Page 39 of The Devil's Playground

I mean, I plan on giving her all of that, too, but Nicolette… she’s different than so many of the women I’ve met since being a Sinner. She’s obviously been hurt by someone before, and I get the vibe it’s someone like me.

I want to show her that I’m different than what I seem, too.

As a fixer, I have a skill. I can do anything, get anything, arrange anything. If it doesn’t come easy, I focus. I plan. I learn. Right now, my goal is to make Nicolette Williams mine. Not for a night, and not because I was at the right place at the right time. You could even argue that I wasn’t—I got a frying pan to the side because she thought I was trying to break into her house—and, yet, she still invited me inside where one thing led to another and yeah… I got my night.

I want more.

Breakfast was my first step. To show her how thoughtful I can be while also setting the stage for step two: claiming Nic before she could even think of brushing that night off as a one-time thing. I was glad when she didn’t try to tell me that fucking me was her way of calling us even. As far as I’m concerned, the ten grand I was out is a small price to pay to keep her out of Miles Haines’s disturbed fantasies.

Once I got my first taste of her, though? I knew I was right. No matter why she caught my attention in the first place, she has it now—and every day that passes makes me fall deeper and deeper for this woman.

It started out as curiosity. By the time I was stalking her around Springfield, telling myself I was just keeping an eye out for her… it was obsession. The more time I spend with her, though? Getting to know every facet of Nicolette? I’m beginning to wonder if this is what being in love is like.

I want to say it is. This feeling like every fucking breath I have is dedicated to her, that when she smiles, I smile, just because her happiness brightens my day. When I was in high school, I had a few girlfriends that made me feel this way. Silly puppy love where I’ll do anything for her approval, and one kiss from her makes me feel like I can do anything.

I’ve never experienced this as an adult. In my early twenties, I was busy working alongside Link, building up the syndicate. Fuck knows that he wasn’t interested in chicks back then—even if it took me a while to find out why—and without that being a focus for him, I wasn’t really too concerned with getting into a relationship myself. I dated, sure, and I screwed around, but it was never anything serious.

And then I held a near-stranger as she died when I was twenty-four. She told me she loved me. I barely knew her… and she died in my arms.

After that, I never thought I’d love anyone—until Nic.

But there’s a dark side to my overwhelming love for her, too. When I first stepped off the straight and narrow path when I was a kid, I realized that life isn’t made up of blacks and whites. It’s shades of grey, and just like how I went from being vice president of the student council when I was a senior in high school to falling in with organized crime shortly after I graduated, the dangerous parts of life have always attracted me.

Is it because I have a dark side of my own? Probably. And the more time I spend with Nicolette, the more I find myself fighting against it.

It’s times like these that I understand why Link walked away from Ava, and why he did everything he could to keep her when he had his second chance.

The darkness hidden beneath my crooked smile and Ken doll looks is just begging to get out, to cocoon Nicolette, to love and keep her and eliminate anyone who would take her from me. I’m obsessed with her… and she acts like this is just a fling to keep her warm through the winter.

It’s been three weeks, and while I got her to agree that we’re exclusive—and, trust me, it was a blow to my ego that even getting that out of her was like pulling teeth—that’s all I could get her to agree to. She had no idea that I’m playing the long game here. What we have… this is it for both of us. We’re forever. Even if there’s someone else I might ever feel the same way about, I don’t care. She’s mine… and I know her well enough that, if she believed that I meant it the first time I told her she was, she’d spook and run.

Nic is hiding something. That camera was a huge clue, though she shuts down whenever I try to mention it. Still, there are times when she looks at me like I’ve hung the fucking stars for her, and others when our eyes meet, but I know she sees someone else. It’s in the way she constantly looks over her shoulders. It’s in the cameras she has posted around her house. It’s in the way she whispers my name wistfully as I fuck her in her childhood bed, in her mother’s house, trying to make her mine anyway I can while I know—I just know—that she’s counting the moments until I walk away from her.

Because that’s the thing. I get the feeling that Nicolette isn’t going all in because she’s not interested. It’s because she is and she doesn’t believe that I could be.

Which makes it my responsibility to prove to her that I am.

As much as I want to, I can’t pull a Devil; not unless I want to lose her completely. Link forced Ava into marrying him so that he could keep her, and though the idea of making Nicolette my wife has me rock-hard, I know better than to bring it up. As far as she knows, it’s only been a few months since I paid her any attention. If she found out I’ve been watching over her since November?

Yup. That’ll spook her. Worse, I’m absolutely convinced she’ll take off. Just run, leaving me behind, and though I’d find her… I’d rather I didn’t have to.

So, instead, I’ve devoted any free moment I have—when Link doesn’t need me for Sinners biz, or I’m not checking in with Jake—to making Nicolette comfortable with the idea of forever with me.

She gets antsy when we go out to dinner? Since it becomes pretty clear that, of the two of us, I’m actually the better cook, we order in and eat in the living room together. When I realize that Nicolette’s favorite thing to do is curl up and watch a musical? I force myself through the first few before admitting they’re not so bad.

Plus, since most of the song-and-dance movies are like three hours long, she’s more than happy to invite me to spend the night after they’re done. Throw in the fact that she likes the more romantic ones, she’s usually in the mood to fuck when they’re over, and I’m happy to oblige.

I’m happy to give Nicolette everything she wants—and that includes time.

No one knows that we’re together. No. Scratch that. No one in Nic’s life knows that we’re together. Link was aware from the moment I sent the shot of her hair on my chest. Of course, that means that Ava also knows. Then, because I’m a high-ranking Sinner, I had to let the guys know that Nic isn’t just a Playground employee. She’s important to me, and it’s their balls if anything happens to her.

With her mother sticking it out in Florida through the winter, she decides to hold off on introducing me until she’s back in Springfield. She has no dad in the picture, and all of her friends are back in Willowbrook. Since she was so determined to keep her job at the Playground, we’re keeping it hush-hush there so that none of the other staff accuse her of getting preferential treatment.

That was Nicolette’s idea. I went along with it against my better judgment, telling myself it didn’t matter. Anyone who counts is fully aware what role she has in my life, and as much as she wants to act like I’m her dirty little secret, that’s kinda hard when I whisk her away at every chance to my personal office next door so that I can remind her just who she belongs to.

Because she’s mine—and, sooner or later, everyone will admit that.

Including Nicolette.

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