“And…what about everythin’ else?”

  I paused in the middle of counting my toiletries, dividing them into things I could and couldn’t take with me.

  The ache returned, the sadness and confusion when confronted with thoughts of Michele. It rose in my throat, clawing and scratching, angry that I tried to ignore it.

  Swallowing hard, I spoke. “It doesn’t matter. It’s over now.”

  “Hmm.”

  I turned to her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing. Just means hmm.”

  She met my eye without reservation, staring at me with nothing to hide.

  “Bullshit.”

  She sighed, rolling her eyes while she scratched her chin.

  “Look… I’m not sayin’ I’m a genius or anythin’, but it just seems like the pair of you have somethin’ pulling you together.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, somethin’ made your paths cross again. Maybe it’ll happen a third time?”

  “So what if it does? Someone shot at us. That should be more than enough reason for me to stay away.”

  She said nothing at first, blinking at me and seeming to wait for me to come to some kind of epiphany, but as far as I’d been concerned, there wasn’t one to have.

  “S’pose it should be,” she said. “Question is, will it be?”

  My heart sank. I didn’t know.

  “You tell ’im you’re leaving yet?”

  My brows creased. “You think I should?”

  She shrugged. “Seems the thing to do, for some reason, but I don’t know. Up to you.” Kennia pushed herself off my bunk and to her feet. “I’m going to grab somethin’ to eat. Need my energy for the drive.”

  Absently nodding, I sank into my thoughts. She wasn’t wrong. It did seem like the sort of thing I should relay. He deserved to know that I was leaving, for no other reason than I was cutting my contract on his vessel short, but there was another. There were many more, in fact, and in the end, they were what guided my hand.

  Alone in the room, I took a seat on my bunk and retrieved my phone. Michele’s text conversation remained toward the top of the queue because he’d continued to message me. I clicked on it and ignored the previous text blocks in favor of sending a new one.

  I’m leaving Italy.

  It was better to be to the point.

  His reply was quick to come.

  When?

  In a few hours. My flight leaves at two a.m.

  There was a hesitation that lasted nearly two minutes. The timestamp told me so.

  If this is about what happened, I promise you needn’t leave. You are safe.

  I believed he thought so.

  It’s not. My grandpa had a stroke. The doctors don’t think he’s going to last very long.

  As I had so many times before, I chose to be honest with him.

  I am so sorry.

  The sentiment was sweet, but undeserved. Still, I hadn’t told him that. What would’ve been the point?

  Thank you.

  Another long pause punctuated the moment.

  May I ask something of you?

  I stared at the message, wondering what he might want. In theory, it could’ve been anything.

  Morbid curiosity drove my thumbs across the keypad.

  What’s that?

  He replied.

  I’d like to see you before you leave.

  My heart sank and my stomach twisted. A conflict unlike anything I’d experienced before roiled inside me. Logic told me to say no, to tell him I wasn’t ready to see him in person again, but I wasn’t a very smart woman.

  Okay.

  * * * *

  At eleven o’clock that night, I found myself standing on the dock, curled within a jacket waiting as a dark figure approached from a distance. The glow of multiple lights told me who it was, but I hadn’t been able to settle.

  Michele kept his hands in his pockets while he closed the distance between us, soon standing near enough that I could see the distress in his face. It broke my heart, but I stood firm in my decision to stay distant.

  We lingered in a thick quiet for some time, the tension only broken by the soft sounds of the city and the churn of the ocean.

  “I’m not certain what to say,” he said after a lengthy silence.

  “I don’t know.”

  He wiped his hand down his face, scratching his chin before returning his hand to his pocket.

  “When does your flight leave?”

  “Two.”

  He nodded. “And of course you’ll need to leave soon, international travel being what it is.”

  I said nothing, staring at him questioningly. He met my eye for the first time in a while.

  “I’m not a gangster,” he said. I flinched but tried to conceal it. There was no way to know if I’d been successful. “But it would be a lie to say I don’t have ties to that world.”

  The pit in my chest grew denser.

  “I would have kept you safe,” he said. “No matter what it took. I want you to know that.”

  “I believe you,” I said, regardless of how badly I’d wanted to remain silent. “But that’s not the point.”

  “Then tell me what is,” he said, taking a step forward.

  The words bubbled in my throat, rising to the surface. I’d considered keeping them to myself, but it wouldn’t help. If there were a time to expose some of my deepest secrets, it was now.

  “I didn’t have a good childhood,” I said after a steadying breath. “My grandpa, the one who’s sick, was in and out of jail for years. So were my uncles and my aunt. I don’t even know my cousins from that side of the family. But the worst one, by far, is my dad.”

  His eyes narrowed and he tilted his head to the side.

  “He used to run book, was a message boy, a bruiser…” The shame descended, pushing on my shoulders like it had for the bulk of my life. “And a thief. He stole from the people he worked for, and they were very bad men.” The lump in my throat was scratching, making the words harder to say. “The point is, I’ve lived in that world before. Maybe that’s why I’m so fucked up when it comes to relationships, I don’t know. But either way, I can’t do this…not again.”

