Page 39 of The Broker
I sink onto the couch. “Enzo and I were never a thing,” I say wearily. “It was all a pretense. We never actually dated.” I lift my chin at him, fighting the urge to cry. “There, are you happy now?”
19
DANTE
Igo still. “You and Enzo were never a thing. Explain.”
“It was a lie, all of it.” She sounds drained. Flat. “I’m afraid of intimacy. I haven’t had sex in ten years, and I freeze up when I’m on a date. When someone has a drink, I wonder if he’s going to get wasted and hit me. I pretended to have a thing with Enzo so people wouldn’t worry.”
Shock ricochets through me. Ten years. There’s been nobody since my brother did a fucking number on her. Rage ignites in my gut. If I could go back and kill him all over again for what he did, I would. Ten years, and she’s still afraid. All because of him.
She takes off her coat and tosses it on the couch. “Roberto’s dead. Antonio killed him a decade ago. But he left a long shadow.” She forces a smile. “I miss the intimacy sometimes, but on the bright side, I have Angelica, and she makes me happy every single day. So what if I can’t have sex? That’s what vibrators are for.”
But Antonio didn’t kill Roberto.I did.The words are on the tip of my tongue, but I bite them back. Valentina is already upset. Now is not the time to burden her with my secrets.
“For the last two years, when you’ve been meeting Enzo at Casanova—”
“Have you been watching me, Dante?” She throws the accusation—a repeat of my words from earlier this week—with a flash of her customary spirit. “Why do you care?”
“Answer the question, Valentina.”
“Or what?” She glares at me and then relents. “Two years ago, Rosa set me up on a blind date with Enzo. The waiter had barely taken our drink order when I had a panic attack.” She doesn’t meet my gaze. “I hated myself for it. You were seeing Marissa—”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
Marissa had been the straw that broke the camel’s back. She was lovely. Kind. Easy-going. Any man would have been lucky to have her, but when I looked at her, I didn’t see the woman in front of me. I saw Valentina, the woman I couldn’t have.
“Nothing,” Valentina replies, avoiding my gaze. “Everyone around me was living their lives, and I was stuck in the past. I tried telling myself to get over it. I tried therapy, but nothing worked. I felt like a failure. So I hatched this plan to keep everyone off my back, and Enzo kindly went along with it.”
I can’t decide if I’m grateful to Peron or if I want to punch him in the face.
“You didn’t freeze up yesterday when I kissed you.” Of all the things to say, why that? “You didn’t panic.”
She looks up. “You’re right; I didn’t.” A wondering note fills her voice. “Huh. Imagine that.” She shrugs it away. “I guess it makes sense.”
“Why?”
“Because I know you,” she says, throwing up her hands in exasperation. “You’re not a stranger that I have to risk trusting when the last time I trusted someone blew up in my face. I’ve known you for ten years, Dante. I knowexactlywho you are. Annoying and bossy and overprotective—”
She trusts me.My heart starts to beat very fast. For ten years, I’ve told myself this isn’t my life. I’ve convinced myself I don’t get to be with Valentina. Then she went on that date tonight, and I was forced to face the truth. If I don’t fight for Valentina, I will lose her. If not to Enzo Peron, then to Neil Smith. If not to Neil Smith, then someone else. I sat in the dark, fighting the urge to drown my sorrows in a glass of whiskey, and I stared into the abyss of a life where I never told Valentina how I felt about her.
Not going to happen.
I feel like I’m walking on ice, and any moment now, it’s going to crack, and I’m going to drown in the cold waters below. I’m about to take the biggest risk of my life,and it’s worth it.“You’re doing it wrong.”
“Doing what wrong?”
“Sex. You’re going on dates with strangers, and it hasn’t worked. So, try something else.”
“Like what?”
I take off my tie and offer it to her. “It’s basic exposure therapy. If you’re afraid of something, you expose yourself to it in a safe environment.” I hold out my wrists to her. “Tie me up.”
Her head jerks up. “What?”
“It’s a safe environment. I can’t hurt you if I’m tied up.”
She rolls her eyes. “Dante, I’ve seen you fight.”