Page 28 of Sinful Like Us

Merde.

Thatcher brushes a hand along his unshaven jaw and nods to me. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” I wince. “I’m being unfair to you.”

“Because you can’t get the words out? Welcome to the fucking club.”

I want to smile, but everything I need to say weighs on me. I put the champagne bottle back in the ice bucket. “It’s been hard this past week hearing Tony say things about you, and the more aggressively I defended you, the more he’d smirk like he got a rise out of me.”

Thatcher glowers out the rear window, and when he looks back at me, he says, “He’s a piece of shit.”

“Je suis d'accord.”I agree.

The corner of his mouth lifts a fraction. He leans his side more into the seat, already fully turned towards me. “What else?”

I rehash the past week to my boyfriend. All the little biting comments. Tony restrained a heckler from approaching me, and afterward, he said,“Bet Thatcher would’ve struggled with that. Probably would’ve broken a sweat.”

I snapped back,“He never has.”

Tony had that grating conceited smile and haughty swagger.

Every day, I heard:

Moretti can’t do this.

Moretti has half a brain.

You realize no girlfriend has ever wanted to be with him. That’s why he’s been cheated on a hundred times.

I tell Thatcher, “If there’d been a ‘shut up’ button on Tony, I would’ve risked touching him and pressed it a thousand times by now.”

“I would’ve decked him,” Thatcher says plainly.

I scrutinize his left hand that clutches his knee, tiny scars mar his knuckles and his ring finger is crooked like the bone shattered and healed poorly. “Is that how you fractured your finger?” I wonder. “Hitting Tony?”

He opens his hand and rubs his knuckles. “I’ve punched him before. But this is from bar fights and protecting Xander.”

I scoot nearer, the air winding around us as I do, and he looks down at me and I look up at him. Our breath coming heavier.

He holds out his hand, knowing why I moved. Gently, I take his palm in mine and inspect the healed wounds. Thatcher has been through grief and war. His hands have carried the body of his brother and my badly beaten cousin, and if he could, I’m sure he’d carry more.

“What he’s said, it gets worse,” I murmur.

His jaw hardens and he nods me onward. “I’m ready.”

I explain how I overheard Tony talking when he was on a break. I had stopped by my dad’s office in Center City, which is a secure location. Bodyguards aren’t required to enter.

“I was about to leave,” I tell him, “and Tony was waiting for me in the lobby just outside the women’s restroom. Through the door, I could hear him talking on the phone.” My stomach roils, and I shift closer, my knees knocking into his leg.

I freeze again.

He assesses me in a sweep, and I clutch my elbows, looking at his lips more than a few times. Once he notices, our breathing switches tempo. Desire pulses between my legs, and I imagine his large hands knowing exactly how to please the aching, building need inside me.

Wrong time.

The body wants what the body wants, and I suppose so does the soul. I’m just struggling with feeding the latter.

Thatcher keeps us on track. “You heard Tony talk on the phone?”