  He nodded and his chin dropped. “I understand.”

  Exposed and uncomfortable, I couldn’t help but wrap my arms around myself, desperate for something to hold onto.

  “Maybe I should go,” I said after a minute or two of nothing.

  He looked at me again, staring at me through his lashes. My heart raced. Regardless of what’d happened during that drive, memories of the days leading up to it were stronger, weighed by emotion and revelation. They were what clouded my sense, what interfered with the resolution I’d tried to keep.

  “Of course,” he said.

  Neither of us attempted to move, seemingly stuck in place by some unseen force.

  I’d become cold, yet I was somehow sweating. My fingers tingled, my stomach had filled with butterflies and my heart beat so hard that it hurt. Too many things were happening at once, and there was only one way I knew to resolve it.

  He met my approaching step and paused. When I stepped again, so did he until the space between us had closed.

  Michele swept me into his arms, encircling me in his strong limbs and pinning me to his chest like a drowning man clinging to a life raft. I gripped his shirt hard, twisting the fabric beneath my clenched fists and burying my face in his shoulders.

  His trembling breath glided along my neck, punctuated by the subdued shaking that’d overtaken him. I slammed my eyes shut harder, squeezing out some of the tears that’d gathered behind my lids. I didn’t want to let him go and he seemed to feel the same.

  We lingered on the dock, embracing one another far longer than most might have, but I couldn’t make myself let him go. I knew I had to, but I just couldn’t.

  After minutes glued to one another, he loosened his arms. The lack of tension brought me out of my bubble, and I followed suit. We drew back.

  His forehead rested on mine, a hand on my cheek. I couldn’t open my eyes, almost afraid of what I’d see. A large part of me wanted him to ask me to stay because I would have, in a heartbeat.

  “Dea mia,” he whispered, brushing my lips with each word.

  “I don’t know what that means,” I said, forcing the words over the painful lump in my throat.

  “It means you are my goddess.”

  Rather than being the sweet endearment they should’ve been, his words hit me hard in the gut. I nearly broke down in that moment.

  Seeming to be on his way to losing himself as well, Michele leaned in and tenderly placed his lips to my cheek then repeated the same to the other, moving so slow that it felt deliberate.

  “Addio per ora,” he muttered. I could only assume he was saying goodbye and that simple word sparked an intense fear inside me.

  Before he had the chance to withdraw, I jutted my chin forward, capturing his bottom lip. He gasped in surprise, but the shock hadn’t stopped him from returning the sentiment.

  Opening his mouth to mine, Michele kissed me deeply. Our tongues danced, his lips massaged mine and he held me tight. I could’ve lived in that moment for eternity, spent the rest of existence locked in that tender, loving embrace.

  But the real world lingered just beyond our bubble, a constant pressure pushing at the walls and desperate to break in.

  We forced ourselves to part. With far more effort than I could’ve imagined, I met his gaze. His eyes had become glassy, glittering in the dim light of nearby boats, and a damp line had trailed down his cheek, the end of which disappeared into his stubble. But despite the evidence of his emotional shift, Michele kept his voice calm when he spoke.

  “Don’t forget me,” he whispered.

  I couldn’t verbally respond but shook my head.

  He pulled a deep, shaky breath into his lungs and nodded.

  The cold that overtook me when I no longer held him was one I had never experienced, so deep and resounding that it threatened to kill me.

  My stranger, my Michele, walked back the way he’d come, soon disappearing into the night.

  I’d gone numb, too overloaded with emotion to land on one.

  But maybe we would see one another again. If Kennia was right and some unknown force was pushing us together, then it wasn’t really goodbye.

  Perhaps that small hope was what kept me from breaking.

  “Hey.”

  The soft, delicate voice of my best friend caused me to turn. Kennia stared at me with her brows creased tight. She forced a smile that flickered in the corners of her lips but didn’t linger.

  “Come on,” she said in that same comforting tone. “We need to head out.”

  I nodded. It was time to go home.

  * * * *

  The late hour, the lack of sleep and a thousand things in between vied for the top spot in ‘the most exhausting nonsense’ contest. I wanted to crash, to pass out and not wake up until I landed in Arizona and, given the length of the flight, that might’ve been possible.

  Kennia and I stood outside the airport, my bags at my feet, hugging one another tight. The taxi waited patiently, and I appreciated him for it.

  “Call me when you land,” she said. “Let me know what’s happenin’.”

  “I will.”

  We gave one another a final tight squeeze and parted. She smiled at me and winked.

  “Love you,” she said.

  “Love you, too.”

  Taking my bag, I headed inside.

  It hadn’t taken long to find a teller and even less time to weave through the nearly abandoned line to reach her.

  “Good evening,” she said with a thick accent touching every word.

  “Good evening.” I dug into my purse and removed all my information for my ticket.

  We went through the simple pleasantries while she typed in my name. I was still out of it, my mind still racing, so I hadn’t noticed the strange expression at first.

  “Something wrong?” I asked.

