“I didn’t have any nightmares. Or wake up screaming, or sobbing.”
This was what she’d meant. This was what she endured, every day, for whatever reason it was she hadn’t been able to articulate in that diner.
Rocco pulled her into his arms, hauling her completely into his lap and tucking her head beneath his chin. He reached down and lifted the sheet she’d dropped in her surprise back up, letting it enshroud her from the opposite side. But he kept one arm tight around her directly, skin on skin, and didn’t lether shy away from him. “Shh,” he murmured into her hair as he bent his head. “I’m here, beautiful. You’re not alone.”
Alessa gasped, the sound wet and painful. She twisted, her hands clawing over his shoulders as she burrowed her face into the groove of his neck, and a shuddering sob wracked her frame.
He wished like hell he knew what was breaking her inside, but this was obviously not the time to push for explanations. So he held her tighter and let her cry out whatever it was she’d seen in her dreams, whether it was memory or imagined phobia. And he prayed it was something he could kill for her.
“Rocco, no. This is too much.” She meant what she said as strongly as she hoped he’d argue, but that was a truth Alessa wasn’t wholly comfortable acknowledging even to herself.
The last thing she’d expected when they’d come downstairs after her nightmare-fueled sob fest was to find her stuff—allof her stuff, near as she could tell—carefully stacked in the foyer. It didn’t take a genius, or even a cup of coffee, to figure out what he was thinking.
“How?”
Alessa opened her mouth, but too many half-formed responses swarmed her brain. She lowered herself onto the eat-in island seat Rocco had previously pulled out for her. “It’s twoweeks,” she said, as if thinking aloud. “I understand I can’t monopolize the suite for that length of time, but that doesn’t mean you’re obligated to—”
“Let me stop you right there.” Rocco set a steaming mug of delicious-smelling coffee beside her, simultaneously stepping up to crowd her space. He flattened a palm on the island top, grabbed hold of the low back of the chair she sat in, and leaned forward until their noses nearly touched. “You need to listen better. There’s noobligationinvolved, beautiful.”
Alessa blinked hard and pressed her lips together for a long second. “Excuse me?”
He smiled and angled his head to brush a kiss over her cheek. The movement was soft, but too indulgent and too drawn-out to be mistaken as anything other than intentional. Then his eyes were locked with hers again. “Mine,” he said, a roughened edge slipping into his voice.
The breath caught in her chest. He couldn’t possibly mean that the way it sounded—the way he’d said it the night before.
Her mind flashed instantly back to how he’d found her in bed barely an hour prior, sobbing and shaking and pathetic. Shameful. He’d held her, he’d comforted her, and she’d collapsed against him like some weeping flower. She appreciated the response he’d offered in the moment, but she was no fool. Men like him had no lasting interest in women like her who were only being held together on the outside by cheap stick-glue.
To say nothing for the fact that she had no interest in becoming property.
Alessa pressed her hand against the flat of Rocco’s stomach. “I think I need that coffee.”
He made a sound indicative of displeasure, but eased back. “You’ll understand eventually,” he said.
Alessa aimed her frown at her coffee. She had no idea how to take that statement.
“After we check in with my father,” Rocco began, his tone normal once more, “why don’t we go shopping?”
Alessa gulped down a little too much of the piping hot liquid. “Shopping?”
He grinned over his own mug. “I still owe you a shirt, and something tells me you didn’t pack for two weeks of no work.” He took a swallow. “Let me treat you.”
Why does this feel like a trap?“I told you not to worry about the shirt. Really, Rocco, you don’t have any obligation to take care of me.”
Rocco growled low. “I have a lot of obligations, Alessa.” He suddenly took hold of her chin with thumb and forefinger, drawing her whole face up and compelling her gaze back to his. “But, and I will not repeat myself again,youare not one of them. Spending time with you, taking care of you, making sure you have whatever it is you need or whatever it is that would put a smile on your face—none of that is a fuckingobligationto me.” His brow pinched as he spoke, his tone hard despite the emotional punch of his words. Or perhaps with the intention of driving them home. “You are mychoice.”
Alessa swallowed hard. His words had a chokehold on her heart and her lungs seemed frozen in time. She could scarcely think.
And in her moment of disoriented, heavy silence, a buried memory wafted up from beneath the pile of more recent, more anguishing reflections. Her brother’s laughter, her brother’s face, and a time when both of their futures had still seemed like things they were only beginning to embark on. It was hard to believe how naïve she’d been, and how much time hadn’t passed since.
“What was so bad about Tony?” Al asked as he dropped onto the worn sofa beside her and passed over the beer he’d retrieved from her refrigerator.
Alessa cracked the can with a frustrated sigh. “I’m sure he’s a great guy’s-guy,” she said, “but he’s hardly my type. And the last thing I want in my life is to be shackled to some guy who can’t keep his eyes on me for one single date.” She gulped down half the can while her brother processed her answer.
“You want me to punch him for you?”
“No, you dummy.” Alessa jabbed Al in the shoulder. “If he’d done anything to really warrant a beat-down, I’d have given him one myself.”
Al shrugged, took a pull on his own beer, and sank back into the sofa. “Look, I hear what you’re saying, Lessa. But I’m worried about you.”
