Page 58 of Contempt

“Not sure.”

“Why is that?”

“I hurt all the time. I don’t want to hurt more because I let you come in tonight.”

There.

She said it.

Renzo could make of that what he wanted.

He leaned against the doorjamb, and hooked one combat boot over the other as he looked her over. He was bad for her senses, she decided. Bad for her heart, and the rest of her, too. He made her stomach do flipflops, and her blood rushed through her veins. There was nothing else like Renzo Zulla that could get her heartrate picking up as fast as he did.

It was crazy.

“How about I talk, then, and you can decide what you want to do,” he said.

Lucia wet her lips, and glanced past him to the empty hallway. “Here like this?”

“You make the calls. It’s all about you.”

Yeah, she wished.

Unfortunately, very little was ever about her. He was also in the equation here. She didn’t for one second think he had come just for her. He came because he wanted to, and so yeah, here he was.

“How did you know where I was staying?” Lucia asked.

“Your father, actually.”

Lucia stiffened. “What?”

“Your dad let me know. Dropped me off, if I’m being honest.”

What?

She was starting to feel like a fucking parrot that repeated everything because she couldn’t make sense of it, and saying it out loud was the only thing she knew how to do instead. But that didn’t make sense.

Her dad?

Since when did Lucian care about letting Renzo within breathing distance of Lucia? Never, that’s when.

Renzo laughed like he could read her mind. “Yeah, that’s probably how I looked when I figured it out, too.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing,” he said, waving a hand. “Anyway, can I talk and then you can decide where we go from there?”

Well, what choice did she have? Sure, she could say no, but that didn’t mean she wanted to. In fact, that was the exact opposite from what she wanted. She had questions—Renzo was the only person with the right answers. If he wasn’t the one to tell her, then how was she ever going to know? How was she ever going to get rid of this constant, heavy feeling in her heart that never seemed to leave her alone?

She wouldn’t.

Not without him to help.

“Talk,” Lucia said.

Renzo cleared his throat, and that gaze of his darted back up to meet hers. In a second, she was silenced. All it took was his eyes on her—pinning her in place and making her feel like the only thing in his world—for her to be thrust back five years to a better time when all of this shit hadn’t happened, and she hadn’t been alone without him for far too long.

Back when they had been different people.