Hold Him Like Gravity (Lombardi Family #4)

Chapter Nine

CHAPTER NINE

Rico

“How… how did you know I’m from the Bronx?” she asked, her face looking suddenly ashen as her eyes went round.

“You mentioned working at a bodega there,” I reminded her, having no clue why she was having such a strange reaction to a normal question.

“Oh, right. Right,” she added with a nod. “Duh. I just… wanted something new,” she said, each word just not quite ringing true. “I lived there my whole life,” she added. That part, at least, sounded honest. “And, well, Brooklyn is a lot more affordable than, say, Manhattan. You’ve always been from here?”

“Born and raised,” I confirmed.

“Never wanted to leave?”

My entire fucking childhood.

“Never,” I said. It wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t Brooklyn I had a problem with, it was my home life. Once I was old enough to really get out on my own, make my own money, build a new family, I really started to appreciate the area. And actively work to protect it. I’d never think of living anywhere else.

“What do you like so much about it?”

“I dunno. Think it has more of a sense of community than most of the other boroughs. Save for maybe Staten Island. Got a lot of culture. Great restaurants.”

“I haven’t really explored much,” she admitted. “I moved without looking into it. Spur of the moment decision, I guess. And I keep meaning to check out the local attractions than just… hanging out with my TV and frozen pizzas at home.”

“No friends? Family? Hobbies?”

“No. Not any I’m close to. And I never really had any free time to find any hobbies. Do you have hobbies?” she asked. “Not including video games,” she added.

“Haven’t played a video game since I was, dunno, fifteen or some shit,” I said. At that age, all that mattered was making money in the hopes of getting myself out of my house as soon as I was of age. “I don’t have hobbies either. Work a lot. But I have been working on fixing up my apartment for a while now.”

“Got any tips?”

“Having, you know, furniture, helps,” I said, getting a smile out of her.

“I did mean to go and get some end tables this week. But I got distracted. I’ve moved around a lot in my life. So I’ve kind of always gotten used to surviving with the bare essentials.”

“You planning on leaving sometime soon?” I asked.

“No. I mean… I hope not. I know it’s not the best neighborhood but I kind of like my apartment. Admittedly, though, eighty-percent of that might be because of Evander. He’s an asshole, but he’s mine. Sort of.”

“He’s a good cat.”

“Do you have one?”

“A cat? No.” I’d never even entertained the idea of getting a cat. A dog, maybe. There were advantages to having some sort of working line dog breed when you lived my kind of life. Another deterrent from people breaking into my place. If the locks failed. If the cameras weren’t enough to scare people off. But I also worked too much, and too odd of hours, to have a dog waiting at home to be walked, pet, fed.

“Really? You’re a natural with him.”

“Had cats when I was a kid. Half-feral hellbeasts,” I admitted, thinking of the way they’d swat me out of nowhere, completely unprovoked. How they chose not to use the litter box, but the floor right next to it, to do their business. How they would come right up on my pillow to violently throw up hairballs.

But my parents liked them because there were forever mouse, rat, or roach problems in our apartments and the cats lived to kill shit. Probably because I don’t remember my parents actually putting out food for them.

“I would argue that Evander is half-feral,” she said. “But he’s the most domesticated cat around you. Maybe his real owner is a man.”

“You should put a collar on him,” I said.

“A collar? Why?”

“See if he belongs to someone else. If you got a collar and a tag made up, maybe even put a GPS on him to see where he goes, you’d know for sure.”

The food came then and Kick dominated the conversation by asking me a shitton of questions about Brooklyn, about how different it was now than when I’d grown up. And, eventually, how I came to own a meat shop.

“Kinda fell into my lap, honestly,” I told her. I went ahead and left out the part about some mild torture that was involved in the whole process. “Seemed like a solid investment. The meat shop has been around, under different ownerships, for something like seventy years. So it’s clearly something the neighborhood wants. I figured it would be easy enough to take over. What?” I asked as she gave me a long, thoughtful look.

“It’s kind of nice to be around someone who didn’t have it all figured out from a young age. I always felt like I was alone in stumbling around, not sure what I wanted to do with my life.”

I’d been pretty sure up until that point that she didn’t know who I was, what I did. But right then, I was sure. Because anyone who knew what I did for a living knew that I’d been working at this shit for decades, been carving out a name and reputation for myself. Anyone who knew anything about the Lombardi crime family knew me.

“You got plenty of time to figure it out. But, hey, there’s nothing wrong with just… working a job. Not everyone wants or needs to have some job they’re passionate about and shit. So long as it pays the bills and doesn’t make you miserable, there’s nothing wrong with just clocking your time and going home to do the shit you care about.”

“That’s… surprisingly comforting,” Kick declared.

But a sad look replaced the relief.

Before I could ask what caused it, though—let alone why it fucking mattered to me in the first place that it did—the server came back, asking how the food was and if we wanted dessert.

“I think I’ve already eaten a weeks’ worth of food,” Kick said, sucking in a deep breath before slowly releasing it.

I waited for the check then stashed several bills in the folder as Kick reached for her wallet.

“Absolutely not,” I said, holding the check presenter out to the server as he passed.

“What about the tip?” she asked.

“Already covered,” I told her, getting to my feet, then moving to her side of the table to pull her chair out a bit.

With that, we left the restaurant, walking home discussing different places as we passed them by.

Entirely too soon, we were making our way back into her building, the air crackling around us as we stood silently in the elevator.

By the time we were at her door, she had just fished her key out of her purse.

I reached for it, nearly pinning her to the door in the process. Maybe if she hadn’t sucked in her breath, or if her blueberry scent wasn’t overwhelming my senses, or her gaze didn’t flick up to mine, heavy-lidded and filled with need, I might have moved away, might have turned around, walked away, and kept shit professional.

But she did.

And then, as I leaned inward, just wanting to get another hit of that blueberry scent, a shiver moved through her and this little mewling sound escaped her.

My nose teased up her neck as she leaned to the side, silently inviting more.

I would have kept going. I would have pressed my lips to hers, pushed her into her apartment, walked her into her bedroom, and gotten rid of the tension that was sizzling between us.

But two doors down, someone slammed their door, the unexpected sound making us pull apart, breaking the spell of the moment.

“Thanks for, you know, checking in on me,” she said, giving me a tight smile. “And for dinner.”

“Glad you’re doing better,” I said.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” she told me, reaching to open the door, then stepping inside.

“Goodnight, Kick,” I said, watching as she closed the door, then sucked in a deep breath and walked away, trying the whole walk home to tell myself it was for the best.

Even if nothing about that felt true.