Kristen Ashley - The Promise

He ignored my “whatever” and went on. “The shoes you can wear every day for the rest of your life and I’d be a happy man.”

Perhaps those shoes weren’t treacherous.

Perhaps they were miraculous.

I couldn’t hold back the smile at that, but I forced it to be small and trained it to the TV.

Five minutes later, when a commercial came on, Benny turned to me. He leaned in, lifting a hand to cup my jaw, and brought his face close to mine.

I looked into his eyes and held my breath.

“It’d make me happy right now I don’t have to sleep on that couch,” he said quietly.

I knew what he was saying.

It was too fast. Way too fast.

But after dinner that night, I didn’t care.

“So don’t,” I said quietly back. Though my voice may have been quiet, my heart was racing.

His eyes got soft, his face got closer, then his mouth was on mine. I only got a tongue sweep, but it was a tasty tongue sweep I liked a whole lot, before he pulled away.

Benny, not wasting an opportunity or time, shifted to slide under the covers. Then he shoved an arm under me and shifted me to cuddle into his side.

I slid my arm along his flat belly.

“Your checkup tomorrow is at ten,” he reminded me.

“Yeah,” I confirmed. I remembered.

“I’ll take you.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll also call Manny. After I bring you home, he and I’ll go get your Z so I can see to it.”

“All right.”

“Gotta get back in the kitchen, Frankie. You wanna call a friend to hang with you tomorrow night while I work?”

“That’ll be nice.”

He gave me a squeeze. “Right.”

After he finished squeezing me, his hand drifted up and into my hair. Then he started twirling a lock around his finger.

I don’t know why I did it, except that I wanted to do it and I didn’t get much of what I wanted, and a lot of what I wanted was right then stretched out beside me.

So I did it.

I turned my head and kissed his tee over his pec.

When I did, his fingers stopped playing with my hair and I felt his ab muscles get tight under my arm.

But when I settled my cheek back to his chest, his fingers started back up again and his body relaxed beside me.

“Nice night, honey. Thank you,” I told the TV.

“Yeah, baby.”

I gave him a squeeze and relaxed beside him, wondering if this was how it felt. If this was how it felt to get what you wanted for a lifetime. Have it stretched out beside you. The promise of it there all night so you’d wake up to it in the morning. The promise of it going to work the next day with you knowing it was coming back. A promise that would stay a promise—beautiful, forever there, beckoning, even as minute by minute it was being fulfilled, leaving you taking your last breath on earth knowing you lived a life filled with beauty.

If it was, it was weirdly serene.

You’d think something that magnificent would be about fireworks.

But if this was it, it wasn’t.

It was quiet, tranquil, comfortable.

Beauty.

I felt arms tighten on me and the haze of sleep lifted, slightly.

When it did, I felt a whole lot more, and that whole lot more consisted of my body pressed snug against the hard frame of Benny’s, the warmth of our cocoon of covers, and the safety both created.

It was a strange feeling.

But I liked it.

I tilted my head back, opening my eyes, and I saw Benny.

Half asleep, my belly still did a dip.

“Hey,” he whispered, his voice deep, easy, and gruff, and right on the heels of the last one, my belly did another dip.

“Hey,” I replied.

“How you feelin’?” he asked.

Groggily, I did a mental scan and found that either Benny’s bed with his body in it was a miracle elixir, or the lateness with which I took the pill meant it hadn’t worn off yet, because I felt awesome.

“Good,” I answered.

“Good,” he murmured, and I tensed when he lifted his head and buried his face in my neck.

The tenseness lasted a millisecond before I felt his lips at my neck and my body melted into his, even as my hands slid from his chest, one pushing under his body, which he shifted to accommodate me so I could wrap both my arms around him.

“Gonna get up.” His voice rumbled against my skin.

“I’m gonna snooze,” I replied.

“Mm.” The soft noise he made rolled along my neck, causing a shiver to glide down my spine and my hands to move along the intriguing ridges and flats of his back.

His mouth glided up my neck and I felt his tongue touch the hinge of my jaw.

I closed my eyes and dipped my hands lower, going under his tee and shifting up so I could feel those ridges and flats, skin against skin.

That was better, by a whole lot. His skin was warm and soft, the ridges and flats fascinating.

When my touch came unhindered, one of Benny’s hands slid to my ass and cupped it.

I pressed my lips together to suppress my own “mm.”

Even so, his mouth came to my ear and he whispered, “Like your touch, baby, but like it too much. This’s gotta end now.”

I felt disappointment slide through me as his hand gave my ass a squeeze before it drifted up to the hollow of my back and he lifted his head away from my ear. I opened my eyes and his caught mine.

“Doctor gives the go-ahead, we’re all over that,” he told me quietly. “He doesn’t, we’ll wait. Findin’ the wait’s worth it, so know when we get there, it’ll still be worth it.”

Still sleepy and slightly turned on, my hands encountering Benny’s skin for the first time, I didn’t have it in me not to blurt out, “You’re even awesome in the morning.”

He grinned, his eyes warm, sexy, and full of promise when he said, “I’m awesome all the time, babe.”

At his arrogance, I kept all the goodness of the last three minutes but still narrowed my eyes at him.

“Seriously?” I asked.

“Fuck yeah,” he answered, still grinning.

