“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Shelly recited the words at the end of the meeting, a prayer offered by her and the twenty-some other addicts assembled in the church basement. Her gaze swept the room over the group of formerly pill-popping, coke-snorting, heroin-shooting ex-addicts. As the meeting closed, most drifted toward the exit, many yanking packs of cigarettes from their purses and pockets. Shelly empathized. Her final addiction was nicotine, and she doubted that she’d ever entirely kick that substance. Some days it felt as though a cigarette well smoked was all that stood between her and a syringe of H.
The coffee had been good. The coffee was always good. The topic: thankfulness through the holidays. The speaker had been a woman not too different than Shelly. She’d ended up homeless, strung out, and turning tricks after losing her three kids. Now she was the grandma of three and a social worker. Clean for twenty-three years.
“Please God, please,” Shelly mumbled as she walked out the door, past the clumps of NAers who smoked cigarettes and sipped their final cup of NA coffee before making the pilgrimage back home to their sober lives. Deep breath. She reminded herself that she was building a new life, one day at a time.
The pain, the shame, the doubt, and the anger still crept through her chest and constricted her heart. But now, instead of numbing all those feelings, she tried to let them pass through her. She breathed deep and allowed the feelings to slip around her. Each time the process grew easier. What had once been giant waves of emotion swamping her, careening her toward a fix, now only tossed her for a bit.
Shelly flicked her lighter and lit a cigarette. Once cigarette smoking had been as normal a sight as someone hailing a cab in Manhattan. Now when you lit a cigarette, people looked at you as though you were an addict, or worse. Fuck it. She’d been a drug addict and worse. She’d deal with the sour looks from the nonsmokers of the world. A deep inhale pulled the first drag into her lungs. Who knew, maybe she was wrong. Maybe she would kick this habit someday, but she wasn’t starting now, not today, only days before Christmas.
Shelly glanced at her phone to check the time. She needed to hustle back to Nonna’s and get them to Aubrey and Justin’s. The sun had long since set, and darkness filled the sky. No clouds—just the moon and crystal pinpricks of starlight. Long Island smelled different than San Francisco, felt different too. The neighborhood felt closed in, more tightly packed, and familiar, like a warm jacket you pulled from the back of your closet.
She hadn’t been into the city yet. What would being downtown feel like? Damn, she’d only started driving again last month. She slid one hand into her jacket pocket, took another drag, and started the short walk home.
A black car, sleek and expensive, pulled to the curb. Her eyes flicked toward the car, but she kept walking. A Tesla was definitely out of place in this neighborhood. The passenger window slid down and the car stopped.
Desire flooded her as she realized who was behind the wheel, even before she heard his voice. Damn. The sensation nearly knocked her to her knees. How long since she’d actually wanted a man? Her gut twisted with a desire for Anthony’s touch, to feel his skin pressed to her skin, his hands on her body. How long since she had felt this desire, a desire attached to more than physical pleasure? Her gaze slid toward the car. Maybe since she’d last made love with Anthony. It might have been that long.
“Shelly?”
Her gut tightened at the sound of his voice, and a heat pulsed between her legs. Her name on his lips was a long-remembered caress. How many times growing up had she heard him say her name? She’d never be able to remember. She walked to the passenger side of the car and leaned down to look inside.
Her breath caught in her chest. The streetlight lit Anthony’s features through the windshield. He had always been the type of guy who made women pause, take a long second look. Sharp-cut jaw and full lips, with a smile, one she’d yet to see since she’d returned, that was a panty-melter for sure. There was no smile on his face tonight. He might as well be a dark-eyed stranger, a wealthy man in an expensive car in the wrong neighborhood.
She rested her hand on the frame of the open window. “Nice wheels, Tony.” She took the final drag of her cigarette and threw it to the ground, then rolled the toe of her boot across the butt. His gaze raked over her. Even through the darkness, the judgment in his eyes, so evident since she’d arrived home, reached across the distance between them and slapped her. “Don’t look like they belong here, though. Neither do you.”
She pushed away from the car and started to walk home. She didn’t need his rich ass judging her. Who was he, anyway? Yeah, she’d done things that she wished she hadn’t, but she was getting her life back together now. Anthony, with his fancy things, and all that money, and his look-at-how-successful-I-am attitude, wasn’t helping her any. Nope. She didn’t care how much money Tony Travati had managed to sock away in his bank account. She knew from experience that money didn’t make you a good person. She’d seen that first-hand.
The car rolled forward, tailing her.
“You better stop following me,” she yelled over her shoulder. “I got the 50 on my speed dial.”
