For a moment, I forget my words. Something hot and unfamiliar tumbles inside my belly. He’s so…and this is weird to say, because I dated his twin…but Stone’s arresting in a way his brother just wasn’t.
Rock had stayed smiling from the moment we met. He was so animated, I never got a good chance to see his sober face. Not until he dumped me.
But Stone’s face is a perfect work of art. Sharp everything and clean classic lines. I can actually see how he and Amber’s preternaturally gorgeous husband could be related. He is…I realize then. He is guapo. Just like my aunt said.
“Is that him?” my aunt demands on the other side of the phone. “Tu novio muy guapo? Tell him hola for me!”
I hang up on Aunt Mari. Then tamp down a strong urge to adjust my hair. I can’t help but notice how hot he is and how hot I’m not in the moment. Add that to the fact that he’s wearing a well-tailored suit, while I’m wearing a weird diaper made of mesh underwear and industrial pads under my hospital gown, and yeah….cue all the self-conscious feelings.
But then I remember the circumstances. That I’m a woman who just gave birth. And that he’s a man who intruded on that birth. A man who keeps on intruding on what should have been my magical moment with my baby.
“Why are you here?” I ask, irritation dissipating that silly bout of self-consciousness.
“To take you and the baby home,” he answers, like I’m an idiot for asking. “Would have been here sooner, but I was finishing up the crib when I got the call you’d been discharged.”
My heart all but gives out in gratitude that I won’t have to figure out the crib when I get home. But then it occurs to me to ask, “Wait, why would they call to tell you I was being discharged?”
“Why do you think? Because I slipped the nurse a couple of hundys. Keep up.”
I’m trying to keep up. Believe me. But talking to Stone feels like trying to swim in quicksand. The harder I fight, the more stuck I feel.
“They’re coming through with the wheelchair soon. You need me to get your shit together?” he asks.
Before I can answer, he’s opening the cabinet and grabbing my purse. I guess that was a rhetorical question.
“Stone, wait, I don’t want…” I try to sit up straighter, so he’ll take my next words seriously, but the action is painful, and makes me feel even weaker. “I don’t want you to take me home.”
Stone stops, turns to look at me, his eyes two cold, dark pits.
“Naima, pay close attention to my next words. Only one of the three people in this room give a shit what you want. And that person ain’t me.”
Wow. I’m from freaking New York, but for moments on end, all I can do is sit there. Completely stunned that anybody could be so rude.
“You ready to go?” Stone asks impatiently, like he has a whole list of places he’d rather be than here, helping me do anything.
There are a bunch of excuses I could try to give about why I let him take me out of the hospital after talking to me that way. Especially since I’d made a vow to leave Too Nice Naima behind in New York.
But listen, I just had a baby. My energy was seriously on the flag, and I plain didn’t have any fight left in me.
Less than half an hour later, I find myself dozing off in the front seat of Stone’s goon car, not waking up until he kills the engine in front of…
Wait, a minute. My eyes pop all the way open when I see the structure now standing in front of me. Not my homey apartment building.
But a house. An actual house with a yard and a picket fence, like I heard about while watching shows set in suburbs on my TV in Queens.
“What the heck?” I demand. “Where are we?”
“At the new crib. It was a bitch to get it all closed up in one day. I’m talkin’ bags of cash. But it’s ours, and a notary’s stopping by tomorrow so that you can sign the rest of the paperwork. We still got a lot of furniture shopping to do, or we can hire somebody if you want. I think they have interior designers down south, too. But I got the baby’s room set up right next to the master suite.”
I splutter. Then splutter some more, choking on my outrage, before I finally manage to get out. “I’m not going in there with you. I’m not going anywhere with you!”
He stills. Looks at me. “Don’t be stupid,” he says, his voice filled with lethal menace.
And I shrink back. Remembering the table. Remembering how he held the cocked revolver to my head as he talked to Amber. Then dragged me out of my own house at gunpoint. “Don’t be stupid,” he warned, when I tried to fight him as he opened the back door of a Suburban. Then he’d shoved me in the backseat. Easily.
But I had been stupid.
Not only had I done nothing to try to escape from the swanky Manhattan condo Luca had imprisoned Amber in, using my life as leverage over her. I’d decided to take Stockholm to the next level by getting involved with Stone’s identical twin brother. Then I’d somehow convinced myself everything would work out. Until it hadn’t in ways that left Rock dead and Amber and me estranged.
I’d been so, so stupid back then.
But not now. “I will scream. I will call the police,” I tell him, all my Queens coming out to shine.
But Stone just gives me a cold Jersey smile and answers, “Yeah, do that. I love these small towns. Everybody’s so easy to pay off. Ask for Romano when you call 9-1-1 or don’t. He’s the captain. He’ll come out himself regardless of whoever dispatch tries to send.
“I hate you,” I tell him, uncharacteristic rage washing over me in vile, vicious waves. “I hate you more than I’ve ever hated anyone in my life.”
“Aw, that’s sweet,” Stone says with another cold smile. “But what’d I tell you at the hospital about me and your feelings?”
Before I can answer, he gets out of the car. A moment later, the back door opens, and he grabs the carrier with my sleeping baby in it. Leaving me behind, like I’m little more than an afterthought.
This is a nightmare, I tell myself as I watch him carry the baby into the…okay, I want to hate it, but I have to admit, the house he bought looks fantastic. It’s a large, two-story colonial with a cobblestone walkway, two charming bay windows, and a huge front porch. Everything someone born and raised in a two-bedroom New York duplex could want after moving to the much cheaper and warmer south.
But whatever. I will not let this stand. I need time to get my mind and body right and then I’m figuring a way out of this mess. I refuse to let Stone get the better of me.