Cross made eye contact with Dante Marcello over his step-father’s shoulder, and he knew then that it was bad. He assumed it was probably bad when Catherine bolted out of the principal’s office without so much as a look at him, but he didn’t really know until now.
“I want that conversation,” Dante told Calisto, “and you make sure he’s there.”
“As long—”
“As long as nothing, Calisto.”
Dante left the reception area with his wife right behind him, and the principal called the Donati family into the office at the same time.
Cross wished he could be surprised at the security camera footage the school caught of him and Catherine the Friday before, but he really wasn’t. And if the idiots thought they were the first kids to fuck on school property, he had news for them.
Still, Cross kept quiet. He let the principal rant. Something told him that his father, and his very quiet mother, were not interested in hearing him say anything.
Thirty long minutes passed before Cross heard the principal say, “Clearly we don’t have enough proof, but our suspicions are enough to warrant this meeting, and some kind of action.”
“Like what, exactly?” Calisto asked.
“Cross is banned from having any vehicles on school property for the rest of the school year, and Catherine as well, although we understand he was the one driving her car. Obviously we can’t stop the relationship between Cross and Catherine; that’s not for us to do. However, we can make a demand about what they do while on our property. We’re going to ask that the two keep a distance from one another during school hours—”
“What the fuck?”
Cross’s first time speaking up at the meeting probably shouldn’t have been that.
All eyes turned on him.
He didn’t give a crap about his car being allowed at school or not. Catherine, though? That was his giant red line, and he wasn’t letting anybody push him to it.
“That’s bullshit,” Cross said. “Because you’ve got some shitty video of us joking around in a hallway and—”
“You are very aware it was more than just that,” the principal interjected firmly, “even if I don’t have the full show, Cross.”
“No vehicles, and keep a distance,” Calisto said, giving his step-son a look that screamed for him to shut up. “Anything else?”
“For now, no. Please remove Cross and his vehicle from school property for the day. And Cross?”
He glared at the woman. “What?”
“You’re very lucky, young man.”
Emma headed out of the office with a shake of her head.
Calisto urged Cross to follow his mother, muttering, “Lucky depends on who you ask at the moment.”
Cross slowed in the quiet school hallway when he felt his step-father’s fist clench into the back of his shirt. Emma continued walked, seemingly unaware that her husband and son were staying behind.
“Tell me …” Calisto spun Cross around so the two faced one another. His step-father pressed his fingers into his temples. “Jesus Christ, please tell me you were not having sex with the Marcello girl in her car, on school property, during school hours, Cross. Come on, lie to me, son.”
Cross wasn’t a liar, though.
He simply omitted details sometimes.
“I’m always safe,” he said with a shrug.
Calisto let out a hard breath, and it echoed with his exasperation. “Just … what the fuck is wrong with you? What were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t.”
“Do you even understand the shit you’ve pulled, and what you’ve done with this?”
“Papa—”
“Don’t,” his step-father said, holding up a hand. “Your next words better be the best apology you’ve ever made, or some magic shit to make this all go away. If that’s not what it is, I don’t want to hear you say a thing, Cross.”
Cross flatted his arms over his chest, but chose to stay quiet.
They messed up.
He got that well enough.
Calisto scrubbed a hand over his jaw, and kept his gaze anywhere but on Cross. “This was the line, son. You went too far this time. You didn’t even think about it. You just jumped. Get to my car.”
Cross frowned. “My Rover—”
“Will be picked up by one of my men, and locked away until I say otherwise. You’re driving home with me and your mother. Get to my damn car.”
The drive home felt longer than ever, and awkwardly silent. His mother—a woman who chattered constantly just to fill space—never said a thing. She didn’t look at him when she got out of the car at their home, either.
Cross moved to follow his mother.
“Stay where you are,” Calisto said from the front.
Emma turned back, looking to her husband only. “Call me, okay?”
“Yeah, Emmy.”
His mother headed up the walkway without a look back.
“Can I get up front?” Cross asked.
“You can stay where you are for now.”
Calisto put the car in reverse, and backed out of the driveway.