“I came to give you a ride to Justin and Aubrey’s,” he shouted back. The car came to an abrupt halt.
She stopped and turned. He now stood beside the open driver door, one hand on the roof of the car. His gaze shifted from her back to the church and the clumps of people lingering on the front steps. Was he embarrassed to be seen with her? She’d run into a former teacher and two classmates in the meeting.
“How’d you know I was here?”
“Nonna said you either be here or at Joey’s.” He nodded toward the church. “She hoped here. NA meeting?”
“Don’t get yourself all judgey. We all got addictions. Some of them are just more apparent than others.”
His gaze whipped back to hers. Surprise hovered in his eyes.
“What? You think I don’t know what you think? I see it written all over your damn face. ‘Why is Shelly back? Is she clean? Is she going to steal from her Nonna?’ You almost had the guts to say it to my face yesterday. So now you’re going to stand there and tell me that none of that crap went through that moneymaking mind of yours?”
Not one muscle in his face moved. He didn’t even cock his damn eyebrow, like he normally did when he was at least amused.
“Nothing now? Not a word? You used to be more honest than that, Tony. Working downtown with all those white-collar thieves must’ve taught you to keep those lips tight.” She shoved both hands in her pockets and walked toward the corner. She didn’t need a ride from him in his fancy car, bought with all that money he thought made him special. Nope, she knew better. Money did not buy class.
How many of those men who had come to visit her back in the bad times had been pulling down seven, eight figures a year? A lot. Before she’d really fallen and let herself go, anyway. At least those guys showered and paid. As she got worse off, so did the tricks, until near the end she’d been so strung out she’d been putting the needle in before they even left.
“Shelly, stop.” Anthony walked around the front of the car and angled to cut her off. His hand grabbed her arm.
Red flooded her vision. Heat pulsed in her chest and adrenaline spiked her blood. She’d been grabbed before. Knocked out for protecting herself. She wouldn’t be grabbed again.
Her gaze locked with his. “Better move that hand. You want me to stay, ask. You want to touch me, it’d better be gentle.” She wouldn’t play about this. Couldn’t. She doubted she’d ever be able to have a man reach out and grab for her again without feeling some tinge of terror, fright that turned into fight-or-flight.
“I didn’t mean to startle you.” Anthony’s hand slipped from her arm.
“Not startling, just how it is. Nobody gets to grab me.” She pulled her hands closer together in her pockets. “I’ve got to get home and get Nonna if I’m going to make it into the city on time.”
“She’s not going. I stopped there first. She was asleep on the couch. I helped her to bed. She said to tell you to have fun.”
Going to Aubrey and Justin’s tonight didn’t sound like fun. Especially by herself. “Then I’m not going.” She whipped out her phone and scrolled to Aubrey’s number.
“Your grandmother won’t be pleased if you cancel now.”
Shelly’s gaze flicked to meet Anthony’s eyes. She lifted one challenging brow. But he was absolutely right. Nonna might be gentle and loving, but she would be unyielding in her disappointment if Shelly cancelled on Aubrey and Justin right before she was meant to arrive at their home for dinner.
“I’ll drive. I’ll even have you home before midnight.”
Anthony’s tone had shifted. The last line reminded her of the playfulness he’d once had. He might not be acting quite like the guy who’d swept her off her feet when she was sixteen, but this was definitely not the uptight stuffed shirt who’d showed up at Nonna’s last night.
He opened the passenger door. She tipped her head and nodded. She wasn’t the same girl who’d ridden around beside Anthony for years, but then again, he definitely wasn’t the same guy.
*
A quiet drive to Manhattan with no conversation. Shelly’s lips parted at the view of the city. Anthony pulled to a stop at the front of Justin’s building. The foyer glittered with Christmas decorations. Once inside, he gently reached for Shelly’s elbow and steered her to the elevator doors.
“Some pad. Suppose yours is the same. Don’t you guys ever miss the old neighborhood?”
The elevator doors opened, and Anthony followed Shelly onto the lift.
“I get back when I can.”
“From what Nonna says, you get back quite a bit.” Shelly gave him a sidelong glance as she spoke, but he didn’t respond. Anthony visited Mrs. Bello for Vinnie, maybe for Shelly, but mostly for himself. Cold calculation made up most his life. Visiting Mrs. Bello let him relax and remember simpler times, and some days just be Tony Travati from the neighborhood.
“Thank you,” Shelly continued. The edge had vanished from her tone. “I haven’t been…” Her words trailed away. She turned and those ice-blue eyes met his. “I know you help her more than she knows. She thinks all those workmen are some kind of pension program for retired teachers. But it’s you, I know it. Thank you.” She reached out, grasped his fingers, and squeezed.
