A Love Most Fatal (Morelli Family #1)

8. Nate

8

NATE

I take Vanessa to get ice cream on the way home, because even though we’ve been together for three hours, I can’t let her go yet. I have this sneaking suspicion that if I let her out of my sight, I’ll never see her again, and I would very much like to see her for as long as I possibly can.

I keep asking her questions, looking for whatever it is that should signal to me as a red flag, but I think she may be perfect. She’s hard-working, devoted to her family, funny, and beautiful. Her face lights up when she’s excited, and when she laughs, it always looks like it surprises her. I like listening to her speak, holding my breath as she thinks before she answers a question. I could learn from her in this regard, the way she listens to the question in its entirety. I bumble and barrel through speaking, often saying stupid shit before really thinking it through.

I’m better at talking to kids; they’re little twerps sometimes, but they are so good. I love that they’re always learning, their little minds working over new concepts and growing as they do. It’s easier to be myself around them because they all think I’m an old loser anyway. Plus, I don’t need kids to think I’m cool, I need them to trust me and know that I’m trying to help them learn and that I’m a safe person they can talk to if they need to. They don’t need to be embarrassed around me because I do my best to be as embarrassing as possible around them.

I’ve never really felt confident around adults in the same way, and especially not Vanessa with her perfect body and sharp mind and assessing gaze that is drawing conclusions about me that I cannot predict.

“Where did you go just now?” She spoons another bite of ice cream into her mouth.

“Was trying to figure out how to get you to like me,” I admit, and that , that is what I mean by not thinking before I open my damn mouth.

Vanessa’s dimple makes itself known, and it’s so cute I want to do something absurd like kiss it. She shivers, just barely, but I see it. I stop walking and she follows suit with a questioning look. I shrug off my suit coat and drop it over her shoulders, silently hoping she won’t think it’s weird.

She smiles wider, switching her ice cream cup between her hands so she can slide her arms through the sleeves, which are too long on her. I take a step closer and roll them up so they’re not past her palms. When I’m done, I realize how close we’re standing.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi.” My grin is making my cheeks ache, and I incline my head to keep walking. We do, but our shoulders are closer than they were before.

“If you want me to like you, I guess that means I’m officially forgiven for trying to bribe you into academic dishonesty?” Vanessa asks.

“I guess it does,” I say.

She scrapes the last bite of her ice cream, which is the most sugary atrocity I’ve ever seen: gummy bears, nerds, and sour gummy worms mixed into a strawberry ice cream. The choice surprised me. For as clean cut and severe as she is, I thought she might go with a dark chocolate fudge, maybe, or a plain vanilla.

I wonder what the sweetness tastes like on her tongue, but quickly dismiss the thought and the accompanying images it procures.

“So, what does a normal day look like in the life of Vanessa Morelli?”

“My sister drags me on a run before the sun comes up, usually. Then breakfast which is my favorite meal of the day—my mom likes to cook.” Vanessa sighs and shrugs. “Then most of the day is taken up by meetings and visiting sites and potential sites. I meet with a lot of investors and check-in on various projects, which is as boring as it sounds.”

“And after the riveting nine to five?” I nudge.

“After that excitement, I go home, see my sisters, the kids make an appearance a few days a week. I know I’m making my life sound really exciting, but of course there’s the basketball games and the random parent-teacher conference to fill in on occasion.”

She shoots me a look at this, and I’m done trying not to smile like an idiot around her.

“What do you do for fun?” I ask, the one thing glaringly absent from her schedule.

This stumps her, and we’re quiet as she thinks about it for the length of half a block.

“It’s fun to go to Artie’s games, or to watch TV shows with my mom at night. I like movies, too, but I don’t go out to see them like I used to in college,” she says. She squints at nothing. “I guess I don’t prioritize fun.”

“And do you date?” I ask. I can’t understand the world we live in if Vanessa Morelli is a single, non-dating individual.

I think I see her cheeks redden under the streetlights.

“No,” she says. “I don’t really.”

I have no sensical words in response, and she must see this because she takes pity on me and fills the silence.