“Where are we going?”
“Right now, and for the very near future, my suggestion is for you to be as quiet as possible, Cross. Actually, it’s not a suggestion at all. It’s a demand, and you better listen to it.”
Shit.
He had more questions, but kept quiet.
Calisto took them into the city, which meant even more driving and no talking. Cross wouldn’t have minded so much, if he wasn’t so damn anxious about what was happening. Something he didn’t know at all.
Cross didn’t recognize the Manhattan restaurant his step-father parked in front of. It didn’t look to be opened, and in fact, seemed like it might be under some kind of renovations if the shaded windows and permits on the front door were any indication.
Calisto got out and hit the window on Cross’s door; a silent demand for him to follow. Outside of the car, his step-father turned to him, expressionless.
“I warned you, didn’t I?” Calisto asked. “When you behave like an adult and are caught, you have adult consequences. Unfortunately for you, when you’re also the heir of a Cosa Nostra Don, and you behave like an adult would with the daughter of another Don, you get these kinds of consequences, Cross. You have to deal with them. I can’t help you.”
Cross didn’t have a response.
He figured Calisto didn’t want one.
Inside the restaurant, covered tables and chairs were piled high in one corner. The floor had been ripped up, and wires hung from the ceiling.
Cross followed behind Calisto, his edginess picking up with every step, until they came to an office toward the back of the business. Calisto knocked once, and the door opened up to expose a man Cross recognized.
Lucian Marcello.
There was something different about Lucian that made the man a little more intimidating than his brothers. Even with gray coloring the hair at his temples, or if a person was lucky enough to get a smile from him, the underboss still radiated coldness.
“Take a seat,” Lucian said, tipping a hand toward a chair in the middle of the room.
“I’d rather stand,” Cross replied.
Lucian sighed, and looked at Cross as though he was a small child testing his patience. “You will sit, or I will make you. You decide, young man.”
Calisto leaned against the far wall of the office, watching Cross with guarded eyes. “You heard him.”
What in the fuck is happening?
Lucian pointed to the hard metal chair once more.
Cross sat his ass down.
The Marcello underboss took a seat perched on the corner of a sheet-covered desk, and gave his attention to the gun he pulled from a holster inside his jacket. Lucian said nothing as he emptied the clip in the gun, counted the bullets, and placed them back in one by one.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
The man repeated the process over and over.
Again and again.
The sound seemed a little too loud for Cross, but he kept watching that gun, and those bullets. His years of mentoring under Wolf put him in that mindset every time a gun was brought out, and he was close enough to see it.
“Eyes on the table” didn’t just mean for him to keep his eyes on the table. It wasn’t always so literal. It meant he needed to keep an eye on anything that might move, threaten, or steal.
Simple as that.
The office door opened a few minutes later, making Cross jump in his seat. He found all of a sudden that he wasn’t the least bit surprised to see Catherine’s father walk in.
Dante moved across the room, grabbed the only other metal chair in the corner, and set it in front of Cross. Unlike his chair, Dante’s was turned around so the man could straddle it and set his arms over the back.
For a long while, Dante only sat there and stared at Cross.
Then, very quietly, he said, “Explain yourself.”
Cross cocked a brow. “Be specific.”
Dante’s jaw tightened in his irritation, and his green eyes flashed with an unspoken warning. “You have very little respect for better men, Cross. Let me explain this to you, so that you understand from here on out. When a better man demands something in this life, you jump through fire to give him what he wants.”
“Define better,” Cross said.
That was a bad idea.
He knew it was a bad idea.
He was just too arrogant for his own good.
Dante dropped a hand from the chair and put his palm up at his side. “Lucian.”
That goddamn gun was handed over wordlessly. Dante replaced his arm, now with a gun in hand, onto the back of the chair. He held it just so, making sure that Cross was forced to stare straight down the barrel, even if the weapon was tilted a bit to the side.
“One more time,” Dante said. “Explain.”
“Again, be specific.”
“Calisto should genuinely worry for your life, Cross. You’re too rude, too insolent, and that’ll never make a good made man.”
