bitter thought, tinged with irony, drifts through the space between my ears. At least it’ll finally be complete.
Hmmm
Instead, smooth leather glides down to my throat. He pushes two fingers against my clavicle, then the top of my head slams against his collarbone. The roughness of his beard grazes my earlobe, and his hot breath skitters over my pulse. “Lock your fucking doors,” he growls.
As he should
Only when the taste of metal fills my entire mouth to where it burns and I fear it’ll choke me, do I spit it out into my palm. It’s my house key. I lock the door and sink—down, down, down, like a deflating balloon. And that’s where I stay until daylight comes.
OH OK
But the lack of a watch on his wrist and the sloppy signatures on the documents I took from his desk and burned this morning tell me he is.
Oh hello
“Top secret.” “Ah,” he murmurs against the rim of his tumbler. “Gabe Visconti and his chamber of secrets.”
Im weak
Pink. Pink. Pink. Christ. I never thought it’d be possible to hate a fucking color so much.
But more fool me, because I’d turned up at her house in an attempt to teach her about the age-old adage of fucking around and finding out, but instead, I fucked around and found out what her heavy breaths feel like against my palm, and how her hair smells when it’s freshly washed.
AHHHH
Why the fuck was her door unlocked, and why did she just stand there—slack-jawed and wide-eyed, in the thinnest robe on the planet—instead of running for her life?
She pulls something up on her phone and shows Arben, and my muscles twitch, preparing my body to do something it shouldn’t. Not to her, but to him. I don’t need to hear the girl running her mouth to know whatever she said isn’t the reason he’s tickled.
Liar
And when she touched him, he thought he stood a chance of finding out if what’s underneath that bright-pink raincoat is as tight as her silhouette would suggest. He’ll lose the rest of his teeth tonight. And I’ll lose my fucking mind over her secret.
AHHHH
He huffs out a dry laugh, his eyes drifting to the photo of her smiling beside his laptop. “I’d drag her down the aisle by her curls if I had to.” “How romantic.”
Behind me, Rafe grinds out an Italian curse. “I don’t have my fucking watch. What’s the time? We need to leave soon, right?”
AHHHAHAHA
I suspect his sudden change in demeanor has something to do with red hair and a smart mouth.
Its penny
Secrets are my most powerful weapon but also my darkest obsession. I bury them. I dig them up. I listen to them. Feast on them.
My attention goes back to the girl in pink. I know every secret. Every secret, except Hers.
Gabriel Visconti is as terrifying as he looks. Even more terrifying now that he’s staring right at me.
Rafe stands beside him, dabbing the corner of his eye, his lips stretched into a small smile as he watches the wedding unfold.
Psychopaths don’t feel fear or guilt, and considering he hasn’t gone on the run or fallen to my feet with a groveling apology—which I absolutely would not accept anyway—makes for a definite double check.
He doesn’t yawn back. He. Doesn’t. Yawn. Back. Oh my God, he really is a psychopath.
I squint at the bar behind them to see if I recognize the redhead Rafe is talking to. Oh, it’s Penny Price. She used to live down the road from me. Click.
I’d laugh if my throat wasn’t closing. Gabriel Visconti being my type is obscene, and that’s before I even found him sprawled over my favorite armchair in the middle of the night. He’s someone’s type, sure. Not mine, though.
Not yet
None of these guys are The One. Folding the napkin into my clutch,
Gabe is going to find this
Not just the earth-shattering meet-cute, but all the clichés that follow. Pebbles hitting my bedroom window at midnight, the yawn-and-reach at the back of a movie theater. Rose petals and candlelight and stolen kisses in doorways while walking home in the rain.
I’ve saved everything for it. Every first, from my first date to my first kiss, and beyond, for it. I can’t simply date—there’s no maybe-so’s, no settling, and definitely no friends with benefits. It’s not in my DNA.
Crazy she aint gonna get it
He pushes me away with the jab of his finger and swaggers toward me in time with the music. I push back and chase his retreat. When the chorus hits, he drops to the floor and slides on his knees. Before his hands can start roaming up the sides of my thighs, a tight grip on my arm yanks me out of his reach.
Oh
“But he knows the whole dance—” “What’s the golden rule, Wren?” I sink back into my chair and let out a dramatic sigh. “I know, I know. We don’t dance with Benny.” “We never dance with Benny.” “Cockblock!” Benny yells.
HAHAA
“He has just enough brain cells that I don’t feel like I’m taking advantage of him, but on the other hand, his tattoos look like graffiti on a school desk.” She shrugs. “Meh. I’ll fuck him with the lights off. Come on.” She offers me her hand.
IM WEAK
“You’re dancing with Gabe.” I stare at her ring-clad fingers. “What?” “The bridesmaids and groomsmen dance is about to start.”
AHHH
When Rafe mutters something in his ear, his lightning-bolt glare finds me and strikes.
Rafe, well, I don’t know who he’s looking for. His face is sullen and taut, and he’s scanning the treeline obsessively.
His red headed queen
My eyes snap upward. “You know, I try to see the best in people, but with you, I really have to squint.” “Don’t squint too hard. I’ll take your eyeballs too.”
He’s not the man I comforted as his blood ruined my dress. Not the man who used one of his last breaths to laugh, or to call me beautiful.
Me, I can identify any emotion by a scream.
Hmmm
Gabriel lunges toward me with such speed I don’t even have time to flinch, and now my feet aren’t touching the ground at all. His forearm pins me to his torso as he drives me backward through a blur of chaos.
Oh
and yet I somehow know that clinging to his body is the safest place to be. I grip him tighter.
