Smoke (The Carelli Family Saga #1) - Eden Butler Page 0,23
New York. You aren’t trying hard enough.”
“I know you don’t want to hear it.”
“Probably not,” I told him, waiting for the excuse I knew would be heading my way.
“But you gotta give me some time to adjust…”
“Fuck, Dario…you wanted more responsibility. You begged me. Besides, shit…” I stood, pushing back the chair. “It’s been six months.”
“I was in for five years!” There was yelling now, but it still wasn’t me doing it and when I cleared my throat and waited for the man to check his temper, my brother blew out a breath, taking a minute to mutter something low, something that sounded a lot like the cursing our old man did when Ma pissed him off and he knew better than to tell her just how mad she’d made him, before he spoke again. “I’m not on my game yet. It’s gonna take me more than a few months to get my head on right. I just can’t tell you—”
Three sharp knocks sounded on my door, the knob turned and whatever my kid brother couldn’t tell me got silenced when Maggie stepped over the threshold. The second I saw her, my mind went stupid.
Lust and need rattled inside my chest as she shut the door then disappeared up when I noticed how her hands trembled. Maggie’s beautiful brown skin had gone pale and her eyes were glinted with worry.
I interrupted my brother mid-excuse. “I gotta go,” I told him and ended the call, throwing the cell on my desk, clearing it in two strides to get to her. “What is it? Mateo? What happened?”
She buried her face against my chest without a single word. She’d only done that when she was sick and half-high on meds. This was not her, and that had me worried. Other than a tutorial on how to handle her own oil change, Maggie had never come to me for anything other than the physical.
But just then, she curled her arms around my waist, her nails making light indentations against the fabric of my shirt. Her entire body shook, and she held onto me like she needed whatever it was she thought she’d find in my arms.
“Bella…” I tried, touching one hand to the back of her head, unsure how to read her. She wasn’t a vulnerable woman.
“Can you just please…hold me? That’s…all I want right now.”
This was…new.
Foreign to me.
Normally, that wasn’t something I did.
Not ever.
I could console.
I’d done that plenty of times with family and friends. With my ma when she lost friends, with the wives and daughters of men I knew.
But never with women I fucked. Never with women who I thought might want more from me. Though, Maggie wasn’t just some woman I fucked. Not anymore and I was starting to realize the truth of that.
“Your son is so beautiful.”
The woman’s voice moved around in my head as Maggie clung to me. Then, I answered the compliment with the same words that came to me anytime I heard someone talk about what a looker the kid was.
He’s got nothing on his mama.
My…
Hell. She wasn’t my anything. He wasn’t either, but having her here, holding her, giving her what she needed, exactly when she needed it, that shit didn’t scare me the same as being the kid’s father didn’t scare me.
What the hell was happening?
Maggie started to lift her head. My hand still hung at my side and I guessed she thought I was giving her a silent no. She started to push away, moving her palm down my back, and her face off my chest, but I wrapped my free hand around her back and threaded my fingers into her hair with my other hand.
“Be still,” I told her, standing there with her, feeling something shifting inside me. Something I didn’t know how to define.
It felt light and heavy.
Sweet and burning and everything I felt settled inside me like it had always been there.
“Did…someone hurt you…or the kid?” I couldn’t help asking. Some primal part of me only knew how to protect. That’s what my fists were for.
“No,” she said, rubbing her face against my chest, turning her head until only her forehead rested against my shirt. I felt her cheek, thinking she might be relapsing, but Maggie pulled on my wrist, grinning up at me. “It’s not that either. I’m not sick anymore. It…it’s just been a very bad day.” She glanced around the office, her gaze on my desk and the papers scattered across it. “Damn, sweetie, did I interrupt…”