“But it will make a dead one,” Lucian said quietly from the desk.
Calisto cleared his throat from his position against the wall, but no one seemed to pay him any mind.
Cross didn’t take his gaze off the gun, or Dante right behind it. “If you want me to explain what happened on Friday, I don’t think I need to. The school made a nice little slideshow with videos and all, Dante.”
“Don,” Dante corrected coldly, “or boss.”
“Not mine,” Cross replied.
“Cross,” Calisto warned.
He was supposed to keep quiet.
Or do what he was told.
Clearly, he was messing that up, too.
“No,” Dante said, leaning forward just enough to tilt the gun straight, “I want you to explain to me what you would say to ever justify putting my daughter in the kind of position you did. You see, you’re selfish, Cross, like most boys your age. I expect that, to an extent, but what I demand will always be respect. Especially for my daughter.”
Wait, what?
He hadn’t put Catherine in any sort of position. He wouldn’t blame her, either, because they both screwed up doing what they did, but it wasn’t all him.
Still, Cross kept his expression blank. He wasn’t about to get Catherine in trouble, not in any more than she probably already was.
He’d take the shit for this.
Whatever.
“You don’t think with the head up here,” Dante said, tapping Cross’s forehead with the tip of the gun’s barrel. Then, he clicked off the safety and pulled back the nine-millimeter’s hammer, before pointing it downward at Cross’s groin. “No, you’re too busy thinking with the smaller head down there because that’s easy gratification.”
Cross should have been nervous about the gun.
Anyone else would have been.
He just stayed still.
Dante stood from the chair, and pushed it aside. His gun stayed firmly pointed downward, an accurate shot straight into Cross’s groin should the man pull the trigger.
Then he did pull the trigger.
Cross didn’t flinch.
He didn’t jump in his seat.
The gun clicked.
Empty.
He’d been watching Lucian toy with those bullets and the clip. He knew the damn thing was empty, but the idea of a weapon was enough to make a person nervous.
Cross stared straight ahead, unbothered. “Are we done?”
“You better hope we never have to revisit this conversation, Cross, or one even marginally like it.” Dante dropped the gun in Cross’s lap. “If you ever put my daughter in a positon like that again, this will end far differently for you. Frankly, we shouldn’t have to worry about this again anyway because you’re going to keep your distance from Catherine from here on out.”
Nope.
But for the sake of getting out of that damn room, Cross agreed.
“All right.”
“All right, what?” Dante barked.
Cross stood from the chair, looked Dante in the eye, and smirked. “All right, nothing.”
“Catherine, wait up!”
Cross’s holler seemed to go completely unheard by Catherine, but he knew that wasn’t the case. Even as she slipped into her next class for the day, he caught the sight of her peeking over her shoulder at him with tired eyes.
Sad eyes.
Apparently, Cross was not going to need to be the one to keep a distance from Catherine at all. He didn’t need to do anything. She was doing it for them.
May melted into June, and it all lead him to the same place. A shit place. Catherine was avoiding him, both at school, and through her phone. The more she avoided, the more pissed he got about it.
He suspected it wasn’t entirely her fault.
It still hurt him.
A lot.
“Fuck,” he muttered, punching the closest thing to him.
A cinderblock wall.
His knuckles split and ached, but Cross barely felt it at all. He wasn’t one to make a show of himself, but too many pairs of eyes darted in his direction at his actions.
Cross didn’t bother to hide his glare he leveled on the other Academy students as he headed back down the hall. Screw classes.
He wasn’t here for this shit.
He just wanted to talk to Catherine.
Cross skipped his next two classes. He ignored his buzzing phone because the school had likely called Calisto to let them know he hadn’t shown up to his third and fourth period. He didn’t bother to pick up the call.
He was already being kept from the only thing that really mattered to him anyway. There wasn’t anything else anyone could do to him that was going to make a damn difference now.
Cross leaned in the doorway of an empty class. His position was just far enough in that people didn’t seem to notice him as they walked by, or at least not until they were already right in front of him. He waited until the one person he knew would be walking by that spot for her last class, and grabbed her arm the very second he saw her.
