Page 46 of Remember When We
“Gio Bianchi, you are so bad.” I swatted his hand away when he tried to reach for me. If he touched me again, we’d end up naked. Just like earlier it took us an hour to get down here. I wanted to be down here when Dad and Matthew woke up. I didn’t think it would be good for them to know Gio was in my room, or worse find me in bed with him.
“Yes, Baby doll. I am a very bad man who can’t get enough of you. I haven’t even started to get nasty with you yet.”
I looked at him, because this felt like a dream.
The fact that we were standing together in the kitchen at my dad’s house didn’t feel real.
We didn’t feel real and I didn’t realize how much I really loved and missed him. Not until he said he lied to me about not loving me and everything that came with that horrible conversation from years ago.
Our breakup eight years ago.
I didn’t realize how I would feel hearing that it wasn’t true. It hit me and cut me deeply, because it signaled that everything I had gone through didn’t have to happen. It didn’t, none of it. I was so depressed when he left. Instead of being happy while pregnant like a lot of women I’d seen, I was the other kind who was depressed. It even took me awhile to bond with Matthew and when I finally did I felt guilty for not doing it sooner.
We were standing here like it could have been years ago and we were trying to keep our relationship a secret.
“Come here.” He crooked his finger beckoning me to come to him and I did. He caught my face and slanted his lips over mine kissing me.
This part I wouldn’t have cared who saw. I loved the wildness we shared, but his kisses were always something more. It was like they held everything that he felt for me; everything and so much more.
This was the same as how I felt years ago.
It just felt like time sped up somewhat and I was here with all these options he’d laid out before me. All were amazing, but here I was too before him with more secrets and the mother of all problems.
Frankie Santora.
If I took him out of the equation, I might be able to just step back into the past with Gio and pick up where we left off. I might even be dancing about going to Chicago and finally having someone to take care of me and Matthew. I might even sing and do backflips, because that person was Gio. He was Matthew’s father, and not anyone else. I might be happy that I would soon give up this hard horrible life and honestly, I would be happy to see the last of Philly. I had never planned to live here forever. We lived in the suburbs, but the place held too many painful memories.
Yes, I could have been happy about all of that, but I doubted I could contemplate happiness with the fucking two hundred grand debt over my head, the consequences of not paying it and Dad’s health.
Dad …
Shit, I had sensed tension when Gio spoke of Dad. I sensed it and he would most likely kill him if he found out the situation.
I didn’t even know how I dealt with it up till now.
My father getting into debt with the mob, me having to pay it off and if I didn’t I would have to give myself to the devil.
The thing was if Gio knew about that, it would just be Dad who suffered his wrath.
It all scared me.
What scared me even more were all the decisions and questions.
Go Chicago and what?
What exactly was he in Chicago? What had he done for Frankie’s guys to know of him?
What could it be that I hadn’t heard?
I knew his father was in the Mafia. He’d told me long ago. He just never said too much. I knew that when Gio lived here he got up to all kinds of bad stuff; all sorts. Not drugs though, he didn’t do drugs like Marshall had. I’d loved him too much to ask the questions I should have asked back then.
I pulled back a little, gazed into his eyes and ran my fingers down his neck over the tattoo. It was that mark that the guys had recognized.
“It’s new. A cross on your neck?”
Christians wore crosses to represent their devotion to Christ, some wore it to protect them from evil. Others saw it as a mark or some remembrance of death.
Gio was no saint, and the look in his eyes told me it was the latter.
