His eyes closed momentarily. “I’m supposed to ask you that considering whose funeral we’re at.”
I let my shoulders lift, giving him the best smile I could under the circumstances. “We all lost somebody.”
“He was your father.”
Taking a daring step closer, I inhaled the strong cologne and tobacco mixture wafting from him. He was all man, all the time, in the way he smelled, acted, and carried himself. His blue eyes could see through me, and his smile, on the rare occurrence he gave one, melted the skin right off me.
“He was your friend,” I added softly.
The way he watched me, looked down at me with such intensity, had me shivering. “Are you cold?”
Slowly, I shook my head. Rising on my toes, I brushed my lips on the underside of his jaw, causing him to lock up. It was only a tiny caress, but his reaction made it seem like more. It always did when we got close. And we did. Often.
“Della.”
“Don’t worry.” I stepped away before he could say anything more or move from me first. That kind of rejection on a night like this was one I wouldn’t be able to walk away from without another piece of my heart shattering. “It was a goodnight kiss. Nothing more.”
His voice was rough, cracked. “It can’t be anything more, not even now. Never again. Do you understand?”
I blinked, noting the faint mark of pink lipstick on his skin where my lips rested for a microscopic moment. “I told you I understood when you left my apartment that morning.”
Theo knew which morning I meant. It still hurt to think about even all this time later. To think he believed I would pounce on another opportunity to be in bed with him just because my father was gone made my stomach ache. I might not have been on the best terms with my father after what he’d done, but that didn’t mean I was going to use his death as an excuse.
I didn’t want Theo’s pity.
I wanted his love.
“His death changes nothing,” Theo added.
His death changes everything. Just not what he was insinuating. Deep down, I knew he was trying to get a reaction out of me. Maybe even hurt me in order to distance us. He’d done that plenty since the morning he left my apartment in a hurry like I’d threatened him. As if waking up beside me in our state of undress was that unappealing to him when he was the one who showed up and initiated our actions that night to begin with. Hurt laced into my being, squeezing my heart to the point of physical pain, but I held my head up high and pretended it didn’t bother me, no matter how much I clung to the possibilities that involved the man in front of me.
He was good at hurting people. That man was skilled at putting others in their place when it benefited him, but never me. Never his little Della. It made me wonder who he’d become now that his oldest friend was truly gone. Not just off to prison, to Rikers Island, but gone.
Who will you become now? I wanted so badly to ask him.
Theodore Bennett West. My father’s best friend. The man I’ve loved ever since I knew what love was, even when I shouldn’t have.
During a very drunken binge when his guard was down, he made it feel like maybe those feelings were reciprocated. Except he woke up in a tangle of my cheap clearance sheets, half naked, with a mask of regret and disgust on his face when he saw me in nothing more than a matching pink panty set beside him after he’d stripped me of my normal pajamas. He’d barged his way in smelling like his liquor cabinet, touched me in ways I’d never been touched by him before, and made me feel…whole.
I could still taste the whiskey on his breath, the tobacco on his tongue, and the desperation in his words as he told me he needed one night. Just one.
“Just one night, Della. That’s all I need to…”
I didn’t know what he needed the one night for, but it was clear something had happened. It didn’t take my body long to cooperate as he pinned me against the wall with his hips, pressing his hard erection against me to show me what exactly he needed. The way he ground into my softest spot and touched me in my most sensitive area with those rough fingers made the spark I’d suspected we’d had since I was old enough to know what that felt like, come to life. There was a fire in us that night as he kept me against that wall and made me come using just his hand while his mouth had devoured mine like he needed more.
Though we hadn’t gone as far as I would have liked before he passed out from who knew how much alcohol he’d consumed, the moments we shared were permanently tattooed on my flawed skin for the world to see. I didn’t hide it.
“As I said,” I replied instead, voice skillfully calm, “I understand just fine, Theo. Please drive safe.”
He stared at me for a moment too long before swiping his large palm through his longer-than-normal tussled brown hair and turned on his heels. No jacket, and not another word.
And I watched him walk away.
Again.
Chapter One
Della
Turning the page of sheet music, I settled back onto the bench and straightened my spine before placing my fingers onto the ivory just as Aunt Sophie showed me.
“I’m not sure I’m getting this,” I admitted, trying to remember which keys were which.
The pristine middle-aged woman sitting in an elegant red armchair beside the window scoffed. “You just need to keep practicing as we discussed. Your mother should have taught you how to play years ago.”
Fighting the frown that always came with the conversation, I rolled my shoulders and pressed down on the keys until an ungodly noise came from the pianoforte. There was no doubt in my mind I’d gotten it wrong, mixed up the keys for the umpteenth time no matter Sophie’s insistence that I’d get it. My mother hadn’t taught me how to play because I never showed interest, and she never liked forcing me into things that wouldn’t make me happy. That was why Sophie disliked her.
“She needs to be pushed, Elizabeth. What better way to discipline her?” Not long after that exchange, I’d started ballet. Sure, my mother had suggested it, but it wasn’t like she’d twisted my arm to get me to go. I liked the pretty leotards and all the pink we’d worn—the bows, the tutus, the uncomfortable pointe shoes I learned to love with time. Ballet became a way my mother and I grew close, and it appeased Sophie in some ways because she saw how I excelled at it.
“You have the fingers for it,” she kept going, waving her hand at me absentmindedly as she flipped through some feminine magazine. It was the same one I’d seen my mother look at and begged to read to me.
“You’re too young to learn what’s in these, my sweet Adele. When you’re older,” my mother would promise.
But the day never came because breast cancer took her from us mere months after she was diagnosed. It was fast, aggressive, and ugly. My father had never been quite right after her passing, but he tried for me. For our family. Considering I was only twelve at the time, he did what he could with what knowledge he had having two little sisters—Sophie and Lydia. Plus, they’d both offered to help whenever he needed it. As always, my father had been too proud. It was a trait I got from him.
“My fingers seem to disagree,” I murmured, dropping my hands into my lap and sighing to myself. “Perhaps another instrument?” Please say no. When I gave up dance after circumstances became too much, Sophie insisted I needed something in my life. Even though I’d long since found joy in painting, Sophie told me the hobby I invested in had to be something “appropriate” for young women because getting paint under my nails wasn’t that. It still made me want to roll my eyes, but I relented and tried what she wanted me to. I owed her that much. She did a lot for me after my mother died, starting Sunday brunches so I’d have an excuse to leave the house for a while, and giving me old albums of photos from my father’s childhood, including some of his teenage years that had my mother in them.