Vinny pauses. The hope I had felt hearing him say nothing happened with Summer begins to flee.
“I was pissed, Liv. Angry. I wanted to hurt you back. I just couldn’t shake it, no matter how hard I hit the bag or how fast I ran. So I headed out to find some random woman to help me forget. And somehow I wound up at Summer’s.” I flinch at his words. Releasing me from his gaze, Vinny bows his head. His expression one of shame, he continues, “It’s what I’ve always done, Liv.”
Unable to hold it all back any longer, a lone tear falls from my eyes, just in time for Vinny to look up at me and gently wipe it from my cheek. His hands cup my face and pull me closer to him. “Nothing happened. I went there and she let me in smiling. It would have been so easy.” He shakes his head, thinking back, remembering. “But I couldn’t do it. And her big gloating smile, just made me more pissed. She was enjoying hurting you. So I left. Didn’t lay a finger on her. Think I might’ve put a hole in the wall behind her door, I flung it open so fast to get the hell out of there.”
Vinny leans down to me, his face so close I can feel his warm breath on my cheek. “I didn’t touch her, Liv.” His thumb brushes my cheek tenderly. “Do you believe me?”
I nod my head, because I do. It’s the honesty in his eyes that makes me believe him.
Closing his eyes with a look of relief, he leans his forehead against mine for a long moment. There’s less tension and anxiety in his face when he pulls his head back, but some of it’s still there, lurking in the shadows of tranquility. “Why didn’t you just tell me about the story, Liv?”
I wish there was an easy answer. One that would take away the pain I see in the depths of his eyes. Pain that I put there. He trusted me and I let him down. Seeing the hurt on his face, knowing I put it there, hurts me even more than I ached thinking he was with Summer. But I know I need to be honest with him, give him what he just gave me, if there’s any chance of us ever getting past it all. So I start with the truth, because it’s where I should have started all along.
“At the beginning, I talked myself into that it wasn’t true. I think I thought I could prove it and I’d get both things I wanted…the job and you.” I pause, thinking back to the minute I realized I was only fooling myself. “Then I met Senator Knight. And Jax.”
Vinny’s jaw clenches. I’m not sure if it’s the mention of his father or if he’s remembering meeting Jax at the exhibition fight. “He put his hands on you, Mom told me.” He searches my face, fists clenching in an innate response, his protective instinct taking hold of him at even the thought of someone laying their hands on me.
“By the time I realized it was true, I couldn’t bring myself to tell you. I didn’t want to hurt you. You’ve always been proud of your father’s memory. Sometimes I felt like you needed it. I just didn’t want to take that away from you.”
“So you never used me for a story?” His voice is desperate, full of agony at even having to ask the question. He needs to know that it was real. Needs to understand I could never betray him like that.
“I wanted to protect you. I never meant to hurt you.”
“I. Protect. You. Liv. I don’t need you to protect me. That’s how it works,” he says, his voice rising, eyes stern and serious. He waits for me to accede.
“No.” My response spoken with conviction, it surprises him.
Squinting, he studies me for a moment, not saying a word. I suppose his look could be labeled menacing, yet it doesn’t make me waver in the slightest. Instead, I stand taller.
One eyebrow cocked, he questions. “No?” I can’t tell if he’s amused or annoyed.
“No. We protect each other. That’s how it works.”
Both eyebrows pop this time. Although I catch a hint of an upward tilt on the left side of his mouth before he’s able to hide it. He’s amused, but doesn’t want to let me in on the secret.
“Okay,” he finally responds.
“Okay?” I question. Feeling bold, I push further. “Why was that so easy?”
Vinny laughs, his face and whole body shedding the last of the anger, diving head first into happiness. He wraps his arms around my waist and pulls me flush against him. Eyes sparkling, it warms my heart knowing I had something to do with putting the smile back on his face. “You’re a pain in the ass.”
Pretending to be offended, I feign trying to escape from his death grip. But the truth of the matter is there’s no place I’d rather be.
A few minutes later, Vinny picks up my bags and reaches for my hand. “You ready to get out of here? I’m pretty sure you owe me a shitload of makeup sex.” He grins at me.
Although even the thought of this man naked sends a shiver down my spine, there’s more I need to say. “Wait.” Vinny stops after taking only one step forward and turns back to me. “There’s more I need to tell you.”
He nods once and waits, cautiousness in his stance. Closing the small distance between us, I reach up to the beautiful face that still takes my breath away, even after all these years. Draping my arms around his neck, I pull him closer so our bodies are touching, yet he can still see my face as I speak. My voice barely audible as my eyes finds his, I tell him what I feel in every ounce of my being, “I love you.”
He smiles, cupping my face in both his hands. “Love you too, Liv. Think a part of me always has.” Softly, Vinny’s lips cover mine as he seals a kiss on words I’ve waited almost a decade to hear.
Epilogue
Veterans Day – Months later
Liv
Walking into the steam filled bathroom, I marvel at the sight of the gloriously naked body stepping from the shower. It’s been months, yet it never gets old.
Vinny grabs a towel and wraps it around his waist. Lucky towel.
“Morning.” He leans down and kisses my lips, uncaring that water is dripping everywhere, a playful, devilish grin on his handsome face.
“Good morning.” I smile.
