Girl Code (32 page)

“Leo,” I whispered as my emotions rushed in like a tide.

His hands found my waist and I met his eyes. His gaze was so heavy it made my knees weak.

“Tabitha, I waited a long time for you to come back into my life. I’ve waited a long time to feel again the way that only you can make me feel—stripped down, bare, and raw. You are more than my other half. You are in my bones, in my blood.” He pulled my body flush with his. “You are marrying me, Tabitha, amore mio. There is no question about that.”

“Well, I already said yes,” I replied, wiping away tears.

“I don’t need your permission,” he came back at me with a smirk. “It’s not like you truly ever had an option.”

“I’m not sure if I want to punch you or kiss you.”

“You don’t have an option in that either,” Leo said, and then he consumed me with his kiss.

The blazing passion was instantaneous. It was like the ring on my finger magnified the crackling energy between us, intensified the heat that was now rushing through my limbs and straight to my core. When Leo’s hands possessively curved around my neck, shocking shivers raced down my spine. We kissed as if the world was ending on that night, and it was the last thing we would ever do.

I wanted him and I could not and would not wait. I dropped my hand between us and squeezed his denim-encased cock. Leo growled and grinded into my hand. The kiss grew maddening, rough, and demanding. When Leo bucked hard against my hand, I stumbled back slightly, but tripped over the hem of my wet dress. Leo didn’t let go as he fell with me, he didn’t take his mouth away from mine. I fell back onto the wet sand where the waves were lapped at the beach. Leo didn’t crush me when he followed me down, careful to brace himself on his arms on either side of my head, but his body was on mine, grinding against me. The sea reached for us with its warm tendrils, washing over our legs and halfway up our bodies.

When Leo finally broke away from my lips, we were both breathless and panting loudly and obscenely. He pulled hard on the thin straps of my dress, tearing them away from the fabric as he feverishly yanked on the top to uncover my breasts. When they were free, Leo groaned and cupped them in his hands as his tongue moved across my throat. His teeth bit into my neck, making me shriek, but I didn’t want him to stop. The pulling, pinching pain of him marking me fueled the inferno inside of me. His fingers pinched and plucked at my nipples as he marked me again on my clavicle. Then his mouth was on my hard and sensitive peaks, holding my breasts together so that he could suck them both into his mouth at once.

“I need to feel you,” Leo growled after he had sucked and bit on my nipples until they were sore. “I need to be inside of you, feel your pussy squeezing my cock.”

Leo got on his knees and began to push my soaked dress up. He pushed it up to my hips and then reached for my panties. I let out a surprised cry when he tore them off of me, tore them into pieces with inhuman growls. As he went to work releasing the button and zipper on his jeans, waves of water splashed over us, over my open wide legs and onto my pussy, but no amount of water could put out the fire inside of me.

Leo pulled his pants down just below his ass before losing patience and settling over me. There was no preamble, no soft-spoken words, no preparation. With one hard thrust, Leo buried himself inside of me to the hilt. When my scream began to pierce the night, Leo’s hand came over my mouth, absorbing the noise.

“Scream again,” he panted as he pulled out and thrust into me again, hard and swift. I did scream again, and again.

There was no control from the beginning. Leo’s eyes were hooded as he looked down at me, his mind gone, only lust existing. He rammed into me without mercy. My fingers dug into the sand, and then into the flesh of his ass as he battered me with his well-endowed erection. My eyes found the moon and the stars and I felt like I was floating up into their depths, a ball of fire soaring into the sky to light up the night. I was ready to explode, to combust, and incinerate everything near me.

Leo’s grunts and growls were getting deeper and longer. His hand across my mouth was tightening and his other hand squeezed my thigh. I didn’t want to climax without him. I needed to feel his come mixing with mine. When he started cursing in Italian, I knew he was close. Suddenly, he took his hand off of my mouth, replacing it with his own swollen lips. Leo roared into my mouth as his orgasm rippled through him and as he slammed into me. I cried into his mouth, biting his tongue as my body erupted into pure heat as hot as the sun. Every aching part of me burned as his semen flooded into me.

“Il mio amore , sei la mia vita,” Leo murmured, breathlessly onto my cheek.

“Always,” I whispered.

I flew to London on an airplane, though with the natural high I was on, I could have flown to London without the use of the megaton tin box. We decided to keep the news of our engagement quiet until I returned from overseas. Leo wanted us to tell our families and friends in person, and I was okay with that. I was more than okay with that. I liked sharing something so monumental and life altering with only Leo, having our own little, warm, and fuzzy secret to talk about and smile about.

There were approximately two weeks between each of my engagements, but not only would the cost of flying back and forth have been ridiculous, but I wasn’t really thrilled about hanging in the air over water any more than necessary. Suzanna and I found plenty to do in each city, especially in London. We even spent three days in Paris, two days in Spain, and three days in Italy.

