Page 92 of A Love Most Fatal
NATE
I have decidedcountless times that I will not go seek out Vanessa tonight. Not after she and the whole Morelli family were charmed half to death by Maxim Orlov—whose name literally translates into Greatest Eagle (I googled it) which makes me even angrier somehow.
He was comically decent, handsome, and broad like a linebacker, with all these noble ambitions to make the Russian mafia a better place. What the fuck is that? If Jenna wasn’t still touring Greece on her Eat-Pray-What-the-hell-ever adventure, I would call her and she would agree that the whole thing is surreal.
He was as good, if not better, than he was in his interview, and if Vanessa didn’t think that she should have Maxim’s beautiful, broad-shouldered babies before, she does now. Or she should.
Me interviewing and delivering him to her feet like a recruiter doesn’t make the thought of them together sting any less. In fact, it pisses me off more—the fact that I have no right to be mad and yet I’m pacing around my room, which is just her guest room, fuming.
We’ve been wrapped up in this secret fantasy since the gala, her body and mine, sweet kisses, talking until one of us falls asleep, too tired to keep our eyes open. Some nights she’s out doing mafia shit with Leo and Mary when I go to sleep, but in the middle of the night, she’ll crawl into my bed with damp hair to cuddle and pretend a little longer that this is something sustainable. I live for these nights.
I don’t know how to stop. Worse, I can’t imagine wanting to stop. Nearly a month of her hands, her mouth, her moans in my ear like an incantation to her thrall. But we can’t have that anymore. I cannot have that anymore.
We shouldn’t, not when she’s soon to be engaged to the one noble mob boss in the universe.
What we’ve had is enough. It has to be enough.
I decide that I will seek her out tonight, not for sex but to tell her this, that there will be no more just tonight in our future and that the sooner she marries that man, the sooner they can figure out who’s been targeting them, the sooner I can get out of her house and her life forevermore, amen and amen.
It’s onlytomorrowfrom now on,just tonightis canceled.
I would love to stomp across the hall to her room, but I don’t want to disturb Mary, so I settle for shuffling along the plush carpet, and when I get to Vanessa’s door, it swings open before I can knock, putting Vanessa directly in front of me.
“Oh,” she says, and that tell-tale red flush is already climbing up her neck.
“Vanessa—” It’s on my tongue to tell her all that I’ve been thinking, the monologue I planned, but when I start to speak, what comes out of my mouth is: “I don’t want you to marry that guy.”
She appears as shocked to hear this as I am having said it.
“Come in,” she says, and closes the door behind me.
I take three long breaths to think through what I’m going to say next, but I’m operating on a previously unknown part of my brain now, the section in my mental command center that plants me right in front of Vanessa and picks her hands up in mine.
“Don’t marry him,” I say.
“You said he was perfect,” she says.
“He is,” I agree. “You could have a healthy, protected life with him. Even if you don’t love each other, I believe he won’t cheat on you or try to undermine your authority.”
Vanessa’s face is screwed up in some anguished confusion. “What are you saying then?”
“I can’t fucking lose you, I don’t want to,” I say. “I like you so bad. Too much.”
“You do?”
“God, yes.” I breathe out a heavy exhale and the weight I’ve felt since before dinner lessens. “Obviously I do.”
“But you said?—”
“I know what I said.”
Vanessa pulls her hands from mine and perches on the side of her bed. I follow and drop down next to her with a few inches between us to give her some semblance of space that I really don’t want to offer after that bombshell.
“You know what I am,” Vanessa says.
“I do. I think you’re the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Vanessa puts her face in her hands. Muffled, she speaks again: “How can you say things like that when we both know you think everything about me is abominable?”