Chapter Seven
Mia
Last night was pure torture.
I mean, it was incredible in one sense. It was unbelievably kind and incomprehensibly cruel to give me that little peek of what it would be like to love Mateo—to be free to love Mateo. To sleep in his arms, my face on his chest, moving with the rise and fall of his breathing.
Unfortunately, it just made me heartsick.
I didn’t have my textbooks or notes for class. I took a notebook with me when I left the bakery to jot stuff down and transfer over into my notebook when I returned home, but I’ve been dreading that all day, too.
Vince hasn’t spoken to me since Adrian made him leave after dinner. I was half-afraid Adrian was only saying he was going to take him out to the car and he’d actually kill him, realizing he’d fucked up by sparing him the first time. Right the wrong. Mateo wouldn’t need much of an explanation at this point. I think he’d care less if Adrian killed Vince than he cared about Joey, and he didn’t seem to care at all when Joey died.
Poor Joey.
But also stupid fucking Joey. He should’ve never gone along with such a ridiculous plan. If Vince would’ve succeeded, I would’ve wanted to kill him myself.
Last night scared me. Seeing Vince at Mateo’s seat at the table. I’m getting really worried about Vince.
So, after a long day, I decide I need to take my mind off things. Vince is working and I’m home alone, dreading him getting here. I get out a bottle of wine and decide to indulge my sadness tonight.
Meg is working at the bakery in the morning, I have no classes, and I have this beautiful, tempting bottle of wine. What have I got to lose?
I’m so glad Vince isn’t home.
He can’t stand when I get like this. It happens sometimes, even when he’s around. I get lost in it. My thoughts turn to Mateo, to Meg, to all I’ve bet, to all I’ve lost. I’m in so deep. The house owns my ass. None of my bets have been worth a damn.
I’m so goddamn in love with my best friend’s fiancé that sometimes I just need to sink into it. It doesn’t help that he’s him. That he feels it, exploits it for his own amusement. It’s a game to him. He has a partner at home that he’s happy with. Someone to call his, someone to curl up beside, someone to fuck each night when he’s not thinking of me. He can toy with me at no cost, and I eat it up, because I’m that far gone.
Laugh-sobbing, I recline on the couch he bought us, in the house I bought with one fucking night of sex that wasn’t worth it.
Not the sex. That was good. I think about that more than I should.
The house wasn’t worth it. Vince wasn’t worth it.
I thought we could build something beautiful, if Mateo would just get out of the way.
I should’ve known. As easily as he played me, as dynamic as he is, I should’ve known Mateo would never be out of the way.
Maybe he would’ve, for a lot longer. But then Meg happened.
And she only happened because I made this fucking choice. Because I thought I could build with Vince, so I left Mateo lonely. I bailed us out, bought us freedom, bought us a chance…
But it was all a lie. I didn’t buy my own freedom; I bought my own personal hell. I just left him open to someone who’s wonderful, who makes him happy, and I love her, and…
And what do I have?
I have this bottle of wine.
“More,” I tell the bottle, like it hears me. “I need more of you.”
My mind tells me this is false, that I do not need more. What I need is to stop drinking wine by myself in my living room like a loser. To stop making myself sad. To go do my goddamn homework, or finish folding the towels. It would be kind of funny to write my term paper completely fucking wasted.
But I don’t. I pour more wine. I wallow a bit more. I miss Mateo.
I think of how it felt to be in his arms at Francesca’s wedding. To be curled up beside him in bed last night. There’s nothing quite like being the center of Mateo Morelli’s attention. It’s always fleeting, and I try to convince myself that’s why he gets to me like this. Because I can’t hold him. I never would’ve been able to. I’m not Meg. Maybe she can harness him, maybe she can hold his interest, but I’m just not her. Even if she had never come along, would I have been able to keep his interest? Probably not. I’m honest enough (or maybe just not drunk enough) to still admit that.
When he smiles at you, it feels like the greatest thing you’ll ever accomplish, to just entertain this man. This overwhelming, larger-than-life, hurricane of a human being.
He’s not even good, and I don’t even care. I don’t care if he’s bad. I’m past caring. I did once. I think. I don’t know when I got this lost.
The wine doesn’t help.
Logically I know tomorrow I’ll be sober, and I’ll be able to function, and I’ll be able to see him again without feeding the unrelenting ache inside of me… but tonight, I will miss him. Tonight, I will be sad.