I talked to Leo every day, every opportunity that we had. He swore he was never letting me go so far out of his reach again. For my next tour, he would be coming with me, he vowed.

Originally, my plan had been to leave Australia a week after the signing. I had a list of things I wanted to see and do. Going to the Down Under had been on my bucket list since I was old enough to know what a bucket list was. It was something I was supposed to do with Leslie, something we had spoken about often as small children, and maybe mentioned it again when we were in college. Suzanna was a perfect assistant and great company, as well as some of the other authors that had attended the large signing, but not only did I miss Leo and the comforts of home, I was nostalgic and I missed my friend. I missed Leslie, the Leslie of old, my best friend throughout my childhood. I didn’t even know who she was anymore, the things she liked to do, the places she went, the kind of friends she had or how she liked to wear her hair or what her favorite pair of shoes were. She was like an acquaintance that I knew by face, and knew by name, but was otherwise a mystery to me, fading back into the crowds and then forgotten again.

As I looked down at the ring on my finger, I knew that she had to be the first person Leo and I told, and we had to do it in person. No, not
we
.
Me
. I had to tell her. I owed her that much at least. It was better to do it sooner rather than later. Knowing Leslie and her failure to answer my calls, I would have to track her down and show up uninvited. Feeling a sense of urgency to tackle that meeting and an eagerness to be with Leo, I left beautiful Australia a whole week early.

I didn’t tell Leo I was coming. I wanted to surprise him, but that’s the thing about surprises. Sometimes they backfire, and you’re the one who ends up surprised.

I landed in Miami a little before one on a Wednesday afternoon. The lunch rush hour had come and gone by the time all of my things were loaded into the back of my rental. I had made arrangements with Christina during my last layover in L.A. I couldn’t surprise Leo looking like a hot mess from traveling and wearing yesterday’s underwear. While I was sure my fiancé loved me unconditionally, I wanted to look pretty for our reunion. I was going to freshen up at her house.

Christina sat on the vanity of the bathroom while I showered, shaved, and washed my hair in record time. I told her about our engagement, which made her so excited I thought she was going to throw open the shower curtain and hug my naked, soapy body, which may have been awkward. She talked about the guy she was seeing, and his weird quirks. I was close with Mayson and Sandy, and even closer to Donya than I ever expected to be, but this blooming friendship with Christina felt a little different, in a good way, and I was glad to have a true friend before my move to Miami became final.

She retreated to the living room while I got out of the shower and dressed. She returned while I did my hair. Leo didn’t really care for women in makeup, but a little eyeliner and lip-gloss never failed me. I had dressed in a white sleeveless button up shirt, belted at my waist with a wide black belt, black skinny capris, and my prized pair of Jimmy Choo red patent pumps, raising my height by over four inches. Leo liked my hair down, so I wore it pulled over one shoulder. I thought I looked pretty good and Christina confirmed it. I didn’t linger long after that, but promised I would call her soon.

When I pulled into the driveway, I felt a little nervous, which was silly. I had no idea if Leo was even home. I had sent him a text after I landed, but he hadn’t answered. I wasn’t worried. Leo spent a lot of time at the building site for Leo’s On the Bay, and he often still went into the restaurant to help out there, and once in a while, he would go check out houses he considered purchasing and renovating. With the garage door lowered, it was possible he was home. Quietly, I unlocked the door and eased myself into the house.

Two things struck me at once: the distinct scent of Chanel No. 5 mixed with the distinct scent of Suave Strawberries and Cream, Leslie’s favorite shampoo, and the sound of Leslie’s voice from deep in the house.

Chapter Twenty-Three

I froze where I was and listened hard with my heart pounding in my chest.

“I’m sorry,” she said, clearly distressed.

I had not heard her voice in person in years, and hearing it there where it should not have been struck a sour chord with me.

“You have to leave,” I heard Leo, his tone angry, yet also distressed as I had never heard it before.

“I’m trying!” Leslie yelled, but I could hear the tears in her voice. “I’m trying to find my shoes!”

A pair of Jimmy Choos, an exact replica of my own, were on the living room floor several feet away from me. Leslie and I always did have a common shoe fetish.

Breathtaking, even with her wavy blond hair in a tangled mess, her shirt buttoned all wrong, her skirt on sideways, and her face blotchy and red from crying, Leslie stumbled out of the hallway into the living room, searching for her elusive shoes. She didn’t see me at first, distraught, crying ugly, and looking for her Choos. When she bent over to pick them up, it was like a scene from a movie, another movie moment in my life, but this one I had no control over. No pause, no stop, no rewind, there was only play.

