Breaking Him (Love is War #1)(54)

“Well, the man himself claims he is. No one else is claiming it, so I’d say that’s some proof.”

“Do you usually take the claims of known criminals as proof? Is that how police work is done around here?”

Dammit, I’d riled him. In all fairness, he’d riled me first.

He pulled at his ill-fitted suit collar, eyes darting away from me, face flushed and angry. “Excuse me,” he said gruffly, “I see someone I know,” and ambled off.

Mingling: 1

Scarlett: 0

And it only went downhill from there.

My next victim was someone I thought was a stranger at first.

He was a short, portly guy, around my age. He shuffled up to me looking nervous as hell, and my first impression was that he seemed kind of sweet.

“Um, hi,” he said, looking down at his feet. “I saw you in that lotion commercial. It was—you were—you did a really good job.”

I smiled at him. “Thank you. That’s a nice thing to say.”

He finally looked up at me, flushed, and looked back down at his feet. “Do you, um, remember me?”

I studied him. Nothing about him was familiar to me, but I’d lived here from birth to adulthood, so there were plenty of vague faces I’d forgotten. “I don’t, I’m sorry. Do we know each other?”

He gave a little half shrug and just kept staring down at his feet. He looked so utterly pathetic that I found myself feeling sorry for him. “What was your name again? Maybe that will jar my memory.”

With much effort he choked out, “Tommy Mann.”

I stiffened, the smile freezing on my face. I knew that name. I studied him again, trying to find traces of the boy he’d been.

I vaguely saw it. He didn’t look good. He didn’t take care of himself. He was pale in a way that gave the impression he didn’t leave his house much. But it was in there somewhere, that boy who’d been just one in a long line of the vicious kids that had singled me out for abuse as a child.

My lip curled in disdain. “Did you ever outgrow your habit of punching girls half your size?” I asked him. “In the face,” I added for good measure.

He actually answered the question, talking to his toes. “Y-y-yes,” he stuttered.

And dammit that almost made me feel sorry for him. I had a soft spot for stutters.

“I always wanted to say I’m sorry for that, but they switched you to the other class after that, and Dante told me if I ever got within five feet of you for any reason that he’d pound me into next year.”

That I believed.

“But I’ll say it now. I have no excuse for myself. I’m very, very sorry. I know how it was for you. I know it wasn’t easy. I didn’t have any friends myself, and I was a weakling and a coward. I don’t even know why, but I was trying to fit in and picking on you seemed to be the thing to do.”

That I also believed.

“Like I said, I have no excuse. To this day I’m ashamed of myself for it.”

I didn’t know what to think of his apology. I wasn’t used to them. I just felt strange. Conflicted. Did he expect to be forgiven for a few short sentences of remorse many years after the fact, sincere or not? Would I be crazy for holding on to a grudge for all these years, or a complete doormat for accepting his decades late apology?

I decided (begrudgingly) that a late apology was better than none at all. He was far from the worst of the goons I’d had to deal with back then. At least he’d left me alone after one offense.

And I had kicked him in the balls really, really hard.

“Apology accepted,” I told him quietly, if begrudgingly. I wasn’t used to forgiving people. It was a muscle I’d never had to use before.

I couldn’t say it felt particularly pleasant to work it out for the first time.

Still, I was rather proud of myself. I’d made it through one confrontation that had gone kind of well, all things considered.

But then Dante.

He appeared just as I was about to move on with a feeling of accomplishment.

He stepped up beside me, wrapped a proprietary arm around my waist, and leaned down, down, down to short, terrified Tommy.

“What did I tell you, Tommy?” his voice was quiet and menacing. “That looks closer than five f*cking feet to me.”

Tommy stammered out an apology and took off.

I was sitting somewhere between exasperated and annoyed as I shrugged out of Dante’s hold and turned to look at him. “I had that under control,” I told him. “He’d just apologized and then you scared the crap out of him.”

He was completely unrepentant as he shrugged his broad shoulders. “You are talking to the wrong guy if you think you’re ever going to get me to feel sorry for any of the punk kids that terrorized you.”

Well, now. How could I get mad at him for that?





CHAPTER





TWENTY-SEVEN





“You can’t buy love, but you can pay heavily for it.”

~Henny Youngman





PRESENT


As much as it was torture to see Dante, it was always sort of inevitable. A fact of life. At some point we’d find each other, clash again, and run away, trailing blood in our wake.

But Nate was different. I hadn’t seen him in years, and in my mind I’d never thought I’d have to face him again.