Catherine’s quiet gasp echoed in the empty classroom when Cross yanked her inside. He kicked the door closed behind them.
For a long while, she only stared at him, saying nothing.
Cross didn’t make her talk.
Finally, she said, “I’m sorry.”
Her voice was tired, and her words, weak.
Like it hurt to say it, but she had to.
And he knew.
Right then, he knew.
She was going to do it to him again. She was going to break his heart again. Maybe it was for the same reasons as the first time, or maybe it wasn’t.
He didn’t know that.
He only knew this.
“You’re avoiding me,” Cross said.
Catherine nodded, not even bothering to deny his accusation. “We’re supposed to keep a distance; school rules.”
“Fuck the school. And you’ve got a phone, too. You don’t know how to pick it up anymore?”
She glanced away. “Do you ever feel like maybe we went too fast here?”
“What?”
No.
“Because I do,” she continued in a whisper, “sometimes, Cross. I feel like a stupid girl, doing stupid things. I don’t want to be that person at all.”
“You’re not.”
“I am,” she countered, “with you.”
“Catty.”
Catherine shrugged, and readjusted her messenger bag on her shoulder. “My dad said that he didn’t know who I was, and I really don’t, either. That hurt, like in my chest, it hurt. I really messed up here, Cross, and I don’t want to keep doing that.”
“Yeah, okay,” he said, still unsure in his heart and cold in his fingertips. “This is about your parents?”
“Not all. I need to take a step back, figure me out without …” Catherine waved between them, saying, “All of this craziness. I don’t want to be a stupid girl that does stupid things just because she loves someone.”
“You do stupid things because you want to, Catherine.”
If he went along with her ride, or she went along with his, that was just a byproduct.
“Maybe. Can we do that, Cross? Step back, slow down … be friends?”
Catherine wasn’t a good liar. Cross had found she had tells when she lied just like anybody else. This was about her parents, at least to some degree. Or her father, more likely. Maybe she wanted to be some kind of perfect daughter, but that shit just wasn’t possible.
She couldn’t be perfect for them.
She loved him a little too much, despite what was happening. He knew she loved him; that was why her hands were clenched so tight around her bag strap. Her knuckles were white. She thought she was hiding her trembling fingers, but he could still see them. She loved him enough not to look him in the eye while she screwed them over because she thought she could hide the tears.
Catherine was wrong.
She couldn’t be perfect.
She wasn’t meant to be.
And she had always been a bit too sly when no one was looking.
Catherine had to figure that shit out on her own, though. Cross couldn’t be the one to show her things she wasn’t ready to see about herself.
But if it was what she wanted, who was he to say anything?
Nobody.
No one at all.
“Whatever you need,” he heard himself say.
Catherine nodded, a false, small smile curving her lips. He reached out to bring her in for a hug, a kiss, or anything, but she pulled away.
Cross learned something then.
Really learned something.
He didn’t feel true pain until Catherine pulled away. It wasn’t real to him until she made it that way, and not with words.
He’d taken punches, broke bones, and ached. He’d fought bare-knuckled until his hands were bloody ribbons, got concussed on a football field more times than he knew was safe, and pushed limits he didn’t even know his body had until he found them.
He knew pain.
This was not the same.
It was a deep, unsettling pain that started from somewhere in his chest and radiated outward. It was in his mind, too, and in his soul. Stripping out veins and ripping through sinew. It was a pain he felt once before; a pain she had caused then, too.
Although then, it had been lesser, he thought. He had not understood why, or how, but it got easier to breathe. Maybe because he was younger, stupider, and found easy distractions all around him to make it better. Maybe because he didn’t understand.
He didn’t understand love, even if that was what he had felt.
First love was the worst.
He knew that now, too.
First love was poison.
It infected like a disease, and spread like a wild fire. It was something he couldn’t seem to get rid of with her. He couldn’t get rid of this way he felt, even when she was breaking his fucking heart all over again. It pushed wide open like an ocean, and pulled back in like a tide ready to drag and drown.
