My head snapped around as my eyes opened, his head jerked back at my movement and his hand at the back of my neck instantly moved to wrap around its side.
“You see that as a kid, you live it, you’re powerless to stop it, it marks you. You got two choices, you keep that shit alive by givin’ in and perpetrating it on your family or you vow it’ll end with him. My brother and me, we vowed it’d end with him and that’s where it ended, Kia. We got older, taller, bigger, that shit stopped and you want, I’ll tell you how me and Ben made it stop but it was us who made it stop. I haven’t seen my Dad in nineteen years and this is because, he knows I see his face, he won’t be conscious long enough to blink at me. You get where I’m comin’ from with this?”
Stunned speechless at his open, raw sharing, I nodded.
He watched me nod. Then his eyes moved over my face. Then they changed, filling with something that made my body tense so tight, I thought tendons would snap but he didn’t seem to notice as the flame that lit in his eyes quickly built to an inferno.
And I would know why when he spoke again.
“Cheated on you and beat you.”
Oh God.
“Sam –”
“You, fuckin’ you. Look at you. What the fuck?”
I pressed my lips together.
He wasn’t done.
“Any woman but fuck, fuck,” he clipped. “You. You. Takin’ a hand to you would be like takin’ a razorblade to La Scapigliata.”
His last two words jolted me out of our current drama and I blinked then whispered, “What?”
“What?” he shot back, still pissed, definitely, and thus not following me.
“La Scapila-what?”
He stared at me.
Then he repeated, “La Scapigliata,”
I felt my brows draw together. “What’s that?”
“La Scapigliata?”
“Yeah.”
“La Scapigliata. The Head of a Woman. The Lady with Disheveled Hair. By da Vinci. It’s unfinished but it’s still a masterpiece. It’s in Parma. I’ve viewed it twice and it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
My mouth dropped open and this wasn’t only because Sampson Cooper, ex-pro football star, ex-dangerous commando and current big, tall, powerful hot guy would be talking about an unfinished masterpiece by da Vinci but because he’d compared me to the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
He looked at my mouth then he looked in my eyes then his arm and hand gave me a squeeze before he stated, “Now, I think she finally fuckin’ gets me.”
“Sam –” I whispered.
“I’d never hurt you, Kia.”
“Sam –” I tried again.
“Never, don’t give a shit what you said, what you did. I would not take a hand to you and I would not cut you down anyway I could, verbally or mentally.”
“Sam –” I tried yet again.
“I scared you just now, I get why but I didn’t mean to and I won’t ever do it again so I need to know you believe me.”
“I don’t.”
Yes. That was what I said. It came right out of my mouth and it caused a flash of something I didn’t like to see to score through Sam’s eyes.
“Baby,” he whispered.
“I barely know you,” I whispered back.
He held my eyes.
Then he muttered, “Four months.”
“Sorry?” I asked.
“You said he got whacked four months ago.”
“Yes,” I confirmed.
“You’re sellin’ your house, gettin’ a new place and off on vacation, sitting on balconies, drinking alone, tears in your eyes. It’s too early. You aren’t ready to believe me.”
You know, seriously, it was beginning to piss me off how often he figured me out.
So much so, I informed him of this fact.
“You know, Sam, it’s beginning to piss me off how you figure me out. How the heck am I supposed to be intriguing and mysterious if you keep figuring me out?”
Yes. Again. That’s was what I said.
And I knew I didn’t imagine my extreme idiocy when he suddenly burst out laughing, throwing his head back to do it then bending his neck so he could bury his face in my neck and finish doing it as his hand at my neck slid to become an arm tight around me.
“I can see that was amusing to you, the problem is, I wasn’t being funny.”
His head came up, his dark brown eyes still dancing with hilarity and his arms gave me a squeeze. “Intriguing and mysterious?”
“I’m chic and cosmopolitan. Women like that are always intriguing and mysterious.”
“Baby, I knew you all of two minutes when you told me your husband was murdered while doin’ your high school arch-nemesis. That’s intriguing, yeah, but it sure as fuck isn’t mysterious.”
He was right which was also annoying so I just glared at him.
“You also told me you knew me,” he reminded me.
“I do,” I again confirmed then went for the gusto because, what the heck, in my efforts to get him to back off, nothing else was working. “In fact, I borderline internet stalked you.”
I thought he would let me go instantly, repulsed by this news, or at the very least it would creep him out, but instead he started chuckling.
Chuckling!