As she hesitantly straightened up, her eyes slowly crept across the hardwood floor. Slowly, slowly, she saw me in frames. My shoes, my calves, my hands balled at my sides, my chest, and finally my stunned and furious face. By the time her eyes met mine, she was standing erect again.

“Did you find your shoes?” Leo bellowed angrily from the bedroom. I knew it was the bedroom by how distant his voice was. Our bedroom, the bedroom we shared, the same bedroom he once shared with Leslie.

Les was too stunned and scared to answer him. She trembled as she stared at me with wide, beautiful blue eyes.

“Damn it, Leslie!” Leo said, his voice closer. He appeared a second later, pulling on a T-shirt. He didn’t see me right away, either, because he was buttoning and zipping his jeans. “You have to
leave.
I love Tabitha too much for you to...” He stopped talking when he saw the look on her pretty face. The movie played on as his eyes slowly followed her line of sight and landed on me.

“Shit.”

I really wanted to beat both of them to a pulp and feed their remains to sharks. I didn’t really feel like being diplomatic and reasonable. After all, what they were doing was totally unreasonable, especially Leslie. That bitch didn’t answer my phone calls, text messages, or emails, but she found the time to make an appearance in Miami to use her body to try to take back what she thought was rightfully hers. And Leo wasn’t any better, spinning his crap about loving me for so long and then throwing it away for one last romp with Leslie.

“I don’t even know what to fucking say.” The words ran smoothly but quickly through my lips.

“This looks really bad,” Leo admitted, holding his hands up as if I was pointing a gun at him. “But it’s not what you think, dolcezza.”

“I don’t understand what the fuck that means, Leo,” I said, opening and closing my fists at my sides.

He ran his hand across his short, dark hair. His forehead creased as he searched for the right words.

“Let’s just calm down and talk this through,” Leslie said, trying to look and sound confident, but she wasn’t pulling it off.

“I
am
calm.” My voice was so low and steady; it didn’t really fit the situation. They both looked at me as if they expected a meltdown at any second. “Fix yourself,” I said disgustedly to Leslie. “You look ridiculous.”

Leslie stared at me with her mouth hanging open for a few seconds before slowly letting her eyes fall on her disheveled self. She turned away, embarrassed and tearful as she began to readjust her clothes.

“It’s not what it looks like,” Leo said, taking careful steps toward me.

“Oh no? Why did she come out of our bedroom looking like a roughed up truck stop whore? Why didn’t you have your fucking shirt on, Leo? Why were you buttoning your jeans?”

Leo stopped a few feet away from me, wisely, because if he tried to touch me, I was sure that I would’ve screamed and pull a
Single White Female
on him and put my shoe through his eyeball.

“You know that tomorrow is the anniversary of Nicola’s death,” he said carefully. I nodded and glanced at Leslie, who was watching us curiously and nervously. “Leslie called me this morning and said she was in the area and asked me if I wanted to go to the gravesite with her tomorrow. She was upset and I told her to come over because she shouldn’t have to be alone with her grief.”

I shifted from one foot to the other and crossed my arms across my chest.

“I made us some lunch, but Leslie wanted a few drinks to take the edge off a bit, but she did more drinking than eating.” Leo looked over his shoulder at Leslie, shaking his head disapprovingly before turning back to me. “She was about ready to pass out so I made her go lay down in the guest bedroom. I tried calling you, Tabitha, but the calls never went through. Now I know it was probably because you were in the air, but you can check my phone if you don’t believe me.”

“That doesn’t explain how the two of you ended up undressed in the fucking bedroom,” I snapped.

“I’m getting to that,” he said with thin patience.

That only further infuriated me, because I was the one who should’ve been pissed off, not him. I had a right to be pissed off.

I glanced at Leslie again. She was remarkably silent and I don’t know why that got under my skin, but I felt like she should have been explaining herself and apologizing.

“I went out and did a little surfing to clear my head,” Leo said, and for the first time, I did notice that his hair looked a little damp. “I came back in, took a shower, and when I came out of the bathroom, Leslie was in there. She had stripped out of her clothes and she was lying on the bed.” He looked like he was embarrassed for her to have to relay the story.

“I asked him to make me feel better,” Leslie whispered, and I was surprised that I heard her at all. Her gaze was on the floor, her cheeks pink with shame and humiliation. “I didn’t know…I suspected, but…I didn’t know you two were…”

“The hell you didn’t know!” I shouted, losing some of my composure. “You’re really good at closing your ears and eyes when the fuck you want to.”

“Ro said you had gone back to New Jersey,” she said, her brow furrowed. “She said Leo was upset, so I thought…”

“Did you bother to
call
and
ask
?” I demanded. I turned my sharp gaze on Leo. “And why didn’t you
tell
her? Why would you not tell her? After all the damn reasons, you knew I ran away, why wouldn’t you
tell
her?”