First love was pretty and dangerous.
First love made it hard to let go.
Cross kissed the crown of Catherine’s head, and then his lips ghosted over her hairline, and to her forehead. Soft and easy, slow and gentle. But he still let her pull away when he was done.
Even though it hurt.
Even though it killed.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she whispered.
He shrugged.
That was easy, too, right?
“I just need to figure some—”
“It’s all right, Catty.”
Except it wasn’t.
Not at all.
Cross used his thumb to wipe the tears sneaking from the corners of Catherine’s green eyes. He didn’t need to ask then if she understood what she was doing to him—again—because he could see all too damn well she was doing it to herself, too.
He didn’t know if that made it better or worse.
“Friends,” he said, his voice a rough murmur. “That’s what you said, right?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
He couldn’t just be friends with Catherine Marcello. He didn’t know how to be just anything with a girl he was pretty sure he had loved since she was thirteen. A girl who watched him with pretty eyes, and he smiled with a bloody mouth. He didn’t know how to be just anything with her, but he didn’t have a choice.
He hooked his pinky finger around hers, holding tight.
“Friends, then,” he said.
“Friends,” she echoed.
Cross’s fingers circled tight around Catherine’s wrist for a quick second, and his thumb rolled over her pulse point to feel her heartbeat. It raced.
Like his, too.
“You need anything, you know where I am, Catherine. I’ll always have your back, no matter what. For anything, all right?”
“Yeah, Cross.”
One more kiss to her forehead, and he wiped the last tear on the tips of her eyelashes away, before saying, “You know I love you.”
“Promise?”
It was torture.
Brutal.
Unforgiving.
He fucking hated first love.
But he didn’t hate it, too.
He couldn’t hate her at all.
Even when she was breaking his heart.
Promise?
“Always, Catherine.”
Cross did well, or as well as he was able to manage. He lasted one week, and then two. He made his way through final June exams, and barely blinked the whole while.
But he felt dead.
Or maybe he was still dying inside.
He wasn’t sure.
He wasn’t sure how he did any of it at all; getting his ass to school, keeping calm while he wanted to rage, and seeing Catherine every day.
Maybe he was trying to prove to himself that he could do exactly what she asked for. They could be friends, and nothing else. It didn’t have to be a lie if he told it well and believed it.
It still was.
Cross still made it those two weeks, though, despite how the pressure continued to grow all through him. Like swirling clouds, the most dangerous part, the funnel, felt as though it was ready to finally touch down and make a tornado with him as the eye.
It started with a slammed door, and then another. His sister, likely. He really just wanted quiet in his mind, but that was getting to be damn hard. His irritation picked up again, but he ignored it. He knew through experience that brushing off his anger, instead of feeding it or doing something to end it, would only lead to something bad.
The problem was not anyone else’s fault but his own. How could they know, that he had been hiding anger until it turned into rage, and pain until it turned into agony? And now, instead of bleeding it out slowly, it was going to explode.
They didn’t know anything because he didn’t tell. Instead, he stayed hidden in his room because there he didn’t have to talk. Or he chilled in the library; he could play music on the piano or guitar until his fingers bled, and drowned out someone else’s attempt at conversation at the same time.
His parents and sister probably thought he was fine. So he was a little quiet, and he stayed hidden away a lot. He already did that, anyway. He was busy with the end of year, and that could excuse his lack of leaving like he normally would, too. Even Wolf had laid off the mentoring because he wanted Cross to study.
Nothing out of the ordinary.
Cross’s anger and irritation grew until it spilled over. “Stop slamming those goddamn doors, Camilla! You’re going to take one off its fucking hinges, Christ. Do it again, and I’ll rip the stupid thing off for you.”
“Cross!”
His step-father’s bellow from the downstairs floor filtered up from the stairwell. He heard a similar warning float from the upper level down to him, too. They all sounded the same at the moment; he didn’t want to hear any of it.
“What did you just say to me?” Camilla asked, coming out of her room from down the hall.
