The waitress brings our food out before I can respond. Tori’s eyes nearly bug out of her head. “You expect me to eat all of this?” she squeaks.
“No. I expect you to try it all. That’s why I asked for the appetizers to come with the food.”
“Zane, this is a lot of damn food. How much is all of this going to cost?” Her eyebrows are furrowed in frustration.
Mine are too. I’m tired of her always worrying about how much money I’m spending. I’m not trying to flaunt it, but it’s not like I’m going bankrupt any time soon. “Just eat, Tori,” I snap a little roughly.
She leans back with a little gasp. I can see the shock written clearly on her face until it morphs into her own frustration. “I don’t like you spending so much money on me, Zane,” she hisses. “It makes me uncomfortable.”
I realize in this moment; we are about to have an argument. The first in a while but always over the same thing. You’d think since I see it coming, I would stop it before it starts, but I’m don’t. “And I don’t like you catching an attitude every time I do. It’s my money, Tori. I can spend how I want.”
“Even with me telling you that it makes me uncomfortable?”
“Why? Why does it make you uncomfortable?”
“Because it does, Zane.” She ducks her head slightly and leans across the table. “It makes me feel like you’re trying to buy me.”
“Back to this seriously?” I hiss. “Why the fuck would you feel that way, Tori? You know what? No. I am trying to buy you, Tori. I’m trying to buy your time and attention. I’m trying to buy a few minutes or hours or days or however much time I can because fuck if it’s not the only time I feel sane lately. If I could spend every damn penny to make sure I had your undivided attention forever, I would.”
Another gasp slips from her lips. Her big brown eyes fill with tears and I instantly feel like shit because Tori is definitely not the crying type of girl. I must really have hurt her feelings if she’s about to cry.
I slide out of the booth and move to her side. I lift her chin wiping a trailing tear with my thumb. “Fuck, Tori, I’m sorry. Don’t cry please. I don’t handle tears. I didn’t mean to -.”
She slaps her hand over my mouth. “Shut up before you ruin it, asshole.” She pulls her hand back and I keep my mouth clamped shut. “No one has ever said anything that nice to me before.”
I run my hand up her arm to the side of her neck. “Baby, I have a feeling that’s because you never gave them a chance because no sane man would ever not feel just like that.”
“Fuck you, Zane. I don’t like this shit,” she says soggily.
I gather her hair that’s hanging around her face and pull it behind her. I tip her chin up a bit to make her look at me. “Tori, don’t you think it’s time you tried to let your guard down and let someone in?”
“It’s not that, Zee. I just don’t know how to do a relationship. I don’t have any type of examples. It just seems like so much work and effort for something that might work out. I don’t like living my life in maybes. I did that for my entire childhood. I want certainties.”
“I can’t give you that,” I tell her honestly because how the fuck can I give her concrete proof when I have no idea what will happen tomorrow?
“I know that. That’s why I tell you I can’t do a relationship.”
I lean over to kiss her softly. “Let’s eat, Baby. I have a bet to win.”
We’re sitting on the backof my truck looking over the river. It’s a place Jax and I like to come to get away. Pretty sure Bastian does too since he’s the one who showed us this place when we were kids.
The sun is setting over the river and the cantilever bridge that connects two sides of the city. The Diamond Industries building can be seen from this spot. My penthouse apartment is about five miles up the road and Bastian’s loft five in the other direction.
“It’s really beautiful,” she says leaning into my side. “I mean I know we have sunsets and bridges like this in New York, but there’s nowhere to see it that’s quite this peaceful.”
“Yeah, this is probably my favorite spot in the city,” I tell her while taking a sip from the beer I bought on our way here. “It’s where I come to think or be alone. Unless Jax is having the same thought that day. Then we commiserate together.”
She peels the label on her own beer. “It’s strange to me that you’ve been friends for so long,” she says softly. “I can’t think of one person I was friends with as a kid that I even know where they are now.”
“I imagine that’s more the norm than all of us, but we’re a very tight knit – family.” I try to be vague as possible.La famigliais in my blood as much as the rest. My dad was a legit attorney, but he was also the attorney for River City Mafia. I always knew even though my dad tried to keep it from me. I’m not even sure if Zoey knows. To this day, I have no idea how dad got Rossi to let him transfer to London, but I have a feeling there was always more to that story than he told us. One that I will probably never get because my dad is gone.
Rossi is too now. That fucking bastard deserved it.
One thing I do know, the reason why Rory has always been so damned determined to keep us out of all of it, is my dad made him promise to keep Jax and I out. No one else knows that and Rory has no idea that I know.
“Mmm,” she hums. “I think I like y’alls way better.”
I nudge her with my shoulder with a chuckle. “You do realize you just said ‘y’all’, right?”