“It wasn’t exactly the best time to tell her,” Leo snapped at me. “I didn’t want to have to deal with that—with us—” He gestured to the three of us. “—on the anniversary of our child’s death.”

Grudgingly, I understood that, and I agreed with that. I wasn’t heartless, and in my heart, I was very sympathetic to their loss, but I couldn’t shake my anger and distrust.

“I didn’t know you two were…serious,” Leslie said.

“I call bullshit,” I countered.

Leslie’s weepy, meek demeanor changed in a flash. She glared at me through narrowed eyes.

“You broke the fucking code, Tabitha!” she screeched, pointing at me. Her face was bright red and a vein popped in her forehead. “How dare you speak to me as if
I
wronged
you
! Six months after our baby died you practically move in!”

“I didn’t even know Nicola existed until Gil and Leah’s wedding!” I argued, and belatedly realized my poor choice of words.

Breathing heavily through her nose, Leslie said, “She
doesn’t
exist anymore. She’s gone. She’s buried.”

“Les,” Leo whispered her name softly and approached her carefully.

Her thin body heaved with her heavy breathing as she tried to keep herself from either breaking down or completely losing her shit. When Leo gingerly wrapped a comforting arm around her, I turned away. I understood why, I really did, but it was painful to see anyway.

I couldn’t have this fight with them, not on this day or the next. Their wounds were wide open and very sensitive. Despite my anger and jealousy, I knew it wasn’t the right time to do this, like Leo said. I didn’t know what was going to happen next. I wanted to believe that Leslie would go on her way after a couple of days and Leo and I could get back to our new lives, but the insecure girl in me worried that the following days would end with me moving my shit back to Jersey, out of
their
home.

Leslie was crying quietly and Leo was murmuring words I couldn’t quite hear to her. I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t watch it and I couldn’t participate in trying to sooth her or sooth him. I had no place in that room, in that house at that moment.

I straightened my back and started toward the front door.

“Tabitha!” Leo said my name sharply. I halted, but I didn’t turn fully around. I tilted my head in their general direction so that I only saw them in my peripheral. “Where the hell are you going?” he demanded.

“I. Am. Leaving,” I bit out.

“You made a promise to me,” he said angrily. “Don’t you fucking dare walk out that door.”

“I’m not breaking my promise, Leo,” I snapped but gave no further explanation before continuing toward the door.

I heard Leo’s footsteps behind me. He reached me just before I reached for the door and knocked my arm away before putting himself between me and the exit.

“You’re not leaving. I know you, Tabs. You’re going to walk out the door and ignore me for the next few weeks until I come find you again.”

“If she wants to go, let her go!” Leslie cried out in exasperation.

I turned to the side and said “Oh, you would just love that, wouldn’t you? Then you can have him all to yourself. What are you going to do next, Les, huh? Slip him a roofie?”

“Fuck you,” she spat out.

“Well, why not? You’ve already tried to fuck my fiancé today!”

Her eyes widened and she gaped at both of us. “You’re engaged?” she shrilled.

I held up my hand. “Boom, bitch.”

Leslie marched toward us. I didn’t know if she was going to slap the shit out of me for being so obnoxious or storm out of the house.

“Real mature,” Leo muttered to me just before Leslie reached me.

She grabbed my hand and held it up to look at the ring.

“I didn’t get a ring!” she yelled, glaring at Leo for a moment before turning her eyes back to my ring. “And it’s fucking beautiful!”

I rolled my eyes and pulled my hand out of hers. They were both standing entirely too close to me and Leo was still blocking my exit.

“I need to get the hell out of this house,” I said, throwing my arms up. I looked at Leo and said, “I’m not running, okay? I just…I can’t deal with this right now. You were right. This isn’t a good time to talk about…us.”

Leo eyed me. “If I let you go, where will you go and for how long?”

“I’m going home, I guess,” I sighed.

“You
are
home,” Leo said firmly.

“This doesn’t feel like home right now,” I said quickly and softly.

Leo’s face fell, and for the first time since I walked into that cluster-fuck, he looked worried. He reached for me, and this time I let him cup my neck in his hand.

“Tabitha,” he whispered, frowning.

“I should go,” Leslie said suddenly from behind me. I didn’t see her, but I heard her sniffling as she walked back into the living room, probably to fetch her purse.

I closed my eyes for a long moment and then spoke up.

“No, you stay,” I said firmly as I opened my eyes and met Leo’s. “You two need to…” I sighed and then carefully removed Leo’s hand from my neck. I stepped in close to him and gently placed a kiss against his lips. “I trust you,” I said. I gave him a firm push out of my way and walked out the door.