Don, I Left as You Wished novel · Chapter 14 of 32

Chapter 14: Two A.M.

Santo was sitting on the end of his bed in gray sweatpants and nothing else.

He had a glass of whiskey in his hand that he hadn't drunk.

The window behind him was open, and the pool lay down below it, dark and flat.

He'd been watching it. Or watching my door. From that bed you could see both.

He stood up so fast the whiskey slopped over his wrist.

I shut the door behind me and leaned on it.

"You keep coming to my door," I said.

"I know."

"And you never knock."

"No."

"Why not?"

He set the glass down on the dresser, very carefully.

"Because it has to be you who opens one," he said. "Not me. Never me."

I looked at him across the room.

My old Lane Four T-shirt. My sleep shorts. My hair still damp from the shower, because I'd been lying awake with it wet.

His bare chest. The pale scar across his ribs. His hands open at his sides, the way they'd been in the shallow end the first night.

"I opened it," I said.

He didn't come to me.

"Are you sure?" he said.

"Yes."

"Roz. Are you sure?"

"You asked me that."

"I'm asking twice." His voice was low and very even. "Because last time, in the pool house, you went cold, and I saw it, and I'll never forget it."

I took a breath.

"Last time I looked down and saw your face from the bottom of the pool."

He closed his eyes for a second.

"And now?" he said.

"Now I know why you stood on the edge."

He opened his eyes.

"It doesn't fix it," I said. "Don't think it fixes it. But I know."

He nodded. He didn't argue.

"Say the rest," I said. "I can see you've got a speech."

He almost smiled.

"If anybody finds out, they won't say I'm sleeping with my stepsister. They'll say the stray climbed into the Don's bed to get her hands on the piers."

"They called me worse at ten."

"Half my capos will walk. Tullio will make sure of it."

"Do you care?"

"I care what it costs you." He looked toward the wall, toward the room at the far end where my mother was asleep. "Your mother, for one."

"I'll deal with my mother."

"And you," he said. "You'll be the woman who forgave the boy who pushed her. They'll say you're weak. They'll say you're stupid."

"I haven't forgiven you."

"I know."

"This isn't that."

"Then what is it?"

I crossed the room.

I stopped in front of him, close enough to feel the heat coming off his skin.

"It's me wanting you," I said. "That's all. That's the whole thing. Is that allowed?"

He looked down at me.

"Yes," he said. "God. Yes."

"Then here's how it works."

I put my hand flat on his chest, over his heart, the way I'd put it on his back in the water.

His heart was going hard.

"In charge," I said.

He laughed, a short helpless laugh, and put his hand over mine.

"Always," he said.

I pushed.

He went down onto his back easy, like he'd been waiting for it somewhere in his body.

His hands stayed at his sides, open.

I climbed up and sat astride him.

The gray sweatpants were thin.

He was hard already, and the shape of him pushed up against the seam of my shorts, right where I was already wet.

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