Heat fired deep in his bloodstream and warmed his frigid heart.
“The house looks good, she looks good, and she seems happy.”
“She’s happiest with you here,” Anthony admitted.
The softness around Shelly’s mouth hardened, and her eyes clouded. Of course he’d said the exact wrong thing. He seemed to have a talent for saying the exact wrong thing to Shelly.
“I’m trying to get it together, Tony.” She released his fingers and hitched her purse higher up on her shoulder. “I’m doing my best. I don’t expect you or anyone else to feel sorry for me. I made my choices, I got myself where I was, but I’m trying my damndest to come back from all that shit.”
Words stalled in his throat. She hadn’t only hurt Mrs. Bello. As loath as he was to admit it, she’d hurt him too.
The elevator doors slid open onto Justin and Aubrey’s penthouse.
Aubrey and Max stood waiting at the elevator door. Love beamed from Aubrey’s face. Her left hand rested on her pregnant belly. Max, closing in on adulthood, stood beside his mother. All Travati in his stance. Head up, chest out, his jaw hard-cut. The air of confidence often mistaken for arrogance.
Justin was a lucky man. A wife, a son, and a new Travati soon to arrive, all when Justin had thought, after conquering cancer, he could never have a family of his own.
Aubrey reached out. “Shelly.” A warm, true smile lit her entire face. “Thank you for coming to dinner. Your grandmother called earlier. I’m sorry she couldn’t make it, but I’m so glad you came anyway.” Aubrey’s gaze flitted from Shelly to Anthony. Her hopeful look seemed to ask, This time, this time will you accept that I am family? This time, will you believe I truly love your brother with all my heart?
“Anthony,” Aubrey continued, in a softer voice, “thank you for coming too.”
Anthony tugged at his cuff and nodded. His eyes dropped to the roundness of Aubrey’s belly. The miracle baby that shouldn’t be. How fitting that Justin, even after being told he would never be a father, had a son, a wife, a marriage, and a new child he’d been told he could never have. Wasn’t it just like Justin to conquer impossible odds to get everything he wanted?
“Thank you for the invitation,” Anthony said. “Max.” He nodded toward his nephew, then reached out and shook Max’s hand. A firm grip. Good handshake. Sadness tinged Aubrey’s gaze, even though there was a small smile on her lips.
“How was your trip?” Aubrey turned back to Shelly, ushering her inside. Max followed his mother. Anthony didn’t hear Shelly’s response, only the laughter that the two women shared as they exited the entryway and walked toward the living room.
Before Max, before Aubrey, before the past summer, this penthouse had been a second home to Anthony. He would have walked in, grabbed a drink, and found something in his older brother’s fridge. All that had changed. Not because of Aubrey and Max, but because of his initial reaction to their presence.
“Drink?”
Anthony spun on his heels. Just past the dining area stood Justin with a bottle of red wine in one hand and an empty glass in the other. Anthony nodded and walked toward his brother. Justin filled the glass and extended it to him before turning and walking toward the den. Anthony followed him. The muscles in his neck loosened with the first sip of wine. How long had it been since the two of them had simply shared a drink together alone? Seemed like forever ago.
“Thanks for getting Shelly here. Aubrey would have been really upset if she cancelled. I’m pretty sure Shelly didn’t want to come all the way in once her grandmother decided she wasn’t up to coming tonight.”
Anthony nodded and took another swallow of wine. The den hadn’t changed with the arrival of Aubrey and Max. Built-in mahogany bookshelves, a giant desk, and leather lounge chairs decorated the room. Even the photo of the four Travati brothers, aged fourteen, ten, five, and three, standing on the front steps of their old house in Long Island, hung on the wall.
Anthony walked toward the photo, as if it were a magnet pulling him into the family circle.
“You always loved this picture.”
“Not just the picture.” Justin stood on the other side of the room. “But what it represents. Mi famiglia. My past. My future. My life.”
Anthony sipped his wine. Nice words. But the four brothers were no longer Justin’s life, nor his focus. His new family was his focus.
“What happened, Tony?” Justin’s voice dropped, softer and somber. Emotion laced his words.
“I’m not five anymore.” Anthony took a long sip of his wine. He turned from the photo, taken one Easter before they had gone to church, their hair spit-slicked and all four brothers uncomfortable in new shoes and stiff suits.