The front door opens.
My head falls back, a blatant sigh of disappointment escaping me. Vince was supposed to be gone longer. He said he’d be home late.
I grab my phone, checking the time. I expect to see he came home way early, but apparently I’ve been drinking longer than I realized and it’s after midnight.
Vince hangs his keys up on the key rack he hung on the wall when we first moved in, back when we still had hopes and dreams about each other.
I laugh. It’s a bitter laugh, and I need more wine. To my horror, the bottle is empty.
Vince apparently isn’t as drunk as I am. He’s still a little drunk. I don’t know who he drinks with now, because he misses Joey and he sure wasn’t at the mansion, but he’s been drinking. Who knows, maybe he’s found some other stupid girl to fuck. Maybe he drinks with her.
That makes me angry. It shouldn’t make me angry. If I want Mateo, I don’t have any right to still be territorial over Vince, but I’m with Vince, and I’m not fucking Mateo, no matter what Vince thinks. No matter what Adrian thinks. No matter what anyone thinks. I don’t get either of them, that’s the hilarious thing. I’ve had both at different points, and I gave up any chance at Mateo for Vince… and now I don’t even have him. Because the asshole had to go and try to kill Mateo, and I can’t forgive him.
Which I guess works out, because he can’t forgive me for fucking Mateo. He can’t even forgive me for being raped by Mateo, and how the fuck does that even require forgiveness? But it does with him. Because it’s Mateo. And I could get past that, I think, if I loved Vince.
But I’ve realized I don’t.
I mean, I do.
But not the way he loves me.
Not the way I love Mateo.
Not in the way that I want to wake up next to him. That I would sell my soul—and I would have to sell my soul, because there’s no way anyone could be with Mateo without doing that first—to have a life with him. I don’t even know when that happened.
Well, Meg.
A life with Mateo seemed daunting. Exhilarating, probably, but fucking terrifying. How do you build a life with a natural disaster?
But Meg seems to have found a way.
And she lets me have a taste sometimes, because she’s the best friend in the whole world. I know she realizes I have feelings for him that a woman should not have for her best friend’s fiancé and baby daddy, and instead of being mean and jealous, like I would, she lets me come over more, she lets me spend time with him, she lets me spend the night, she lets us have friendship, at least.
I’d take anything with him.
Anything that didn’t hurt her, anyway.
I may be desperately in love, but I’m not a monster.
Vince probably thinks I am.
But I think he is.
Because he tried to kill Mateo.
And I’ll never forgive him for that. Not ever.
But I have to stay. I don’t think he still loves me, but he still wants me, and it’s the only way I know to make sure he doesn’t do something drastic. Vince has made it clear to me since we met that he doesn’t fear death. Adrian’s wrath isn’t enough to keep him from killing Mateo.
He has to keep me.
So I’ll stay.
I’d walk through the underworld to protect Mateo.
I don’t know why.
“Are you drinking again?” Vince asks, kicking his shoes off.
I laugh. It isn’t funny, but I’m wasted in more ways than one. “Yes. Wine makes me happy.”
“Yeah, you look real happy.” He drops onto the couch next to me. I don’t want him to be that close, so I scoot into a sitting position, moving away from him.
Of course he notices.
“Really?” He glances over at me, almost smiling.
Yeah, he’s definitely been drinking.
“You’re gonna move away from me?” he demands.
I don’t even answer. It would start a fight, and I don’t feel like fighting. I feel like wallowing.
Only he’s apparently feeling ornery. He’s not aggressive; his tone is even, but he asks, “So you’re just going to ignore me?”
“Stop being so needy, Vince.”
He laughs. “Needy. Right.” He catches my ankle, tugging me down the couch, onto my back.
There’s something wrong with me, because I don’t want him, but it makes me excited.
He climbs on top of me and I smile up at him, thrusting my hips. “You want to fuck me, Vince?”
“You know I do,” he says, almost like it aggravates him. I get it. It aggravates me, too.
Since he’s more full of resentment than desire, as he unbuckles his belt and unzips his jeans, he tells me, “Don’t worry. You can pretend I’m him.”
I reach for his now-free cock, stroking his aroused length as I tell him, “Don’t worry. I will.”
This pisses him off, which is what I want. He pushes my arms above my head with one hand, yanking my panties down with the other. “You really piss me off, you know that?”