  “No.” She met my eye and flashed a smile. “There was a change to your ticket. I was confirming it.”

  My heart sank. “What change?”

  “You’ve been upgraded to first class.”

  The words hung in the air, lingering just beyond me. I wanted to ask why, to ask how the hell it could’ve happened, but a larger part chose to accept the strange turn of events. With a flight so long, the extra space was welcomed, and again, I was fucking exhausted.

  She finished making the arrangements and handed me my boarding pass with a dazzling smile.

  “Enjoy your flight, Miss Hurst.”

  “Thank you.”

  Retrieving my things, I headed through security then to my gate and took a seat with a few other beleaguered passengers. My mind wouldn’t stop racing, flashing between major life-altering situations, all of which seemed to deserve the proper amount of attention that I couldn’t give them.

  For better or worse, I kept thinking of Michele. To me, he was the more important concern. I didn’t care that John was ill. He wasn’t a good man, and I had no relationship with him, but I had something with Michele.

  Tears prickled in my eyes. With a sigh, I leaned forward, propping my elbows on my knees and burying my face in my hands. The longer I thought about him, the less I cared about the shooting. Stupid? More than likely. But that didn’t make it any easier.

  While I contemplated walking away from the only person who’d come to mean anything to me, the leather seat beside me groaned as someone sat. They were a little close for my tastes, especially when the gate was near abandoned in the late hour, but I chose to ignore them. They, however, didn’t choose to ignore me.

  “Hello, again.”

  I shot my head up, my gaze landing on the very source of my distress.

  It took a little while to pierce my confusion, but it was the man himself sat beside me wearing the same thing I’d seen him in on the docks not an hour prior.

  He met my eyes, his expression soft and reserved.

  “W-what are you doing here?”

  A soft smile touched the corners of his lips but faded almost immediately, and seriousness replaced it.

  “I…” His head dipped and he soon mimicked my position, sitting forward with his elbows on his knees. My heart was in my throat as I waited impatiently for him to speak. “I couldn’t let you walk away again.” He met my gaze, brows creased. “I do love you, Basil, and I understand that you may not feel the same, but I—”

  “I love you, too.”

  The words had fallen from my lips, flowing out of me without my knowledge. I hadn’t even known where they’d come from, but once uttered, I didn’t want to take them back. They were true.

  He stared at me, his eyes a little wider than usual. His confusion and surprise was cute. Something so simple from a generally composed man could have been little else.

  Then his forehead creased. “Are you certain?”

  I let out a breath that might’ve been a laugh, so unprepared for the question that I could do little else. And while I knew he was giving me an out, a way to take back what I’d said, I wouldn’t.

  It might’ve seemed fast to most, and maybe it was, but it was how I felt. Removing the intense interaction from the equation, Michele had shown me nothing but kindness. He was tender, attentive and made me feel safe.

  Was there anything more important?

  He reached for my hand, which I freely gave. Threading his fingers through mine, he pulled me close. I leaned into him, finally able to relax when the scent of his cologne touched my nose. Our foreheads touched, my eyes drifting shut with a sigh.

  “Say it again, per favore.”

  A little giggle tickled the back of my throat, but I kept it at bay.

  “I love you, too,” I replied, more confidently than before.

  He sighed, leaning back to place a kiss on my forehead.

  When we parted, I met his gaze. “How’d you find me, anyway?”

  “Your friend, Kennia.”

  I rolled my eyes and laughed. Of course it was her.

  “And the ticket?”

  A soft blush flickered to life in his cheeks. Michele shrugged.

  “It seemed the right thing to do.”

  Shaking my head in mild disbelief, I leaned into him once more. As he already had, he kissed my forehead, then brought me as close to his side as our seats would allow.

  “Does this mean you’re coming with me to Arizona?” I asked after a silence.

  “If you’d like,” he whispered against my hairline.

  My heart thrummed excitedly. I nodded.

  “Looks like you’re finally going to be able to see a desert.”

  He chuckled, and with his hand in mine, we waited for the boarding call.

  Perhaps returning home wasn’t going to be as bad as I’d initially thought.

  Want to see more from this author? Here’s a taster for you to enjoy!

  Naughty or Nice?: Hard as Stone

  C. Tyler

  Excerpt

  December Twenty-Third

  Alice Stone stared through the slightly fogging glass. It was cold as hell outside and the car’s defroster could hardly keep up.

  They’d passed the first gate onto Maiden’s Head Bridge a few minutes before and were coming up on the second. She could see the guard tower, like an old-school sentry protecting the only bridge to the city. The comparison wasn’t normally wrong, but because of the holidays, it was now decorated in the festive spirit. While not overly done, it did have a few twinkling lights in the window and a pair of wreaths on the gate. At least an attempt had been made.

  Alice’s mom, Catherine, pulled up and spoke to the guard, and after their name was confirmed as being on the guest list, he opened the large, angry-looking wrought-iron gate and let them in. Alice’s stomach sank the moment the sound of gravel crunching beneath their tires met her ears.