Before I could retort, he dipped his head, touched his mouth to mine, and pulled back.

“You snooze. I’m gonna hop in the shower. You’re not up, I’ll wake you when you gotta start getting ready.”

After delivering that, he gave me another mouth touch, let me go, and rolled out of bed.

But as he did all that, I thought there was no way I would be able to snooze with a naked Benny in the shower just a room away.

Still, I snuggled up under the covers. Cautiously curling my knees closer to my belly and still feeling no pain, I settled in, closed my eyes, and listened for the shower.

I felt a slow smile spread on my lips when it came.

The smile died when my mind moved to other thoughts.

I had not woken in a man’s arms in over seven years and the last man’s arms I woke in were Vinnie’s.

Vinnie, like Benny, was a cuddler, even in sleep. He liked contact. He showed affection whenever he could—awake, asleep, physically, verbally, even going so far as to let me know he was thinking of me when he was going about his day. I knew this when I’d come home to flowers. Or a little sweet nothing gift. Or even a card that had a hokey love message. Vinnie would write in the card, making fun of it, but we both knew he meant those words and that’s what made it sweet.

When he started to work for Sal, when he became whatever it was they were before they became a made man, those little gestures started dwindling. Not the physical affection. The verbal affection, the gifts, and the cards.

Apparently, a wise guy in training (and definitely those out of it) didn’t do sweet things for his woman. Apparently, a wise guy showed no weakness, even for his woman. Apparently, a wise guy considered doing thoughtful things for the woman he loved a weakness, when the woman he loved thought it was the opposite.

Knowing he had that in him, guessing why he took it away from me, the crack that had formed in our relationship when I tried to talk him out of approaching his father about franchising (and he didn’t listen)…

The crack that cut deeper each time he did something reckless that I tried to explain was just that (and he didn’t listen)…

The crack that split between us further when he took up with Sal…

It tore us apart.

I just wouldn’t admit to it or give up.

I knew that now, forced to come to terms with it in Vinnie’s brother’s bed.

And lying in that bed after having a hint of Benny Bianchi’s good morning for the first time, a hint that was sweet and sexy, a hint that I knew could only get bigger and better, the thing that hit me was that it wouldn’t matter whose bed I was in. I would think back to what I’d had and how it went bad. I would make the comparisons. Unless I continued to live my life as I was the seven years before I was shot, which I didn’t intend to do, I would find a man and as I adjusted to a new person in my life, those thoughts were bound to drift through my head. In order to get healthy mentally and get on with my life, I would eventually have to come to terms with it.

Vinnie was dead. I was alive. He made his choices, I talked to him (and yelled at him) until I was blue in the face to try to get him to make different ones.

He didn’t.

Now he was gone.

But I was not.

And now I was moving on and, in doing so, finding another man.

That man just happened to be his brother.

That was it. That was where life led me. If I let it and quit fighting it, it could be as simple as that.

For Benny, it was that simple.

And for Benny, I could find my way to making it that simple.

On that thought, my eyes drifted closed as the sounds of the shower came from the next room.

By the time the water went off, I was snoozing.

***

I sat next to Ben as he did the parallel parking thing in front of my apartment complex.

I did this pressing my lips together, and I was pressing my lips together because I was also watching Manny and a woman get out of a red Chevy Tahoe in front of us.

It was after my doctor’s appointment where the doc pronounced my improvement “gratifying” and reiterated what he’d told me in the hospital: that the stitches inside were “absorbable” and would dissolve on their own, and the “glue” on the outside was used for cosmetic purposes so my scarring would hopefully be minimal. He then ordered me to titrate the pain meds by only taking them if I really needed them and gave me the go-ahead for “slightly more strenuous activity and light exercise.”

I didn’t have the guts to ask if this included sexual intercourse because I was trying not to think of having sex with Benny.

I wanted it. That was without a doubt.

But I’d had one lover and that lover shared things with Benny, so he knew things about me. Therefore, if I let my mind go there, I’d probably freak out. So I didn’t let my mind go there.

Now we were at my apartment to get my Z and I had another obstacle to face, and that was Manny, the last member of the Bianchi family who spent the last seven years firmly in the camp of Not My Biggest Fan. Unlike Benny (who had reason, considering what I did when I threw myself at him) and Theresa (who I could get, her not wanting to have bad thoughts about her son), Manny wasn’t ugly about it. He’d just cut me out of his life.

I’d been tight with him—not like with Ben, but we were close—and like losing all the Bianchis, that hurt.

Carmella, their sister, didn’t do any of that. She was the second oldest and she’d started her grown-up life early, getting married and popping out kids. Doing this, and being a girl, she matured a lot quicker. She saw how things were with Vinnie Junior and she was the first one to phone him and tell him, if he cast his lot with Sal, she’d put up with him when she came home, but outside of that, he was dead to her.

Then he cast his lot with Sal and he was dead to her.

She never blamed me. She knew what it was. So I never lost her.

It wasn’t like we chatted on the phone daily. But, then again, we didn’t do that shit when Vinnie was alive. But she sent me Christmas and birthday cards, the occasional email update, and I did the same with her.

I knew by the sheepish, hesitant look on Manny’s face as he peered into Benny’s SUV, that he wasn’t looking forward to facing me.