As he pushes his cock inside me, I groan and close my eyes. “I don’t care.”
He tries to make me care, but he can’t. He can’t reach me, and that pisses him off more than anything.
He can get inside me, but he can’t reach me.
Not like Mateo can.
---
As the sun streams in through the window, a bright, unavoidable sign that it’s morning, I brace myself for the fallout of last night. Not the empty wine bottle that I’m pretty sure we left in the middle of the floor. Not the unoffending stack of laundry I had been working on folding before I had too much wine and got lost (luckily just towels, so it won’t matter that they’re wrinkled to shit now).
I can smell food cooking. No one else lives here, so that means Vince is making breakfast.
Which kind of surprises me, because he usually only makes breakfast when we’re having a good day.
That’s the frustrating part. Last night obviously was not one, but there are good days. Before I learned what he tried to do to Mateo, we had a lot of good days.
Vince tries. I know he tries. Sometimes I wonder if it’s just me, or the combination of us. I’m not completely sure what about us doesn’t work, but there’s clearly something. Our once-salvageable relationship is snowballing hard and fast into an unapologetically dysfunctional one.
Even now, somehow, I tell myself it could probably be saved. But it won’t be, because I’ve figured out what it will require of one us. One of us would have to step up and do the hard thing. The selfless thing.
The thing I would do for Mateo, but I won’t do for him.
I am a terrible person.
I don’t know why Vince doesn’t leave me. I know why I don’t leave him, but I’ll be damned if I know why he keeps wanting me.
I drag myself out of bed and down the hall to the bathroom. I look like hell. The sex got really rough and my hair is a complete disaster this morning. Dried clumpy mascara shadows hang underneath my eyes. Washing my face isn’t going to suffice; I need a shower.
And maybe an exorcism.
I shower fast and put on a bathrobe instead of clothes. My mouth is so dry. My stomach is feeling shifty as hell, too. Every step I take, it feels like a vat of alcohol shifts from side to side in my gut. This is not going to be a fun morning.
Vince is at the breakfast bar with a plate of food. His phone is on the countertop and he’s scrolling through a text message. He glances up when I enter the room, and somehow he still manages to meet my gaze. I wasn’t sure we’d be able to look at each other this morning. We got mean last night. Months and months of pent up anger and resentment came pouring out of each of us.
“Good morning,” Vince says, almost gently.
Testing the waters, probably. He got meaner than I did, and I was pretty fucking mean.
“Good morning,” I murmur, averting my gaze and tugging my robe together a little more snugly. I turn my back to him, moving to the counter. I grab a plate from the cupboard and dish out the rest of the eggs. “Thank you for making breakfast,” I add.
Instead of you’re welcome, he says, “I’m sorry about last night.”
Thinking about rehashing any part of last night literally makes me shudder. “I know. Me too.”
“We were really awful to each other.”
“I remember.”
“I don’t want us to be awful to each other,” he states. “I made you cry.”
I wince. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter, Mia. I love you. I hate this.”
I nod my agreement, but I don’t say it back. I do love Vince, but it’s not healthy anymore. It’s not what it started out as. I don’t even know if it’s real, or just a remnant of what I once felt. Maybe it’s obligation and I just call it love.
“We didn’t mean all those things we said to each other, right?” he asks.
Since my back is still to him, I allow a cynical little smile to play around my lips. Reaching into the silverware drawer for a fork, I lie. “Of course we didn’t.”
“I think something needs to change,” he tells me.
“Like what?” I ask. I’m not trying to be mean this time, just realistic. “What could possibly fix this, Vince?”
It seems like he’s been thinking about this, but he doesn’t look forward to saying it. “I think we should try to stay away from the mansion. From him. I think we should go back to strictly Sunday dinners. That worked well for us before.”
I shake my head, still feeling a little foggy from all the alcohol last night. Maybe that’s why I tell him, “That wouldn’t work, Vince.”
“It might,” he says.
“It won’t. I don’t feel like I felt then.”
He pauses, absorbing this. “For him or for me?”
“Both,” I say honestly. “I know I’m a terrible partner. I know that. I’m even sorry for it. But there’s nothing I can do.”
“Nothing you will do, you mean,” he corrects, aggravated.
“I don’t even know the difference anymore,” I state. “You want my honesty, Vince, I’ll give you honesty. But you won’t like it.”
