“You came,” a soft voice said.
“Yeah, I brought a friend with me. Is it okay if he—”
“Sure, I guess.”
I went inside the small bay and my heart damn near exploded in my chest.
“You.”
“I-I don’t understand,” I croaked, feeling myself grow hot all over.
“Wait a minute,” Enzo frowned. “You two know each other? But how?”
He was drilling holes into my face, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the woman lying in bed. Her face was littered with bruises, and she had fingermarks around her neck.
Fucking fingermarks!
“Matteo?” Enzo gripped my shoulder as my knees went weak.
“Caitlin?” The word barely got out over the lump in my throat.
It was her.
The girl from that night.
She was one of Zander’s girls?
A stripper?
It couldn’t be.
Yet, Enzo knew her. He’d helped her. And she’d called him.
What the fuck was going on?
“Caitlin?” I said again, my heart crashing violently in my chest as I took in her injuries. She was beat up pretty bad. Someone had done this to her… someone had—
The penny dropped as Enzo’s words from earlier came back to me.
“DiMarco did this?” My voice didn’t sound like my own as red-hot fury exploded inside of me.
“Why is he here?” Caitlin stared at Enzo, her big green eyes pleading with him. I wanted to roar—to tell her not to look at him like he was her savior—but to look at me.
Fuck.
Fuck!
This was totally fucking with my head.
All I could think about was Zander putting his hands on her, hurting her. Abusing her.
“Enzo, I said why is he—”
“I’ll kill him,” the words spilled from my lips. “I’ll fucking kill him.” My fists clenched by my sides as I plotted all the ways I’d make Zander fucking DiMarco pay for ever laying hands on Caitlin. Something slow and painful, something that would make sure he never laid another hand on Caitlin or any other woman for as long as—
“Matt.” Enzo’s hand clamped down on my shoulder and I glanced up at him, blinking.
“Yeah?”
“Can you wait outside?”
“The fuck?” I balked, glancing between them.
“You’re scaring her, cous.”
Scaring her?
I was scaring her?
“Caitlin?” I choked out, but she didn’t look at me. She wouldn’t.
“Come on, Matt. Let’s take a walk.” Enzo slung his arm over my shoulder and guided me out of her bay.
“No,” I protested, glancing back over my shoulder. “I should stay with her. I should—”
“You need to cool it,” he said, the second we were out of earshot.
“Cool it? You want me to cool it? Did you see what he did to her? DiMarco is a dead man walking,” I seethed, anger coursing through me like wildfire, burning me inside out.
“You don’t get to make that call, and you know it.” Enzo scrubbed his jaw, his eyes hardening to slits. He didn’t like this anymore than I did, but it wasn’t his… whatever the fuck Caitlin was to me, lying in a hospital bed.
“Who is she to you?” he asked.
“Caitlin? She’s… Fuck,” I murmured, trying to rein in my thoughts. “Remember when we were up in Providence last summer, visiting DiMarco? We… I… I spent the night with her.”
“You did?” He frowned.
“Don’t look so surprised. Despite what you might think, I do know how to use it.”
“I didn’t… it doesn’t matter.” Enzo shook his head. “All that matters is that she’s safe.”
“She called you. Why the fuck did she call you?”
“I told you, I met her a few weeks ago, and got the impression she was in need of a friend. I don’t know why but I gave her my number in case she ever needed help.”
Which I was so fucking relieved about. But I couldn’t help the stab of jealousy I felt that Caitlin had called Enzo… and yet, she’d refused to give me her number all those months ago.
Was this why?
Was it because she was somehow tangled up with DiMarco?
I couldn’t make sense of it all. Because all I could think about was her lying there in that hospital bed, beaten and bruised. He was a… Fucking. Dead. Man.
“You know you need to stay cool about this, right?” Enzo pinned me with a knowing look.
“Like you’d be cool about it if it was Nora lying in that bed?”
His expression darkened. “It’s not the same, Matt, and you know it.”
“It’s—” Shit. He was right. It was a low blow—especially after everything he and Nora had been through.
Besides, it wasn’t the same because Caitlin wasn’t my… she wasn’t my anything.
He exhaled a steady breath. “Look, I get it, the two of you have history. But from the surprise on both of your faces, I’m guessing it’s in the past.”
Yeah, because she’d ghosted me.
But I’d never stopped thinking about her, not for a second.
Maybe that made me a pussy, but we’d shared something that night. Something that had burrowed deep into my soul.
“Let me go talk to her,” he said. “She called me for a reason, let me find out why.”
Seemed pretty obvious to me, but I didn’t argue. No matter how much I wanted to be the one to go to her.
To protect her.
“Yeah, okay. Tell her… shit, tell her, I only want to help. No pressure.”
Enzo’s brows knitted together as he scrubbed his jaw. “You really like her, don’t you?”
I gave him a weak smile and shook my head, “I don’t even know her.”
While Enzo went to see Caitlin, I got coffee and tried not to wear a hole in the floor. But I couldn’t sit still.
She was here.
Or rather, we were here.
Both of us, at the same time, in the same place. If that wasn’t some kind of freaky kismet, I don’t know what was.
Except, she hadn’t looked pleased to see me.
Not even a little bit.
This isn’t about you, asshole. It’s about the woman lying in a hospital bed hurting because of that fucker.
I could still vividly remember her from that night. Her soft, pale skin. The taste of her lips. How perfectly her body had fit with mine.
I’d been in fucking heaven, ready to make all kinds of promises, and she hadn’t even wanted to give me her number.
I wracked my brain for the exact details of our conversations. She’d told me she worked at some diner… but Enzo had said she was one of Zander’s girls.
Did that mean she was one of his dancers?
Shit.
How had I not noticed? Although it wasn’t like strippers wore a neon sign over their head.
Slumping down in the chair, I drained my coffee and threw the cup in the nearby trash can. I didn’t give two shits what Caitlin did for a living. She was still one of the most real, most beautiful women I’d ever met.
And she’s here.
I just needed to talk to her. To find out exactly what happened, and who I needed to hurt. My fist clenched against my thigh as I waited. Whatever she and Enzo were talking about was taking a long fucking time.