“That’s bullshit.” Justin shook his head. “We’ve disagreed on business in the past, even disliked personal relationships that we’ve been in, but this, this anger—it’s different. This is deeper. There’s a rage inside you that I don’t understand.”
Heat roared through Anthony’s chest. The enamel of his molars ground. “This is business, Justin. I disliked your response to my request last summer. A request that I made to protect our business.”
“I did as you asked.” Justin stood near him now, an arm’s reach away.
“Grudgingly. And you’ve never forgiven me for asking.” Anthony tilted his wine glass to his lips.
“I didn’t think you needed my forgiveness.”
“I don’t. But I do want respect with regards to my decisions for Travati Financial, and I can’t seem to get that. My division is development and real estate, the only division at the moment that actually makes money and isn’t under federal investigation, and yet, I need your approval on every move I make.”
“We work as a team—”
Anthony shook his head. “No, we work for you. You may say we work as a team, but in practice that is absolutely untrue. When was the last time we did something different than what you wanted? Being a team means everyone gets to contribute to the decisions that lead to success.”
“A team needs a leader.”
Anthony’s muscle flinched in his jaw. Hubris. Arrogance. Why did Justin think he didn’t have to listen to anyone, that being the leader meant being a dictator too? “Well, brother, maybe I’m simply tired of being led.”
“Leo and Devon don’t have these problems.”
“Leo nearly lost the entire company last year, and Devon’ll be lucky if he doesn’t end up spending time in Club Fed.” Anthony sipped his wine. “At this point I’m guessing they’re both happy they still have jobs, because with those types of mistakes, they’d be out on their ass anywhere else.”
“We’re family. We help each other through the rough patches.”
“Do we? That hasn’t always been the case.” Anthony remembered too well a time when he had needed help he didn’t get. Rough, gut-wrenching times when he had been expected to confront his pain alone.
“I apologized for that. I should have been more understanding, more helpful…you…I didn’t understand what that kind of love was…well, until recently.”
Anthony emptied his glass. He wouldn’t discuss the past with his brother again. That time was gone. Anthony had made his own decisions then, and he would continue to do so now.
“She looks…healthy.”
“She is. She’s harder now, though. There’s more of an edge.”
“How could there not be?” Justin asked. His eyes flicked to his brother. “You know that while she was in Tex—”
“I won’t discuss that time in her life with you or anyone else. Understood?”
Justin nodded and fell silent. Anthony appreciated his new-found discretion. His older brother might have been an asshole about love once upon a time many years ago, but now that he’d found Aubrey, he understood the boundaries, the needs, the necessities that came with profound feelings for a woman.
Profound feelings.
Ice threaded through Anthony’s veins. His actions, his words, the feeling in his gut…how had he not recognized his own feelings, how did he not know himself? This was not just a physical reaction to a woman…this was—
“You okay?”
Anthony shrugged, cleared his throat. “Fine.” His staccato tone, he hoped, would put an end to Justin’s inquiry. “Hungry.” He turned toward the den door and exited. Shelly Bello. He was still in love with Shelly Bello, whether he wanted to be or not.
Molten emotion that flamed from lust to rage poured thick through his heart. He turned the corner into the dining room and there they stood: Aubrey, Max, and Shelly, as though already a family.
Impossible.
Too much time, too much pain, and too many uncertainties.
“We were just discussing you,” Aubrey called from the far side of the dining room. “Shelly was regaling us with stories from your shady past.”
“Don’t believe everything you hear,” Anthony said. “You always have to consider the source.”
Despite his bantering tone, Shelly’s face paled in the light.
Aubrey and Max continued to smile. “Is it true you outran a cop car after a Green Day concert?” Max asked.
“Your uncle’s illegal antics are not an appropriate topic for dinner conversation.” Justin circled the table and pulled out the chair at the foot of the table for his wife.
Anthony pulled out the chair to the right of Justin’s seat at the head. Shelly’s eyes were an unreadable blue. Her body brushed against him as she stepped into place, and he fought the urge to lean forward and press a kiss to her head. He’d hurt her with words that were meant to be playful. Consider the source. He’d meant it as a throwaway line, an allusion to the fact that she was his best friend’s little sister. But how, with her past, the past Justin had been about to discuss, how could she possibly hear those words and think he meant anything but her time in Texas?
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” His lips grazed her hair, a ghost of the kiss he had wanted to give her.
Heat thrummed between them. Heat that was dangerous to him, to her, to both his life and the life she was carefully reconstructing. He stepped behind the chair and gently slid it toward the table. Physical and emotion distance was required. Nothing good would come of this passion between them. Any future between them held nothing but a bitter end.