then at me and then tugged off one of her gloves followed by one of mine so that she could paint a word onto the palm of my hand.
Why?
“Because there could be people looking for me,” I replied, realising she wanted to know what I was doing out here.
Who?
“They’re…” I didn’t even know how to begin to explain who the Romeros were to me. Enemies. Friends. Brothers… “People from my life before this. I found out a lot of things I used to believe were lies and I just…needed to get away. To clear my head.”
Bad?
“I used to think they were the worst men in the whole world,” I said, knowing what she meant. “But now…I don’t even know what to think of them.”
Winter nodded slowly like that made sense even though I’d hardly told her anything, her gaze scanning the forest as Tyson raced between the trees before tracing another word on my palm.
Alone. She punctuated that by pointing at me and I gave her a sad smile.
“Yeah, baby doll. I’m all alone.”
A soft smile touched her lips and she traced more letters on my palm.
Me too.
“Not anymore, Winter,” I said, meaning to reassure her and realising that I was talking about myself too. “We have each other now.”
Not that I had any idea how long that would be true for. But these storms weren’t going away for at least another week and there wasn’t much point thinking beyond then. One day at a time. That was all I ever worked with now.
The look she gave me in response to that was hard to decipher but as I turned to head back towards the cabin, she didn’t return my glove to me. Instead she wrapped her small fingers between mine and kept hold of my hand as we walked. And as I watched her from the corner of my eyes, I had to wonder exactly what was going through her mind. Because if I’d even considered letting someone else come and stay with me in my cabin before she’d shown up, the idea would have repulsed me. But now that she was here, I had absolutely no desire for her to leave. She needed time to recover from what had happened to her and the one thing I had in abundance out here was time. So if she wanted to spend some of it with me then I was happy to let her. And who knew, maybe I’d be glad of the company too.
I leaned back in my chair suppressing a yawn as I waited for Rocco’s maid to finish laying out coffee for all of us and looked around the big room we were in. The wooden furniture was dark and decedent, the walls painted a forest green colour and the carpets patterned with some floral arrangement. They’d only moved in here a month ago but it just didn’t really feel like their place yet.
“When are you getting this place decorated?” I asked casually. “I feel like some old business man in a smoking parlour sitting in here.”
“That’s because it is a fucking smoking parlour, stronzo,” Rocco replied, rolling his eyes. “And we’ve had some more pressing shit to do recently than worry about colour schemes.”
“You mean Sloan hasn’t decided on what she wants yet,” Enzo taunted. “So you haven’t been able to get the decorators in.”
“Happy wife, happy life.” Rocco shrugged, pushing a hand through his curling black hair so that it was swept out of his eyes.
“Never thought I’d see the day when the great Rocco Romero got so pussy whipped,” Enzo replied with a smirk, casually scratching at some new ink he’d gotten on his neck. The two sparrows circled each other in a way that seemed aggressive to me but which he claimed was them playing together. Then again, Enzo’s games always ended in violence so I guessed the two things were the same to him.
“I’m not whipped, stronzo, I’ve just got more important things to do with my time aside from worrying about decorating the new house. If it bothers you that much then you can get fucked.”
“I intend to,” Enzo replied. “There’s this hot new bartender down at Paulo’s and I’m planning on spending the weekend breaking her in.”
“I heard she’s tied to Lucien,” I said casually, inspecting my nails even though they were spotless. “So you’ll have a fight on your hands if you want her.” Lucien was a big bastardo with a mean temper and a possessive nature. Enzo could