“I’m not anti-dating, I’m just. . . busy. I was engaged once. Before grad school, an old family friend, and my first boyfriend.”

“What happened?”

“He wasn’t what I thought. Didn’t like that I wanted to go to grad school and work for my dad. Wanted me barefoot and pregnant. He was intimidated by. . .” She waves her hand in an encompassing gesture in front of her. “He didn’t want me to be in charge.”

My mind paints a very clear fantasy, unbidden, in which Vanessa and I live in domestic bliss. I’ve quit my job, just for a few years, just until the youngest is in pre-school, and Vanessa runs the world all day before she comes home to be with me and our two babies. After the children are asleep, after a delicious dinner I made, unless we ordered in, we make love and in fact make another baby, a third, a girl who we name Vanessa Jr. She has my nose.

I think there is something wrong with me.

“He sounds like a jackass,” I say, and I hope she doesn’t hear how my voice has dropped an octave into the gravelly, horny territory. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

“Me too,” she says. “Better to have found out before the wedding, though. Sometimes I imagine what if I’d gone through with marrying him. My dad would have still died, and I would have still wanted to take over the business, but I wouldn’t have the support of my husband which would make what I do a whole lot more difficult.”

“I’m glad you have your family as support. I can’t imagine taking on something like that alone.”

Our walking has slowed past a leisurely stroll, and I’m starting to think that she doesn’t want this night to end either. That sort of thinking breeds too much hope, though, and it is much too soon to let myself be hopeful.

She’s looking up at me, her big brown eyes focused on my face, assessing my reaction in light of her latest confession. After a moment, she turns back to the sidewalk, and fuck it, I grab her hand and she lets me lace my fingers through hers.

“What about you, then? Do you have hobbies?” she asks.

“My friend Jenna and I go to the community center a few times a week. Pickleball or kickboxing, stuff like that. Otherwise, I like reading.” I don’t mention that sci-fi is my favorite genre, but I will if she asks.

“What is pickleball? A card game?”

“Like table tennis but human-sized.”

“Isn’t that just tennis?”

“No, no, Vanessa. Tennis is tennis. Pickleball is kind of like tennis, but smaller. More like ping pong.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” she says.

“You must not spend much time with middle-aged people.”

This earns me a laugh, and I revel in the sound like it’s a heated blanket.

We are just about to my building, and I slow my steps further until we’ve stopped walking. I’m still holding her hand as we stand under the lamp post bathing us in yellow light.

“I’ve had a really nice time tonight,” Vanessa says. “I don’t get to do this very often.”

“Me too.”

I’m bad at stuff like this, holding hands in quiet moments on the precipice to another moment. I never know how to gracefully tip from one into the next.

She makes it easy.

“Nate?”

“Hm?”

“You can kiss me,” she says, and I don’t waste any time.

I let one hand slip around the back of her neck as my mouth descends on hers, her lips warm and pliant against mine. I deepen the kiss when one of her hands snakes around my waist and sigh into her open mouth.

Her tongue tastes like sugar and strawberries, and it dances with mine. I’m backing her up into the alley between my building and the next one for some semblance of privacy, and she moves willingly, her tongue still enthusiastically traveling around my mouth, pressing against my teeth, making me let out these involuntary moans. I press her against the brick wall while bringing our bodies flush together, one of my thighs pressing between her legs.

She sucks my tongue into her mouth which makes me lose my mind.

I’m barely thinking, just feeling her hands so eager traveling over my torso and into my hair as I draw her closer and pour myself into her mouth. I want to consume her and be consumed; I am lightheaded from this kiss and her soft hands.

I recognize that we could be inside my apartment within two minutes, less if we hustled up the stairs, but I can’t even consider the idea of stopping this, not when she’s grinding against my thigh and pressing her tits into my chest, not when she’s biting my lip and huffing little breaths in my ear as I trail a mess of kisses up her throat.

My hand is traveling up her side and skating across her bare back beneath my jacket when she goes still. I follow suit and look at her questioning.

Did I go too far? Was I too much?

“Are—”

“ Sh ,” she puts her finger to my lips and is looking just behind me like she’s listening for something.

