Page 61 of The Pretenders of Copper County
“That’s not what I was going to say.” He laid one small hand over my mouth. “Of course I think the best of him. He’s not a criminal, whatever he might have gotten mixed up in. But the last few days, being with—I mean, being in Copper County, I’ve started thinking Danny kept me a littletooprotected.”
I narrowed my eyes. Was that even possible?
“See, I didn’t have a lot of friends when I was growing up.” Chris rubbed his thumb over my lip and spoke abstractedly, his eyes watching his fingers. “And I always figured it was my own fault. I’m shy and I get nervous around people, which means I babble alot. I get distracted sometimes, which can be annoying. My interests are kinda specific and unusual. I’m just not the easiest person to be around?—”
“Bullshit,” I said. The sound came out muffled by his fingers, so I grabbed his hand and held it so I could repeat myself. “Bull. Shit. Every person in this town decided after thirty seconds of knowing you that they wanted to be your friend. AndI?—”
I had thrown professionalism out the window because I craved him so badly—not just his hot body and his enthusiastic kisses, but his sweet smiles, his stammering, andeven, sometimes, the arguing he claimed he was definitelynotdoing.
“Yeah,” Chris sighed happily. He pushed up his glasses with his free hand. “It’s been kind of amazing. But like I said, it’s made me think. If I can fit this well in Copper County, why not back in New Jersey? Why not in a beautiful place like Little Pippin Hollow? Was it that people didn’t like me? Or did I hold myself back so much I didn’t give them achanceto like me?” He turned his hand in mine so our fingers slotted together. “Danny used to tell me all the time not to trust too easily because people had ulterior motives. He told me the world was dangerous, so I needed to be smart and tough and protect myself. When I was sad about some kid at school not wanting to be my friend, he’d flare his nostrils—that’s a thing he does—and say, ‘Don’t you waste another minute trying to make people like you, Christoforo. You don’t need friends when you have family.’ And when I wanted to take the money Nonna left me and go to Italy on a cheese tour, he said it was risky to go alone and impractical to go atall. And when I wanted to take over the Cellar…” He sat back in his seat and twisted his fingers together. “Well, I already told you about that.”
“Yeah.” Chris,too soft?Please. I wished, not for the first time, that Dante Fromadgio wasn’t under protective custody so that he and I could have a little chat.
“I know Danny only said those things because he cares for me. He wants me safe. He doesn’t want me bullied, or to lose the business, or to accidentally take a train to Romania instead of Rome because I got distracted, daydreaming about aJohn Ruffianepisode.” He blushed. “Not that I would ever do that, obviously.”
I huffed out a laugh. “Obviously.”
“But when I came here,everything in my life was already so… so mixed up—I was worried about Danny and keyed up from the business at the safe house and the low-key altercation at the roadhouse?—”
“The bar brawl,” I corrected.
“Thelow-key altercation,” he repeated. “And, well, I might also have been trying not to, um, let a certain bossy person see that I was really quite attracted to him?—”
I felt a slow smile spread across my face, and I squeezed his fingers. “Is that right?”
Chris’s blush was one of the unrecognized natural wonders of the world. “I didn’t sayyou. I said acertain person. I could have been talking about Watt.”
I scowled, pulling him closer. “Not funny,” I said darkly.
“The point is, I didn’t have the energy to pretend to be anyone else, or to hold myself back. I just acted like my own, weird self. And… people liked me anyway.” His voice held a kind of wonder and disbelief that made my stomach plummet in sympathy while my fingers itched to find every person who’d ever hurt him and show them the error of their ways.Slowly.
“So, now I’m thinking all that protection Danny gave me wasn’t as helpful as he thought it was. Because maybe if I hadn’t expected people to hurt me everywhere I turned, I might have put myself out there sooner.” Chris bit his lip. “You can’t cut a plant off from sunlight and expect it to thrive, you know? You have to expose it to the elements a little bit. You have to let it do its plant thing. You have to trust that it knows how to bloom.”
I sighed. “You’re saying that I’m making you feel stifled.”
“No!” He hesitated. “Not… exactly. I know this is a different situation. I know you think I’m actually in physical danger. I know you’re a Division agent, first and foremost, and you’re doing your job. And Ilikehow protective you are. Ilikethat I feel safe with you and know you’re looking out for me. Alot. I just… I don’t want to be kept in a little pot anymore. I don’t want to go through life scared. What good is being safe if it means you’re not happy?”
I’d wondered a lot about how Chris had ended up so innocent with an uncle like Dante, but I hadn’t considered what it had taken tokeephim that innocent. How much effort Dante must have put into it, how many big and little lies he’d told… or what kind of toll that had taken on Chris.
I ground my teeth together. I shouldn’t give a shit about any of this. My job was to keep him physically safe and whole, not to encourage him to “bloom” or whatever. Chris was right; Iwasa Division agent first and foremost. Or at least I should be.
The trouble was, I liked Chris. Very much. And I respected him, too. He was thoughtful, and intelligent and, yes, capable. I trusted his judgment. I trustedhim, even now, when I was pretty sure he was lying about something, because I knew his intentions were good.
Keeping him safe at the expense of his happiness didn’t seem right. It made me feel a little too much like the figure skating coach who’d told him he couldn’t fly because nobody was strong enough to lift him.
A tall, dark-haired, solidly built man in a police uniform strolled down the sidewalk in front of us. When he spotted Chris, they both waved.
“You ‘blooming’ might not bother me so much if every man in this town didn’t seem so interested in pollination,” I muttered.
Chris turned to me with a frown. “Pardon?”
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
“That was Silas.” Chris jerked a thumb at the cop, who’d pulled open the door to the diner a block down the street. “His fiancé, Everett, is Hen’s grandson.”
I had no idea how Chris knew all this since he’d actually spent less time in town than I had this week, but I wasn’t surprised. Not anymore. People, like charcuterie boards and horrifyingly unrealistic action shows, were Chris’s thing.
I ran my free hand over Chris’s smooth cheek and cupped his jaw. “Go on,” I told him, nodding toward the library. I squeezed his fingers one last time, then released them. “Get your embroidered card holder or whatever the fuck. Just please try to avoidallbodies of water, even the small and placid ones, until I can teach you how to swim. I’ll meet you back here in an hour and a half. Okay?”
