Page 54 of Bloodstained Wings
His head falls slightly. “I do trust you. I really do. I was mad about the Rich thing because I thought you had snuck out to meet him or were sneaking behind my back. I didn’t think it was as harmless as you insisted it was because I was afraid of finding out later that it was something bigger than how you explained it. I don’t want to lose you, and I don’t want to be lied to, either.”
I hesitate to ask, but the words tumble out of me without hesitation. “What made you change your mind over the last few days? You thought it was personal before—that I was hiding something or even had some affection for Rich Donahue. Now you’re saying you trust me fully. What changed?”
He pauses for a long, pondering moment, and I can see the gears in his head turning as usual. He doesn’t answer right away, and I take that as my sign to shut this down. I bring my fingers to his lips, press down to signal his silence is okay, and then peel myself off his lap.
We both stretch before his arms link around my hips, yanking me to his warm, naked physique. He kisses my temple, and I settle back into our usual closeness.
But it’s not normal. It’s anything but normal.
I can feel it in the way he touches me that something has changed in his mind, but I don’t know what it is yet. He asked me not to snoop around his back for answers, but it’s easier than trying to get an answer directly from him. So, while he gets ready to go to the meeting next door, I plot my plan to find out the truth.
What has changed with Carter Blackthorne? Why has he suddenly given in to the truth that I would never leave him for another man or even want to meet another guy behind his back? To me, it’s an obvious answer. I love him with everything in my body.
But for Carter, it’s not that simple.
It never is.
Chapter Twenty-One
Carter
The family looks pissed off when I make it to Anita’s, but I don’t care. She’s serving heaping bowls of Italian wedding soup, and I even try to snag one before the pot is empty, but my aunt isn’t in the charitable mood with me right now. She sets down an empty bowl before me, a sign that means she would kill me if we were back in the motherland, but thankfully, here in Manhattan, it just means I’m in for a well-earned scolding.
“I’m sorry I was late,” I say, kissing her cheek for forgiveness.
She doesn’t budge. The ladle in her hand looks more like a club, threatening to crash against the back of my head if I’m not careful and observant while in her kitchen. “You’re late, Carter. I didn’t sign up to be the hostess every night for these powwows. I’m getting tired of having everyone barge in here at night.”
“I’m sorry, Anita. It wasn’t my intention to be late. I had to fix things with Isabella first.”
She seems to relax with that assurance. “How is she doing? I haven’t seen her since the article came out, and even then, she didn’t seem too talkative with me.”
“She’s okay. A little shaken up and despondent over the ordeal, but I promise she’s okay, Anita. She just needed to see me for a bit before coming over.”
“So, she was home the whole time?”
I swivel around, seeing Ernesto clutching a can of beer. He leans against the back door, a few people outside sucking on cigars under the faint stars in the dark skies above. I give him a cautious look, one he should heed right now, but it’s not looking good.
Ernesto doesn’t drink often, but when he does, it’s easy to unravel any truth in that man’s body. “You said you were meeting Isabella at the club earlier this evening. Now she’s at home, where she’s been all along? How is that possible? I doubt she drove from the lifestyle club and beat us to the house.”
Anita doesn’t hesitate, a large, heavy ladle coming down over the back of my head. She gets about three goodwhacksin before I catch the arm of the utensil and get her to cease fire for a moment. A welt has probably already formed on my neck from one of her stray hits, and I’m damp with wedding soup broth now as well, a stray noodle caught in the back of my coat while I release the ladle in surrender.
“You have it all wrong,” I say, trying to calm my feisty aunt. “I didn’t cheat on Isabella.”
She crosses her arms over her chest. For a small, portly woman with cooking as her love language, she sure can knock the sense into someone in a heartbeat. It’s too bad Ernesto is wrong about his assumption. I never told him what happened at the lifestyle club—just like how I left that out from Isabella’s knowledge as well.
“I didn’t cheat,” I reaffirm. “Give me some credit, Anita.”
“Then explain yourself.”
“I got a text that I thought was from Isabella’s new number. It happened to be an old fling, and I went up to her, told her to stop trying to get with me, and left. That’s it.”
She cocks a single brow, watching me like I’m about to grow a four-foot-long wooden nose. “You know if you hurt that young girl, I’ll hurt you. Right?”
“I would hope so. I don’t want to hurt Isabella. I promise, Anita.” I turn toward Ernesto next, hoping he remembers this in the morning because when he’s sober, I’m going to lay into him for starting this shit. “It was Lilian, dammit.”
His eyes widen, and the snarky “I caught you in a lie” façade falls with his cocky grin. “Fuck. She was there? Did she say anything about the photos of Rich and Isabella?”
“Yeah, but I sent her away before she could say too much. I didn’t do anything with her, but she wanted me to. She’s just trying to get me to go back to her. I can’t imagine why after what I did to her in the past.”