Gian (Trassato Crime Family #1)(21)

I jutted my hip to the side, our gazes locked in a silent battle. The only sounds were the faint ding of the elevator and the revving of cars on the busy Brooklyn street outside the window.

He flexed his hands, the lone tell in his otherwise calm demeanor. “Don’t test me, Evie. I’m not in the mood. I will ground your ass, and you can kiss your physical therapy and training goodbye. You won’t be able to leave my house for any reason until this is over.”

I plucked my jeans off the arm of an electric blue club chair and shoved my legs into them. “Fine. You don’t have to threaten me. I get it.” My voice was a vacant, unattractive rasp that mirrored how I felt inside.





CHAPTER TWELVE




Gian



“Fuck my life.” I disconnected the phone and tossed it on the desk in my home office.

In the last twenty-four hours, Evie and I had managed to establish a fragile truce of sorts. We stopped avoiding each other. We weren’t fighting. I convinced myself the kiss in the hotel room was an error in judgment, and I successfully ignored every last urge to push the relationship into something we’d both regret.

Now my mom and Carmela had come up with some half-assed plan to convert the family Sunday dinner into a f*cking engagement party. I tried to talk my mom out of it. I told her I had to work. I told her Evie had a cold. I told her the timing wasn’t right, and Evie and I wanted to wait a couple of months prior to making any sort of formal announcement. I told her Evie would want to invite her out-of-town family. None of my excuses mattered the minute she pulled the trump card. She said she wanted to have the engagement party while my dad was still healthy enough to enjoy it.

I couldn’t blame her. If our engagement were real, I’d be insisting my mom threw an engagement party. Hell, I’d fast-track everything. The engagement party, the bridal shower, the wedding. It’d be a done deal in thirty days, maybe less. However, nothing about our relationship was real, except the chemistry between us that I couldn’t smother regardless of how hard I tried.

I opened the door to the office and spied Evie resting on the sofa with her legs curled into her chest. Aiming the remote at the television, she clicked through channel after channel, never stopping long enough to hear more than a word or two.

“Hey.” I crossed the room and leaned my hip into the arm of the sofa. “Are you busy? Can we talk?”

She raised her eyebrows, keeping her gaze glued to the flickering flat screen. “Go ahead.”

“My mom has a family dinner at her house every other Sunday.”

Her thumb paused mid-click. “Uh-huh.”

“Tomorrow is one of those Sundays.”

“That’s fine.” She shrugged, and her white shirt slid down, revealing the top of her creamy shoulder. “I’m okay hanging out here by myself. I won’t run off anywhere if that’s what you’re worried about.”

I stretched out my legs and crossed my ankles. She wasn’t going to like this. “Actually, my mom invited you. She decided to make Sunday dinner an engagement party for us.”

Her head whipped toward me, and she muted the volume of the T.V., blanketing us in silence. “What?” she finally said, her voice hardly a whisper. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah.” I nodded, avoiding making eye contact like a damn *. I hadn’t felt this pathetic this since I was a kid and my mom yanked me into the house by ear for peeling the bark off the neighbor’s tree. “It won’t be that big of a deal. Carmela will be there, and she invited a few other family members.”

My mom claimed she had only invited a few people, but a few people to my mom might mean anywhere from ten to thirty. This was bad on so many levels. I didn’t know where to start. Pulling Evie further into my life made it harder to extract her when the time came. She’d hear things she shouldn’t, see things that couldn’t be unseen. From there, she could infer a whole lot of stuff better left in the shadows. When the idea flashed through my mind and I claimed we were engaged, I never considered how quickly the fiction would snowball into more.

“I don’t think this is a good idea. Once you introduce me to your parents, there are going to be expectations, and it’ll only drag this out longer.” She picked at the hem of her white shirt. “I want my life back, and I don’t see how perpetuating this lie is going to do that.”

“You’re probably right, but I already agreed. I can’t back out now. She’s probably started prepping the food and calling our relatives. I can’t let her down.”

“And you think celebrating a fake engagement is somehow the lesser of two evils? That she’ll somehow be proud you created this illusion only to tear it down in a month or two?”

I focused on the silent sitcom playing on the television screen. The actors patted each other’s backs and tossed their heads back in laughter. They lifted their drinks and toasted some unknown occasion, accomplishment, or anniversary.

“Gian,” Evie barked. “Are you listening to me?”

She slammed the remote onto the black coffee table Carmela had selected along with most of the other furniture. I didn’t care enough to make the effort. For the last few years, I split my time between here and the apartment over the club, but neither of the places felt like home. They were places to sleep. The last time I had a real home was when I lived with my parents.