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AS I LAY THERE, WITH her head resting on my chest, her slow breathing filling the room around us, I started to relax.
I knew I wasn’t going to be able to sit back and really get over myself until we’d hooked up again. That chemistry, that tension was still far too powerful between us, far too intense to deny, and I was certain she felt it in all the same ways I did. I knew that we might not have come together under the best circumstances, but what mattered to me now – what mattered to me at all – was that she was here, she was close to me, and that she hadn’t tried to shut me out.
She lifted her head from my chest after a few moments, looking into my eyes with curiosity. I liked it when she met my gaze like that, when she looked at me like there was something she wanted to know. For so long, it felt as though she had been doing her best to deny it, doing her best to pretend that she didn’t feel anything at all between us, but I knew – I could tell – that there was so much that she wanted to say, so much she wanted to ask.
“You okay?” I asked her, reaching up to stroke her hair, and she nodded.
“Yeah, I think so,” she replied. It was the first time she had spoken to me without that tone in her voice, without the sharp jab that was clearly meant to throw me off. I’d had so many people pushing back against me lately, that just being here with her, knowing that I didn’t have to hide from her, that was all that mattered.
“What do you want to do now?” I asked. In truth, I would have bundled her on a plane back to New York along with her father and gotten her away from this place, but I knew it wasn’t going to be that easy. She would have to do it on her own terms. She would have to agree with me, pitch the idea, and I’d have to sit back and hope that she was willing to do just that. I was happy to pretend that she had come up with it, if that’s what it took.
“I’d like to get something to eat,” she replied, and her answer caught me off-guard. Given everything that was going on right now, going out on a date was the last thing that I expected her to bring up. But if that’s what she wanted, that’s what I would give her.
“Where do you want to go?”
“There’s this Cuban place one of the girls at work said was pretty good,” she replied. “I think we should go there.”
“I’d love that.”
She slipped out from under my arm and went to get dressed, and I took a moment to admire her body as she did so; damn, she was so fucking gorgeous, sometimes it was hard to think straight around her. But I would bet I wasn’t the only man who started to lose it a little when they were around her. She was so strikingly gorgeous, those dark eyes, that beautiful body, her curves, her strength. If I could have pulled her straight back into bed, I would have done just that, but I knew that I had to go along with what she wanted for the time being.
I got dressed and the two of us left together; I knew it wasn’t the smartest move in the world, to let her be seen with me, but it wasn’t as though Kozlov’s guys were not going to have noticed me sneaking around to her place, after all. Might as well have a little fun with this, since I had no idea when we might be allowed to have fun again.
She took my arm as we headed out of the apartment, and I couldn’t help but smile, knowing that people were going to look at us together and think that we were involved. I liked the thought of being seen with a woman like her, being seen out on a date with her, like any other couple. I had no idea if that was even close to how she would have described us right now, if I had asked her, but honestly, I didn’t care. I had her again, and that was all that came close to mattering.
We headed to the Cuban place and picked a table close to the back of the room – I wanted at least to go with somewhere that we wouldn’t instantly be spotted if someone was hanging around, trying to catch us out, and I could hear Mauro’s voice in my head telling me to play it safe, that I didn’t know what kind of people might have been watching us.
The music was loud and the people around us were chatting animatedly, and I started to let myself relax a little, trying not to let the tension of the last few weeks get to me. She was opposite me right now, right there in front of me, looking over the menu of this place, and just a couple days ago, I wasn’t sure I would ever get to see her again.
“What are you going to get?” she asked me.
“How about a little bit of everything?” I suggested. “And a couple of beers, too?”
“Sounds good,” she replied, with a grin. I loved seeing her smile, and there wasn’t much in the world that I wouldn’t have down to get to see it. I waved down a waiter and ordered pretty much everything on the menu, making sure to tell him to be as generous as he wanted with the portions.
It looked like she hadn’t been eating much since she got here. She looked more gaunt than usual, and some of her curves were whittling away. I thought about asking her about it, but I knew that she would have just brushed me off and told me that there was nothing for me to worry about. I wished I could believe her. I wished I knew enough to say that for sure.
The food arrived, and soon the table was creaking under the weight of everything that we had ordered. She tucked in happily – seemed like she hadn’t lost her appetite, thank goodness. We sipped on our beers and just talked – talked about food, about drinking, about the best places to go in New York to do both. I had no idea where I was expecting this night to take us, but something so chill and so calm felt right, after what the two of us had been through. I just wanted to be able to leave it all behind us, I wanted to forget that we were caught up in this mess, but I had no idea at all how long it would be before that happened.
“Mmm,” she sighed, as she sat back in her seat happily, reaching for her beer. “This stuff is delicious. I’m going to have to come here again sometime.”
“Yeah, that sounds good,” I agreed, breezing by the comment I wanted to shoot back about the two of us not spending any more time here than we absolutely had to. We needed to get out of Miami, and I wasn’t sure she really understood how important it was that we make a break for it, get as far as we can from this mess and keep on moving.
“You want to go back to New York, don’t you?” she asked, and I paused. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to answer that question, at least not right now. We were having such a good time, and it felt like some of the spark that had been there before was starting to re-form. I didn’t want to blow it by bringing up something that I knew was going to give her a hard time.
“We can talk about that tomorrow,” I told her gently, hoping that it would be enough to assure her that she had nothing to worry about. She smiled – just a little smile, but a smile nonetheless.
“Thanks,” she murmured, and I shrugged.
“Whatever you need.”
I paid the bill, left a generous tip for the waiter, who had been running our orders back and forth all night long, and then we headed back to my hotel room. She texted her dad to let him know she was safe and that he had nothing to worry about.
“But I just can’t do another night in that apartment, with him snoring five feet from me,” she explained, shaking her head.
“I could have got you set up with—”
“I know,” she cut me off. I had already told her a million times over all the ways that I would have helped her if she had given me the chance, but it was obvious that she had one idea in her head and she wasn’t going to budge from that. At least she was spending the night with me – that had to count for something.
“Wow... this place feels so big,” she sighed, as soon as she stepped through the door to my room. “It’s beautiful.”
“It’s just a hotel room...”
“Yeah, and when you’ve been living in a studio apartment with your father for the last two months, everywhere feels like a palace,” she replied, shaking her head. I laughed.
“I guess you have a point.”
She flopped down on the bed, snuggled against the sheets. I lay down beside her. And yes, there was one place that my mind went instantly with her in my bed like that, but there was no way I was going to push for it when I had just managed to get her back, when I had just managed to find a way to get her close to me again.
“Thanks for seeing me again,” she murmured, and she looked up at me. I would have bet it took a lot out of her to admit she was glad I had come back for her. After what had happened between us, all the chaos that I had brought into her life, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had never wanted to talk to me again as long as she lived. But here she was, right in front of me, telling me in all the ways that she could that she was glad I had.
I lay down next to her, and pulled her into my arms again. This was always what felt right when it came to the two of us, being near each other, holding each other, making sure that we both knew how much we cared for each other. I kissed the top of her head and she snuggled in a little closer. She was still dealing with a lot, all the stuff that had driven her to this point, and I couldn’t undo it all – but I could, at least, show her that she was safe now. With me. Where she belonged.
It didn’t take long till I heard her breathing smooth out again, a sure sign that she was falling asleep. And I was just glad that she felt safe enough that she could rest here, with me – she knew I would protect her against anything the world might have tried to throw in her direction.
I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her in close. I would sleep a little easier tonight myself, knowing that she was here – she still hadn’t agreed to come back to New York, but it was just a matter of time before I got it through to her how important this was to me.
And for now, I was happy she was here. That was all that mattered.
