Hold Him Like Gravity (Lombardi Family #4)

Epilogue

Rico - 1 Day

Kick needed more sleep than I did. All the weeks of stress and fear had clearly done a number on her. And with all of that shit handled for good, she was sleeping like a baby.

I slipped out of bed around ten, draining the tub, then rinsing the clothes. The black hoodie and pants were now a light gray with splashes of white from where the bleach made direct contact before it got diluted. Everything reeked. But it was all going to go through a wash cycle at the laundromat before I handed off the tee and the hoodie to an unhoused guy I passed. The pants could go in a dumpster somewhere.

The disposal of it all was the main reason I never had and likely never would have an expensive wardrobe. The number of clothes I’d needed to get rid of over the years was ridiculous. But, hey, some needy people were better clothed for it.

Bass was the one to take the clothes away that morning, though, needing to get rid of his own.

While I’d been the one showing Kyle and his near-rapist buddy the error of their ways, Bastian had been in the room with us. And, yeah, the blood got everywhere before I finally had enough and put an end to their miserable asses.

Coal had been the one to take out the other two. Renzo felt it was time for him to officially make his bones.

So, in the next few months, I figured I could expect to call Coal an equal, a capo instead of a soldier.

“Hey, why didn’t you wake me?” Kick asked, coming out from the hallway wearing barely-there shorts and a thin tee, her hair all bed-messy, her eyes still heavy-lidded from sleep.

“Because you needed your sleep,” I said, reaching into the cabinet to pull down a mug for her.

“It’s eleven-thirty,” she said.

“Which means we can order lunch which is, arguably, a better meal than breakfast.”

“Oh, come on. A nice stack of French toast with powdered sugar? No sandwich can beat that,” she said.

“You’ve clearly never had an Italian Ice Cream Cone,” I told her.

“What is an Italian Ice Cream Cone?” she asked as she sipped her coffee.

“A hollowed out piece of Italian bread stuffed with meatballs, cheese, and sauce,” I told her, watching her lips part.

“Okay. That might be better than French toast,” she agreed. “So we’re getting those, obviously. When do they open?”

“They’re open now. I can have someone drop them off… no?” I asked as she pouted.

“Can we go to pick them up?” she asked. “We could really use some more treats and kitty litter for Evander too,” she added.

That was a lot of we.

And I liked that a lot more than I could have anticipated.

“Sure,” I agreed. “Sounds good. Need anything else?”

“I’m going to need to go back to my apa—“

“No, you don’t,” I cut her off.

To that, she let out a small laugh. “I meant to get some more of my clothes,” she said.

“What for?” I asked. “You won’t need them.”

“Bastian is going to come home eventually, you know,” she insisted.

“Not if I tell him to crash with Coal for a while.”

“You can’t do that to him,” she said, shaking her head at me. “This is his home too.”

“Alright. Fine. We’ll move out. Wanna go house hunting this afternoon?” I asked, only half joking. That had just moved up high on my list of priorities. If Bastian wanted this place, he could have it. And I’d get a place for Kick and me where we could be as naked and loud as we wanted.

She laughed it off, but there was a light of hope in her eyes.

“Let’s start with spending the week together,” she suggested.

Kick - 1 week

It was funny how one week of living at Rico’s place made it feel more like home than months in my apartment.

Even before my clothes were hanging in his closet and my bath products were scattered around his shower and sink cabinets, it just felt, I don’t know, right.

I even really liked Bastian being around. Though, yeah, I was painfully aware of his presence on the nights when he was home and Rico and I were in bed.

It was nice to have people to share meals with, to have small talk over coffee or watch shows with.

“So, did you read it?” Saff asked, sitting on the counter I’d just wiped down at the shop, her legs swinging as she looked at me out of a blackened eye.

I had to admit, it was going to take some time to adjust to seeing the female capos sporting injuries I’d once walked around with. But without all the mental and emotional pain I’d felt. Since, as far as I could tell, Saff and Cinna tended to wear their bruises or cuts with pride.

“I… did,” I admitted, feeling a flush creep up my neck and across my cheeks at just the memory of some of those spicy scenes in that alien book.

I was still working my way through the giant romantasy one for the actual book club, but once the alien smut showed up on my doorstep the day before, I’d caught myself creeping out of bed in the middle of the night so the light didn’t wake up Rico, and devouring the rest of the book in the living room with Evander lazily swatting at the dangling ball on his cat tree to keep me company.

It was definitely thin on the plot, heavy on the steam, and completely and utterly addictive.

“That flush tells me you want to go book shopping with me tomorrow to get all of the sequels.”

“How many are there?” I asked.

“Twelve,” she told me, smiling. “Hey, Rico,” she said, making me turn to see him walking in from the office where he’d been speaking to Renzo. “I wanna take your girl book shopping tomorrow. Give her a stack.”

“What? No. I can buy my own books,” I insisted as Rico wrapped an arm around my lower back, pulling me close, and pressing a kiss to my temple.

“I mean, sure, you can ,” Saff agreed. “But why should you if a guy is willing to buy them for you?”

