“Yeah?” he asked, leaning in, his mouth finding my neck.

I squirmed, tickled by his touch, but he held me to him, his arms wrapped tight around me. “Yes.”

“Good,” he said. Then he kissed me quickly, aware of Tiny watching us and held my hand. Fingers linked, he led me to where Tiny was standing.

“Ready?” Tiny asked.

Nate nodded.

Tiny glanced at me quickly before moving back to Nate. “We gotta go see Benny.”

I felt Nate’s hand squeeze mine, though I doubt he would’ve known he’d done it. He turned to me and said, “I’ll be back soon, okay?” He released my hand at the same time he kissed my forehead, and I watched, my heart heavy, as he and Tiny climbed the steps.

“Tiny?” I called out, my voice weak.

They both stopped on the landing, Tiny’s hand on the door handle. “Yeah?”

“Bring him home to me, okay?” I asked, the quiver in my voice giving way to my worry. “No blood this time.”

Tiny smiled reassuringly and nodded once. “You got it.”

A few seconds later, I was alone again, alone with just my raging thoughts. Mainly thoughts of Nate, of course, and the fear that I’d never see him again. Those thoughts consumed me more than they did any other day. I’d counted the tiles five times only to realize that I wasn’t really counting them at all because all I could think about was how deeply in love I was with Nate DeLuca.

But, I’d realized the problem with love was simple…

It’s that the problem with “simple” was LOVE. And within the walls of this room, with the bonds that kept us together, neither simple nor love could exist.

30

Nate

“No, but I love you, Bailey,” I said for who the fuck knows how many times. I was trying to convince her that I loved her because I did. I was also drunk, and I’d fucked up, and she was beautiful, and I loved her.

She smiled softly, glancing at Tiny quickly before looking back at me. If she was mad or annoyed that I’d come home like this, it didn’t show. “I love you, too, Nate.” The words rolled off her tongue as if she’d said them so many times before and I hated every single person she’d ever said it to. It was a stupid reaction because I doubt she’d said them to anyone in that way before, and it didn’t really matter. What mattered was that she was beautiful and she was mine, and I loved her. I told her all this, again, slurred words falling from my lips, and she smiled just that tiny bit wider as she placed her hand on my face and pulled the covers up to my chin. My eyes drifted shut at her touch… or maybe it was the alcohol, but fuck I loved the way she touched me.

“I probably shouldn’t have let him get that bad,” Tiny offered.

Truthfully, I was a little ashamed that I was a full-grown man who needed the help of another man (though probably ten times my size) to stop me from falling ass over tits down the basement stairs, but it wasn’t his fault.

“It’s not your fault,” Bailey answered, reading my thoughts. “You’re not going to tell me why he’s this drunk, though, are you?”

He didn’t respond verbally, but I knew what his answer was. He wouldn’t tell her. He never would. And neither would I.

*

I hadn’t gone in with a game plan when we’d visited Uncle Benny. Tiny, however, did. He’d confessed to killing Louis Franco to protect me. Which, I guess, is the same reason he’d lied about what had happened. To protect me. He’d told Benny that Franco had reached for his gun when my back was turned, and he didn’t think twice about doing what he did. Benny hadn’t had the reaction I’d expected; he’d simply told us to get the fuck out of his office and deal with the shitstorm we’d created.

He would deal with the Francos.

So, in that moment, I was surrounded by two people whose sole purpose in life was to protect me.

I couldn’t keep my emotions out of it and I fucked up. I guess that was the reason I found myself at O’Malley’s bar, downing an entire bottle of whiskey with the hopes it would drown out the taste of Franco’s blood in my mouth.

It hadn’t.

“He probably just needs to sleep it off,” I heard Tiny say, pulling me from my thoughts. His voice seemed distant, or maybe it was the soft rabbit-type-hole in the bed I was slowly falling into.

“Yeah, probably.” Bailey’s hand left my cheek and a moment later, I felt her lips there, replacing the touch. “Sleep, baby,” she said. And then she whispered the three words that seemed so natural to her, only this time I didn’t just hear them, I felt them. She kissed me once more, and I found myself giving in to the exhaustion (and maybe a little of the alcohol), but before I was there, in the place too dark to find light, I murmured, “Ti amo, mia bella ragazza.”

“What does that mean?” she asked, but I was too out of it to answer her, so Tiny did it for me. “It’s Italian. It means I love you, my beautiful girl.”

*

I don’t know how long I’d been asleep when I awoke to the sound of Bailey’s voice, soft and warm as it flooded all my other senses. “She was a nurse,” I heard her say. “…at the children’s hospital. Sometimes she’d take me there on her days off so we could visit with the kids.”

“She sounds nice,” Tiny said, and I slowly opened my eyes. They were sitting at the small table and chairs set up in the corner of the basement, empty takeout boxes sprawled out in front of them.

“She was nice,” Bailey responded. “I mean she is nice. I probably shouldn’t talk about her in past tense. It’s not like she’s dead… that I know of.” She peered down at her hands resting on her lap, a frown pulling at her lips. She was obviously talking about her mother.

“Sometimes it’s hard to differentiate the two,” Tiny said. “Sometimes it’s almost easier to pretend like someone is dead when they choose to be absent. Makes it hurt less.”

Bailey looked up, same frown, same soft eyes. “You sound like you’re talking from experience…”

Tiny nodded. “My dad. He bailed when I was fourteen, and I haven’t heard from him since.”

“I’m sorry,” Bailey said, the genuine sincerity in her voice clear.

With a shrug, Tiny laughed once. “He used to take me to ball games whenever he could, and my favorite part was always the hotdogs. Now every time I smell hotdogs, I think of him. How fucked up is that?”

Bailey laughed. “It’s not fucked up at all.”

“What about you, Bailey? What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of her?”

She thought for a moment, and then a small smile crept to her lips, and it was such a fucking shame that the only two people who got to witness it were a drug dealer and his muscle. “Fall leaves.”

“Leaves?”

She nodded. “Not all leaves,” she said, her eye roll making her seem younger.

“So why fall leaves?” Tiny asked, a slight tease in his tone.

“Because fall was her favorite season… we used to have this massive tree in the backyard, and we’d always wait for a huge pile to build up before going out there and running through it all. Some people have snowball fights. We had leaf fights.” She paused for a moment, the memory causing her to frown. “It was the last thing we did together.”