Page 20 of Double Edged Hearts
Chapter Five
Alex
She’s a pretty sight wearing nothing but my shirt.
She looks at me with her hair wild and her lips in that perfect pout. I’m trying my damn best not to want her too much.
This… what we’re doing isn’t real. It’s a fantasy I have that will end by morning.
In this fantasy I’m acting like the boyfriend who’s making his girl pancakes because she said she felt like some.
She’s acting like my doll. The goddess sitting at the breakfast table with those long golden legs on show, and her tits pressing against the shirt giving away her arousal again, for me.
“Alex, it’s going to burn,” she says with a little smile.
I glance down at the pan and see she’s right, so I flip the pancake over just in time. She laughs, and it’s the best sound.
I got used to the quiet in the house. Sometimes the guys come over and stay when we’re talking motorcycles and plans for the arena. That’s it though. There is just me.
I’m the only one without a family. Dante and Gio both have two kids. Claudius has one and another one on the way. Luc, his brother, is busy with his three. So that just leaves Donny and the other guys, who are more like acquaintances even though we’ve known each other for a long time.
“It smells amazing,” Cora notes.
“Cinnamon. If you add a dash to the mixture, it gives it a kick. My brother taught me how to do it.” At the mention of my brother, her smile recedes, and I know she wants to ask me which one, but she won’t because both stories about my brothers are bad. “Phillipe. That brother,” I say, and she nods.
“I can tell he was a good cook.” She smiles.
“The best,” I reply, and I do the thing I rarely do when there’s any talk of Phillipe. I remember him.
I remember the good parts. He was older than me by twelve years. Jude and I were only two years apart. Phillipe rescued us from our deadbeat mother, who would have left us for dead in that piece-of-shit apartment she raised us in. She lost her mind after my father died in a car accident, and she never found herself again. She drank herself into an early grave.
Phillipe took care of us like we were his. I remember how he loved me and Jude, but mostly I see him crossing the street where we lived, in New York, with a bag of groceries, the bullets hitting him as a gang started shooting at a rival member. He got caught in it, and Jude pulled me away, getting me out of danger.
That’s the scene I remember. It felt like the day I lost everything.
Cora stands up and comes over to me. She reaches up and touches my jaw. “You have that look,” she notes.
I know the look she means I’ve been sporting it all week. It’s the look of loss. Grief… guilt. For Jude.
She’s distracted the hell out of me. Prior to her arrival I was thinking about him so much the nightmares started coming back. Nearly every night I’d see him.His ghost.Asleep and awake.
“What look doll?” I ask.
“For him. Jude…” she answers tentatively.
“Yeah. I get like this every year at this time. Hard not to.”
The same time I lost him, I got closer to her. It was then I knew she would always be important to me.
I was a real mess after I killed Jude and it was her who brought me back. It’s some twist of shit that we aren’t really together outside this fantasy.
“Are you okay?” she asks and I touch my forehead to hers.
“Don’t worry about me doll,” I answer.
I take out the pancake and place it on the plate with the rest then switch off the stove. I then pick her up and set her on the breakfast table.
“What are you doing?”
