He chuckled. “Ah, yes, I didn’t factor in how hard that would be for you two. For me, touching clients isn’t exactly normal procedure.”
Penn was in hearing distance, striding forward to join us. “I stopped being your client the moment you gave me a bed for the night.”
Larry grinned, relief coming off him in waves. “That’s true. And you became the son I never had when you agreed to come back to New York with me for my treatment. I know how hard that was for you.”
Penn flicked a quick glance at me. Hiding yet more things. Where had he been before Larry got sick? Did he hate New York because of the imprisonment or were there other factors, too?
Factors like me?
“Hello, Penn.” I tucked my hands behind my back, mainly to stop myself from reaching for him but also to hide the shakes at seeing him again. It was the strangest date I’d ever been on with a lawyer as our chaperone and the state prison as our restaurant of choice.
“Elle.” He crossed his arms, his biceps tight and arms ropy. Did he cross them for the same reason I kept mine behind my back? So he didn’t reach for me?
“Are you—are you okay?” I glanced around the room as Larry took a seat at a free table.
“Fine.” Penn motioned for me to sit too, pulling up a chair to face us. “You?”
“Good.” I grabbed my hair, twisting it into a rope over my shoulder like I always did when I was nervous. Penn’s gaze followed my hands, black hunger flashed with desire. His eyes stopped on the fading bruise on my face, his jaw clenching. “If he wasn’t already in lock-up, I’d punch him all over again for what he did to you.”
I had no reply.
Should I tell him I’d paid Greg a visit? That I’d been idiotic on his behalf? That I would never stop fighting for him?
The awkwardness between us reached an epic ten. My hands itched to grasp his. My lips ached to kiss away the pain of our last meeting and start anew.
Why couldn’t we touch? How would we delete this strange tension?
I couldn’t stop looking at him. His tussled hair, the thicker growth on his face. He hadn’t shaved, and for the first time, he looked like Nameless from three years ago. His lips were the full kissable ones framed by a dark beard. Half of his prettiness masked by stubble.
My heart growled with possession and apologies. I couldn’t stop reliving the awfulness of him walking down the stairs in police custody telling me he had no way to convince me he was who he said because he’d never told me his name.
How I could be so blind?
Tears tickled, welling from the constant pit I tried my best not to swim in. “Penn, I’m so sorry.”
He stiffened. His jaw worked as his eyes filled with emotion so deep and tangled, I’d need a century to learn everything there was to know about him.
“I know.” He lowered his face, his gaze hooded and dark. “Me, too. It’s me who should apologize for—”
“No.” I shook my head fiercely. “You have nothing to be sorry for. It’s all my fault.” A lonely tear escaped. “It’s my fault you were taken the first time and now history has repeated itself. It seems whenever you’re around me, I get you locked up.”
He chuckled, his chest rising and falling, begging me to touch it. To smooth away the remaining faded yellow and green of his bruises. To reassure myself that he was still eating and drinking and staying alive even while caged up.
How did I ever believe I could walk away from him? How did one truth delete so many lies and make everything seem inconsequential now he was back in my life?
Technically, Penn was a stranger.
Realistically, we had two lifetimes to reveal and compatibility to test.
But something intrinsic and basic linked us together, ignoring timelines and date-numbers. I’d wanted him from the first moment I met him. I wanted him now I knew the truth.
There was so much to say but how could we with so many people watching and listening?
I wanted to spill how many sleepless nights I’d had while searching for him. How my need to find him wedged a small splinter between my father and me. How I’d never looked at another man because a part of me still believed he was the one.
You can say all those things.
The other prisoners are here with their own families.
They wouldn’t listen to us when they had such a finite amount of time to listen to the people they loved.
I opened my mouth to blurt a billion things at once. To tell him just how desperate I was to fix everything I’d done wrong.
However, Larry saved me from tripping over myself with inappropriate nonsense. “I’m in the process of finding out when your hearing will be. I’ll get it fast tracked as quickly as I can.”
Penn nodded, keeping his thoughts about that hidden. “Thank you.”
“Anything you need? Anything you think will benefit me in overthrowing this?” Larry pulled out a legal pad, ready to take notes.
Penn snorted. “Apart from getting Arnold Twig on the stand and interrogating him with hard evidence of his tampering with my life? Nope.” He leaned back in the chair. “Talk to Gio. See if he’s had enough and is ready to throw Sean under the bus. He was coming around to the idea the last time I visited him. He agrees it’s fucking stupid to serve time for a crime that he only did on Sean’s encouragement.”
That reminds me.
Talking about Gio poked awake all my questions, making them buzz like angry bees. “Why do you have Gio’s license in your safety deposit box?” The sentence splattered against the table with an offending command.
I hadn’t meant to say it with no lead in or kind words.
Whoops.
Penn stilled, his eyes narrowing on mine. “You went through the box?”
I jumped, lies sprang to spill.
No, of course not.
I would never.
But I was sick of lies.
Truth only from now on. “Yes.” I took ownership. “Every piece.”
His lips ghosted a smile. “And?”
“And?”
“You want to know why I have Gio’s license.”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“Anything else?”
I frowned.
Penn leaned forward, toying with me in his sexy, cocky way. Even trapped in here, he still captured me with every look and word. “You must have other questions, apart from Gio.”
My heart turned into a hot piece of coal, desperate for the prison to vanish and a bed to miraculously appear so I could torture Penn with kisses to tell me the truth. Or let him torture me with them while telling me anything he wanted.
I licked my lips, my body heavy and wanting. “I have so many questions. We’d be here until next year if I asked them all.”
His nostrils flared, hearing the sex in my voice. “I don’t care if it took ten years.” He switched to an intoxicating whisper. “But not in here. It fucking kills me to see you in here.” Pain cloaked him as if remembering to cover his emotions from the harsh elements of incarceration. “If I’m being honest, I didn’t want to see you today.”
I flinched as if he’d slapped me. “What? Why?”