Page 103 of Bitter Poetry

My phone bleeps. I glance from the message to the door and then over to Tony, who is chatting to a customer at the other end of the counter.

I message back.

A few moments later, the door opens, and a man wearing jeans and a T-shirt with his baseball cap pulled low slips inside the door.

CARMELA

I’m sure Christian sat me here just to annoy me. Sometimes, I almost feel like he’s my friend… one with benefits. Yes, I can’t miss that part out. But the rest of the time, his actions seem designed to infuriate me.

He’s not my friend,I remind myself. He’s my bodyguard and the brother of the man I was supposed to marry.

I hardly sleep anymore. My husband has been increasingly distracted, and on the one occasion when he took his conjugal rights, I didn’t even try to pretend that my mind was elsewhere. After he’d done and lay snoring in the bed, I quietly took myself off to the bathroom to wash the evidence of him away.

I feel hollow inside, like I’m trapped in a nightmare. There are brief moments when I experience feelings, but for the most part, feelings don’t serve me well.

I take a sip of coffee. My seat faces the wall. I can’t see a single person, not even the window. This is supposed to be my normality fix, the time when I top up on watching people and life. Instead, Christian is doing what he does best: driving a train wreck through what little sanity I have left by manhandling me into the worst possible seat.

It’s packed now. It’s not like I can go to another table.

Why did I stay here?

I’m lost in these aimless considerations when a man slips into the empty seat opposite me. My thoughts slam through scenarios where this man, whoever he is, ends up as a body dropped outside a hospital. I can’t do this, not today. I carry the mental scars from the last time some poor fool made this mistake. “The seat is taken.”

I sound like a bitch. I’m not even using it. The coffee shop is packed. Any normal person wouldn’t mind.

“So it is,” he drawls. “Taken by me.”

My eyes lift and clash with dark ones that I see more often in another face. Dante’s have a few lines at the corners. There are as many similarities as differences in their two faces, and I catalog each one: the way Dante’s jaw is a little more defined, his nose sharper, and his lower lip fuller.

Christian smiles easily and often, but his eyes are colder.

I’ve stopped breathing. The burn in my lungs rouses me from my catatonic state.

He’s wearing a black T-shirt underneath his jacket with his baseball cap pulled down low. I’ve never seen him like this. He looks younger… and hot.

He smiles. “It feels like a long time since I’ve spoken to you alone.”

Heat floods my cheeks. “We didn’t exactly speak last time, did we?”

“No,” he agrees, his smile widening. “We didn’t.”

“Christian arranged this, I assume.” I mean, it’s obvious he did, but I’m talking because I’m nervous. Being this near to him is making everything go haywire in my body.

Memories resurface, startlingly clear. His mouth is on mine, and his cock is inside me, taking my virginity.

He didn’t get all my firsts, but my heart believes he took the most important ones, and I’m glad he did.

“It’s for the best that we’re somewhere public this time,” he says dryly. “Because, for once, I need to talk to you.”

I tear my gaze away from his. It’s too much seeing him, being close to him. I blink down at my coffee. My hands are shaking so badly there’s not a chance that I could take a sip, even for the pretense of acting normal.

I glance back over my shoulder. I can’t see Tony from here, but I can see Christian. As always, he’s found a seat that places me in his direct line of sight.

He’s staring straight back at me. He’s not smiling. His expression is dark and a little unsettling. When I turn back to Dante, he’s looking at Christian.

Does he know what Christian and I have done?

Fresh heat fills my cheeks. I feel like I know Dante, but also, I really don’t. He was distant with me at first, understandably so when I was still a child. Then my world turned upside down, and what might have been was snatched away.