“It could be.” Taking the towel from his waist, he purposefully lifts it to his shoulders to dry off, leaving his very aroused bottom half delightfully naked, standing firmly at attention. The confident, knowing smile tells me it’s a calculated move and has nothing to do with needing to dry off. He wiggles his eyebrows suggestively when he catches me staring.
“You’re insatiable.” I laugh.
Wrapping his hand firmly around the back of my head, he tilts my head toward him. “You know I get turned on when you use SAT words.” Another hot, wet kiss planted chastely on my lips.
“Insatiable is definitely not on the SAT.”
“Whatever. Keep talking.” Allowing the towel to drop to the ground, he reaches down under my knees, scooping me up into his arms.
“Existential, exculpate, ebullient, evanescent, ephemeral.”
Reaching the bed, Vinny quirks one eyebrow. “Ephemeral?”
“Short lived. Fleeting.”
“Yeah, what I’m about to give you isn’t going to be ephemeral.”
***
Lying in bed sated, my ear pressed to his chest, I listen as Vinny’s heart beats steadily. The sound soothes me, leaving me feeling replete, a feeling I’ve come to cherish after so many months of chaos swirling around us. Thinking back, things could have gone so differently. The press had a field day with Vinny’s admission. Months of nonstop badgering from reporters could have taken its toll, but instead, somehow, it bound us even tighter. Me and Vinny against the world.
After giving the exclusive story to the Daily Sun Times in exchange for my job, we hung low for a while. Vinny needed to recover physically from his fight and mentally from the toll the last 25 years had taken on him. Preach, Nico’s old trainer, loaned us his lake house, a serene, picturesque hideaway where we could escape the hordes of reporters and photographers vying for a piece of Vinny.
Like Vinny, Senator Knight eventually gave the media his side of the story, falling far short of full disclosure, although finally admitting to a one night drunken affair. Mrs. Knight stood dutifully by his side the entire time, a plastered smile on her perfectly made up face. I noticed Jax was suspiciously missing from all of the family photos aimed at restoring the Senator’s public image, but I kept my thoughts to myself.
“I have to get up soon.” Vinny strokes my head as he speaks.
“I know. But I’m so comfy.” I snuggle closer to him, his warm body feeling incredible flush against mine. My body uncaring that it just spent the last hour greedily consuming his, the desire for more of him is just never quelled. Selfishly, I want to stay in bed all day, forget the ride they have planned, and keep him all to myself. I’m worried that today will be hard on him. Nico, on the other hand, thinks it will be good for Vinny. Help him get past the sour memory of his lost father by riding in the Veteran’s fundraising motorcycle run again this year. I’m not so sure. The loss to Vinny, of a father that never really was, came harder than anything else. He grieved the loss of a man he honored from the time he was a child. A veteran that he clung to for purpose in his darkest hours.
As Vinny gets dressed, I’m still undecided on giving him what I’ve planned. For five weeks, I’ve tossed the idea back and forth, one day thinking it was a great idea, the next wondering if I was crazy for even considering giving it to him.
Eventually, we both begin to get dressed. “You okay?” I sit on the bed next to Vinny. He’s been quiet since he got back out of bed.
He nods silently, seemingly lost in thought. “There’s lots of Veterans out there that should be honored. I keep telling myself it’s not about me. But it’s hard not to be reminded.” He pauses. “I don’t know, I feel like I lost someone, yet I never really had them to lose.”
My decision finally made for me, I walk to my purse and pull out an envelope. Removing a single page I’d written and balled up so many times, I offer it to the man I love as comfort. Vinny takes it and begins reading.
Staff Sargent Charles Fisher, Jr.
3/30/1960–1/19/1988.
Survived by his parents, Charles Fisher, Sr. and Laura Cantly Fisher, Staff Sargent Charles Fisher, Jr. was laid to rest on January nineteenth, nineteen hundred and eighty-eight.
A dedicated, two tour military hero, Sgt. Fisher was killed in the line of duty in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Three days before the end of his second tour, Sgt. Fisher was passing through Helmand in route to the US Embassy, when he came upon a bus exploded by the detonation of a suicide bomber.
Acting quickly, and without regard for his own safety, Sgt. Fisher dragged seven children from the burning vehicle while under enemy fire. As he removed the final child, insurgents moved in closer, finding a new target for their hostile fire, hitting Sgt. Fisher five times. All victims were rushed to a nearby military hospital. Miraculously, all seven children survived. Sgt. Fisher was pronounced dead on arrival.
A look of confusion on Vinny’s face, I remove the dog tags he’d ripped off his neck the day he found out the truth about his father.
“These dog tags belong to a hero. I researched the ID number. The man you’ve honored by wearing them may not be your father, but I thought you would be proud to wear them today anyway.”
Vinny closes his eyes for a minute and I watch as his throat works to swallow. Eyes opening to a window of emotion, pain that was only just recently in the forefront being overshadowed by caring and love, he leans down and lowers his head. Gently, I slip the worn tags around his neck, softly kissing his cheek.
Vinny pulls me against his chest for a hug, wrapping his arms around me tightly. “You rewrote the ending of my story with the truth.”
I smile against his chest. I hadn’t thought about it that way, but I guess I did. Releasing his grip on me, Vinny pulls his head back enough to look into my eyes. His baby blues shoot an arrow straight through my heart, “I’m rewriting the ending to our story, Liv. I’m giving you your happily ever after. I promise.”