The only thing I hear is my heart still beating in my ears and my neighbor’s reggae playing through his window upstairs. A car rolls past, and I’m pretty sure they can’t see us shrouded in the dark, but I still shift to cover her body more.

Vanessa lets out a breath and relaxes her shoulders, and I think whatever gave her pause has passed, but then I hear it too. The footsteps from the street behind us are so quick, I don’t even have time to untangle myself from Vanessa before palms are landing on my shoulders and yanking me away from her.

I am on the ground, the breath knocked from my lungs in the space of a breath. Another man has sprung for Vanessa, but she jumps from his reach. I want to move, to help defend her, but a boot lands on my chest and presses down before I can.

“I’ll shoot him,” the man above me says, and Vanessa halts. The other man still approaches her.

There’s a gun pointed toward my face, and I cough, trying to sputter some sort of surrender. I have two credit cards with decent, but not great, credit limits, but I’ll give them whatever they want.

I put my hands up by either side of my head; Vanessa does too. The other man stalks towards her, and I see that he’s got a gun pointed at her.

“Come on, we can work something out,” I rush to say, and his foot presses harder on me. I am about to yell watching the other man reach to grab Vanessa when she moves faster than lightning.

Many things happen at once.

First, I see Vanessa twist her attacker’s arm, dislodging his gun, which she quietly fires twice before I can even hear the man grunt. I only know it fired because of the light and the way the other man standing over me hiccups back and falls to the ground, releasing the weight from my chest as he does.

Did she just ?—

I scoot away and push myself to standing, my breath still ragged. I want to help Vanessa somehow, but she’s handling herself just fine. She expertly fights the man that’s at least double her size. In a flurry of moves I barely see, she’s brought him to the ground beneath her and shot another two rounds into his head. My stomach lurches, but I keep the bile down.

Red is spattered on her neck and face and my suit coat.

“Are you okay?” I ask even though, despite a split lip and splatter, she’s looking mostly calm, just a quiet rage simmering.

Vanessa spits blood onto the back of the man’s head and nods.

“Did he hurt you?” she asks.

I shake my head.

She steps past me to survey the other man, the one who was holding me, and lands a hard kick to his side. Mind you, she’s done all this wearing her very tall heels. When he doesn’t move, she spits on him too and retreats to where her purse had fallen off in the fray.

“I’ll call the police,” I say, already digging in my pocket for my phone.

“Not yet,” she says.

I pause, my finger hovering over the call button, and my hand is shaking. She comes close and looks me over, her fingers trailing over my face for a moment before she takes my phone and locks it.

“It’s okay,” she says. “We’re okay.”

I watch as Vanessa pulls out her own phone and taps the screen before pulling it to her ear.

“Get Tony over here,” she says after a moment. “Two of them. . . We’re good. Yeah, he’s good. See you soon.”

After hanging up the phone, she slips it back into her purse. My whole body is shaking now, and I haven’t made myself look at the dead men because I’ve never really looked at a dead person before, and the thought of seeing two now up close horrifies me.

“Are you in pain?” she asks, and her voice is so gentle.

“No,” I say, and my voice is so loud I try again, quieter, “No.”

“I’m sorry you had to see that.”

“What is happening?”

Her lips press together into a thin line. The red of her lipstick has smudged a bit around her mouth from our kissing, and I imagine it’s smeared across my lips as well.

“Business,” she says. “I can’t explain here, but I’m going to handle it. I need your help moving them further into the alley.” She nods at the dead men, and I still don’t let myself look at them. Just the fact that their bodies are next to me, dead and unmoving, feels like a weight on my chest, like a monster beneath my bed I’m afraid to look at.

“We’ll start with this one. You can get his feet. Okay?”

“Vanessa, we need to call the police, we can’t move them, we?—”

“Nate, you need to trust me right now. I need you to say ‘okay.’”

I take a shaky breath and squeeze my eyes shut. I am pretty sure when I open them this will all still be happening, but I let myself hope that it won’t.

When I open my eyes, she’s still in front of me wearing my suit coat, a small trail of blood on her chin. I swipe it lightly with my thumb and she barely winces.

“Okay,” I say, and do what she tells me.