“Why?” he asks. “Why can’t you just….” He trails off, unsure how to finish. “Why can’t you just focus on me? Why do you need him?”
I shake my head, wishing I knew how to explain. I wish there was some logical explanation, some way I could make Vince understand how Mateo makes me feel. “I can’t explain it,” I finally say.
“He was never good to you. He played you. Even now, he just toys with you. You’re a game to him, Mia. I actually love you. You just amuse him. You’re like a fucking video game that rides his dick.”
I laugh, shaking my head. He might not even be wrong. I wouldn’t describe it that way, but I know I’m mostly a game to Mateo. I’m not his partner. I’m not the person he chose. The person he made a baby with. I have no idea what I am to him. I know what I want to be, but they’re not the same thing.
“I wish you had my back the way you have his,” Vince states.
I can’t help scoffing. “I’ve had your back, Vince. I have. I tried. But you take it too far. You’re too intense.”
“I’m too intense? Are you fucking kidding me? You’re obsessed with Mateo, and I’m too intense?”
“He’s logical. He doesn’t get as angry as you do. He’s territorial, sure, but he’s not like you. You get mean. You get bitter. You feel more, react more. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but it’s harder. You punish me. Mateo’s never punished me for my feelings. Every time I’ve been with him, he knows I’m fucking you, too. He’s never mean about it.”
“Because he doesn’t. Fucking. Care.” Vince states. “He loves Meg, not you. You’re his side dish. You’re the novelty, the place he goes when he’s bored. When he doesn’t want to be gentle with the woman he actually loves, he knows you’re waiting in the wings to be treated like his whore.”
“Okay,” I say, shaking my head. I’m not hungry anymore. He’s pissing me off. “Let’s go back to ignoring. Let’s go back to lying. I can’t talk to you about him.”
“I want him out of our lives,” Vince states, coming up behind me. I do feel him this time, because I feel his anger. It’s not like when I feel Mateo. It’s not power.
Turning to face him, because he needs to see my face, I reach out and caress his jaw. It isn’t tender. It’s almost mean, for the lack of emotion behind it as I tell him, “That will never happen.”
He grasps my wrist in his hand, glaring at me. “He doesn’t love you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I shoot back. “You don’t either.”
This really pisses him off. “Fuck you, Mia.”
“This isn’t love, Vince,” I continue, shaking my head. “You have to know that. This is… this is poison. We’re poisoning each other.”
“What would you suggest we do instead?” he asks.
“Move on?” It makes my stomach hurt, saying it out loud. I don’t know what happens to me if we break up. I don’t know how I stay a part of Mateo’s life in that scenario, but from the rare interactions we’ve had alone, I think maybe he’d keep me around somehow. I hope he would. I’d miss him more than I’d miss Vince. I don’t know how I would even function in the normal world anymore, and it hasn’t even been a year. I don’t know how anyone moves on from this family. They pull you under, wash over you until you’re gasping for breath, trying to keep your head above the crushing weight of them. But you can’t. They swallow you whole. There’s no emerging. There’s no light at the end of the tunnel.
But I don’t want light. I want Mateo. I want his darkness. I want his goodness. I want every crevice of him.
But I have Vince.
Vince is still holding my wrist, and now he pushes me back against the counter, reminding me of when we first met. It’s hysterical that this is what reminds me of when he met me, but it is. It seems like a lifetime ago now, for both of us. We’ve both changed so much. Experienced so much. I was intrigued by him back then. Afraid, but intrigued. I saw sadness in him then, and I wanted to be his solace.
I don’t anymore.
I’m just here.
“I slept in his bed last night.”
Vince’s brown eyes widen, like he can’t believe I’d say that.
I can’t either. My heart races with the danger of it. Pushing Vince. It’s mean and it’s dangerous, because Vince isn’t methodical like Mateo; he’s a loose cannon.
“Curled up against him,” I add. “My head on his naked chest. His arm around me—”
For the first time since everything first happened with Mateo, I think Vince might hit me. He doesn’t. But he pushes me so hard against the counter, it hurts. He fists his hand in my hair, yanking my head back.
Then he pushes me to the floor.
I go down on my knees, and he takes his cock out. There’s not much room between his legs and the cupboards behind me, but he strokes himself, glaring down at me.
He fists his hand in my hair again, guiding my mouth to his cock, and tells me, “You’re mine, Mia. Not his. Don’t forget your fucking place.”