“Saff once got a guy to pay her rent just to get her phone number,” Rico said.

“No way,” I said, brows raising.

“Then changed my number as soon as the payment posted,” Saff said, nodding.

“The kicker is, she probably made ten times what that guy made a year,” Rico said.

“Hey, it’s only fair.”

“How’d you figure?” Rico asked.

“He will never have to buy a box of tampons. That’s several grand you guys get in your pockets over a lifetime that we don’t have. And we’re not even factoring in waxing, makeup, bras. Or the things that are the same but cost more because they’re marketed toward women.”

“Can I buy your books too, Saff?” Rico asked, fingers tickling my hip for a second.

“I don’t know if you can afford my book buying plans,” Saff said as the bells to the front door jingled.

We all turned to look to see Cage starting to make his way in. But as soon as he spotted Saff, he turned and headed back out.

“Hey!” Saff yelled loud enough to make me jolt as she whipped around on the counter, then jumped down. “Get back here, you asshole,” she called, rushing out of the shop to, it seemed, catch up to the retreating Cage.

“What was that about?” I asked when we were alone.

“When it comes to Saff? Who the fuck knows. Could be he screwed her over on a deal. Could be he ate the last donut at brunch. So, you’re having a girls day with Saff?” he asked.

“Yeah. She invited me to be part of her book club,” I said, lips curving up. “I haven’t had girl friends in a really long time,” I added. “It’s nice to be included.”

“So, what kind of books are you getting?” he asked as I went back to wiping down surfaces to have the shop ready for the morning.

“Oh, just some ones that Saff recommended,” I said, not exactly lying, but my ears felt hot at the idea of telling him the whole truth.

“Would it happen to be more books about seven-foot aliens with notched cocks?” he asked, making me spin around, eyes going huge. “Found the book stashed behind a pillow on the couch. Were you hiding it?” he asked.

“I just… it was, you know…”

“Don’t have to hide your alien porn,” he said. “Actually, I think I’d like to reenact that scene on page one-fifty,” he said, ducking down to throw me over his shoulder, slapping my ass with one hand, and carrying me into the back.

Where, in fact, we reenacted the scene from page one-fifty. Which was leaps and bounds better in real life than fiction.

Kick - 3 months

“Ugh, damnit!” I snapped, tossing the Allen wrench just as the apartment door opened.

“The fuck are you doing?” Rico asked, tossing his keys in the bowl then closing the door behind him.

“Building a rotating bookcase. Or, failing to build a rotating bookshelf, more like,” I said, waving at the mess of parts still spread out in front of me on the floor. Except for the box it came in. Which was set a few feet away with Evander happily sleeping inside of it. Only popping his head out every once in a while to remind me with judgmental eyes how little he thought of me and my skills.

I should have known I would have no success with this after trying to put together that little plant stand I’d bought after a simple spider plant from the grocery store led to a pothos which led to a fiddle leaf fig and a monstera. And, well, it just kept going. We were going to be living in a jungle in the near future at this rate.

But it was the first time in my adult life that I could actually buy things without having to worry about leaving them behind. My life had stability. It was safe to start accumulating things. Plants, books, stuff I found I loved and that Rico was happy to have in the apartment.

He was always trying to get me to spread out, to really move in, to make the place my own.

Rico had ended up needing to step in and build that plant stand for me. With the kind of ease that made me embarrassed to have spent the whole afternoon on something that took him fifteen minutes.

“You should have just waited for me,” Rico said, coming over to sit on the ground next to me and reaching for the Allen wrench. “How about you get the books while I get this together?” he suggested.

They were currently sitting in a sad little stack in our walk-in closet.

“Maybe we should keep the spicier books in the bedroom, though,” he said, shooting me a wicked little smirk as he reached for some of the pieces of the shelf.

After he’d read that one alien smut scene, then we had the time of our lives reenacting it in the office at the meat shop, I’d started to share the steamy book scenes with him in bed. Sometimes, he would even read them aloud to me while his fingers slipped into my panties and started to tease me.

“That’s a good idea,” I agreed, going to grab the thick, heavy romantasy tomes that Lore was always recommending to me when I was at her and Renzo’s place.

After the first book club meeting, we’d gotten just as close as I had with Saff and, eventually, Cinna. Where Lore shared books with me and gave me some basic cooking lessons once I’d confessed wanting to be able to cook for Rico on occasion, and Saff provided lots of fun trips out of the apartment and exploring Brooklyn, and Cinna gave me some basic self-defense lessons.

It was strange and wonderful to have so many people around me who wanted to spend time with me, who were kind and supportive and, above all else, loyal. Because that was the most important thing in this big found family I now found myself as a part of.

I got distracted by my books, sorting through them and carrying them out stack by stack. On my last trip out, Rico had finished the round, rotating bookshelf and put it in its new home.

“You want help organizing them?” he asked, waving toward the books piled on the coffee table.

“Actually, first, I should maybe thank you for all your hard work,” I said, walking over to him, watching his eyes go heated as I lowered down onto my knees in front of him and slid my hands up my thighs.

Then I went ahead and showed him this new technique I’d read about in one of those books on the table.