She was mouthier and louder and bitchier now that she was thirteen, almost fourteen. She didn’t take very much shit from him, or anybody else.
“I said, stop slamming your damn doors,” Cross repeated. “Get it this time?”
“Fuck you,” his sister said over her shoulder.
It was so flippant, so uncaring, and laughable.
Goddamn hilarious.
Any other time, and Cross would have laughed it off just to piss his sister off more. But he didn’t. What he wanted to do kind of scared the shit out of him. He wanted to put his fist through her door, and be done with it.
Yeah, damn.
He needed to go.
He needed to get the hell out of here.
Today. Now. Yesterday.
Cross should have already been gone because that was just his nature. He fucked off when he needed to reset or recharge, and he shouldn’t have thought he could do this differently.
“Cross, what are you doing?” Calisto asked from the bedroom door.
He didn’t answer; he just tossed jeans and shirts into a bag. A couple days’ worth, and a hoodie, too. The handgun from between his mattress and box spring went into the bag, too.
“I need to get out of here,” Cross said.
“You’ve got—”
Cross pushed past his step-father in the doorway, acting as though he didn’t hear his shout behind him. His Doc Martens beat against hardwood as he took the stairs three at a time. Like a bat out of hell, he just needed to get the hell out.
“What in the hell just happened upstairs?” Calisto demanded.
Cross didn’t stop or slow.
He didn’t speak.
“Cross!”
“What’s wrong?” he heard his mother call down.
Cross was already heading for the front door, and grabbing his vehicle keys out of the glass bowl on the shelf as he passed it by.
“Just give me a second, Emma,” Calisto called back.
Shit, Cross wanted to be what his parents needed, and what they kept hoping for. He wanted to be able to show he listened when his step-father spoke, even if Calisto didn’t think so all that much. He wanted to settle. He wanted the balance his step-father talked about.
He couldn’t be those things or what they needed. He couldn’t because he didn’t have it. He never had.
He was restless, unsteady, unsettled, and bored far too often. He was difficult, different, tired, and here. Always here, or there, or somewhere. He had to go, go, go, and move. He had an edginess in his blood, pumping from his heart, because relaxing only came easy when it came with someone he no longer had. He was dumb to think this would be different.
Cross didn’t know how to explain that, though. It was easier to just go because that was what felt good. Wild, they called him. They had said that since he was little. They were right, but they were wrong, too. He couldn’t be settled, or balanced, or anything else when he had never really been those things to begin with.
“Cross,” his step-father shouted out the front door. “Wait a minute, son.”
He was already slamming the driver’s door of his Rover, and lighting the ignition.
What the fuck was he supposed to say?
Shit happened.
It’s messed up.
I don’t want to feel like this.
Being friends is a lie.
None of those explained anything well enough, Cross knew. Not without more words, and more time being spent trying to just breathe.
He couldn’t do that.
Calisto’s hands wrapped around the rolled down window, and his knuckles turned white from the pressure. “Cross, talk to me.”
“I’m going to head to Zeke’s for a couple of days.”
There, he let them know.
They didn’t need to worry.
He told them.
“Exams—”
“Finished the last one today,” he interrupted.
Maybe he should have expected this, and not let it surprise him so damn much. It had been looming anyway, this spiral he was currently in.
“Cross.”
Cross bet his step-father could see it in his eyes, if only because what he felt was reflected back in familiar dark irises. Pain and sadness and insecurity. Weakness he didn’t want shown to someone else; a wound he needed to staunch before it bled just a little too much. Calisto could see it. They shared the same eyes, after all. Soul-black and way too deep. He hid nothing there. He didn’t know how to.
And he had already been hiding it for two long weeks.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Cross muttered, putting the Rover into reverse.
“You’re not fine.”
“I am.”
“Son—”
“She keeps breaking my fucking heart,” he uttered, wishing it came out lower than it did. Instead, his voice was broken and hoarse, but clear and aching. “Okay, she keeps doing that, so fuck it.”
Calisto let go of the window.
Cross made sure his tires smoked on the way out of the drive.