ten minutes to navigate through the crowd. Mrs. Phillips stopped me to tell me, again, how sorry she was that she hadn’t known August was the punk I knew him to be.
Mr. Kempt pulled me to the side to ask what I thought Vi would say to taking her off for the weekend to the Cape.
I wasn’t fucking touching that one.
By the time I found Maggie, she was at the back of the restaurant, standing in front of the large bay window in the dining hall my folks reserved for larger parties. The light from the streetlamps outside was distilled by the thick fabric around the windows, but Maggie still looked like a fucking angel against that glass, her entire face profiled and flawless as I watched her.
She’d been like this Christmas Eve, months back, the first night we met. She’d been scared then, upset too. And I’d stood in front of her saying shit that had no business coming out of my mouth. But hell, I’d wanted her and Christ did she need to cut loose a little.
Now I loved her. She loved me and she needed to hear my apology for being an asshole.
She was still scared.
Felt guilty too.
How the hell could I take that shit from her for good?
“You’re beautiful,” I told her.
Maggie only bent her head, shifting it in my direction without looking at me.
I could live a million damn lives and find her just from the way she moved because she drew me to her. The slip of her fingers through her hair. The quirk of her eyebrow when she tried not to smile. The glorious fucking rock of her hips when she moved across a room.
She was the flame.
I was the suicidal moth aching to die for her.
“You’re strong,” I continued. “And smart.”
“Dimitri…” She shook her head, one gesture, one name that warned me, but I never was good at warnings.
“You got no reason to feel guilty,” I told her, moving to lean against the window. It felt like someone had shot me again when I caught the tears swimming in her eyes. “Baby…” I reached for her and she tried to fight me, but I’m a selfish, stubborn man and brought her close. “Don’t you get it?” I pulled her face up, kissing her once. “I’d take a thousand bullets for you and Mateo. Body shot, head shot, wherever. I’d give up everything I have if it meant you were safe.”
“Don’t say that…”
“Why the hell not?” She pulled away from me and I held her back, my arms on her waist, her back to my front. “It’s what you do for the people you love.”
“Let me go.”
“Bella,” I said, wrapping my hands in her hair, pulling on her to catch her chin and turn her mouth toward me. “That is never going to fucking happen.”
She took my kiss, hesitating for only a second before she caved, curling her body toward me, spinning in my arms to give me back the kiss I’d stolen from her.
Maggie fit against me like a puzzle.
We were two damn parts that shouldn’t fit, but we did.
Made for each other and no one else.
“There’s no one for me but you. There’s no one for you but me. You feel me on that?’
She opened her mouth, light glistening on her bottom lip had me wanting to take her lips again, but Maggie’s soft sweet voice distracted me. “I feel you and I love you.”
“I don’t apologize easy…” Her skin was soft, smooth when I moved my thumb over her cheek. “But I’ll never hurt you on purpose.” It took everything in me to man up and say the thing I needed to. “I can’t be sorry for what I did because it meant we’re here right now and you and my boy, all of us are safe and together.”
She blinked, giving me the agreement I was looking for.
“But I’m sorry you feel guilty about it and…I’m sorry I was an asshole joking about it.”
Maggie laughed, kissing me back. “You’re an asshole about a lot of things …”
“Not to you…not anymore,” I tried, liking how she smiled at me, wanting to do whatever I could to keep that smile on her face. I had ideas how to do it.
“No,” she said, that smile stretching. “Not so much anymore.”
Yeah, I had big damn ideas.
Something had happened to Dario since the night of my talk with him. I’d left him in the park, hoping my advice about remembering who he was had hit