Sweet Hope (Sweet Home #4)(52)
“Oh Axel,” Aliyana said and kissed my shoulder.
Gripping onto Aliyana’s hair, I finished. “There was no way I was gonna compromise all that they had now, the life my mamma wanted for them, so I cut all ties. Alessio and his f*cking boys wouldn’t get any chance to get at my brothers unless they crossed the country and I knew the f*ckers didn’t have the funds to go that far. If they got my brothers, it’d be when they were coming to see me. That shit wasn’t gonna fly.”
“So Austin never knew you stopped seeing him to save them?”
I shook my head to indicate ‘no’.
“They also never knew you were harmed… that you could have died?”
“No, and they never will,” I said sternly.
Edging closer, Aliyana pressed her lips to mine, kissing me three times. Lifting just above my face, she asked, “They should know what you went through to save them, Axel. If they only knew, if Lev knew—”
“I didn’t save them, Aliyana, I condemned them. When they were kids, I made deals with the Heighters to get them fighting beside me in the street war, thinking it was f*cking important. Like a damn piece of shit trailer park was ever f*cking important. But my brothers, nah, they weren’t like me. They were smart, they were talented… they were going somewhere in life. That is, once they got the hell away from me.”
Aliyana’s face darkened. “Axel, you’re the most talented person I know, look at what you create,” she said. I had to fight a smile at the conviction in her voice as she pointed to my work in progress.
But that smile quickly dropped when I cupped her cheeks and said, “I’m not a good person, Aliyana. I’m f*cked up. I’ve got a real dark soul and more sins piled at my door than the Devil himself. You should be running away from me, not willingly running into the darkness holding my f*cking hand.”
“It’s too late,” she said quietly, “You’ve already consumed me. There is no turning back from you, not now. My hand’s never letting go of yours, eternal darkness or not.”
“Then I pity you.”
Aliyana’s mouth parted and she sucked in a sharp breath. I pulled the pad of my thumb over her bottom lip and said, “I’ve killed people. Do you get that? I’ve put men in hospital. I’ve ruined lives… ain’t no redemption out there for me. There’s no beauty, no fairytale to be found by being fused to me.”
Aliyana shook her head and a determined look spread on her face. But then, something passed over her face as she looked to my marble boy crying bullets, and facing me again, she said softly, “The most beautiful art is often born from the most desperate of circumstances.” And in that one sentence, she obliterated my stone heart to pieces.
“Fuck, girl,” I growled, fighting over-emotion, but Aliyana pressed her finger on my lips before I could say anything else.
“Your art is your redemption, Axel. Elpidio is your rebirth, your second chance at life. You are a victim of circumstance, not a sinner by choice.”
Feeling my throat clog so tight I felt I would choke, I fought to gasp for air, only to whisper, “La mia luce,” as I stared at this woman beside me, completely f*cking astounded by her defense of a loser like me.
Aliyana’s face blushed and she dipped her head to my chest, her arms wrapped around my waist. Reaching out to my side table, I picked up a smoke and lit it. I took a long a drag.
“I can’t smell smoke now without thinking of you,” Aliyana murmured. I ran my hand through her hair and she asked, “Why is there a crucifix now covering your Heighter star?”
Stiffening, I took another drag and said, “A couple of years after I went into prison, my Heighter inmates came into my cell and scrubbed it out with a needle and ink. They’d heard Alessio was coming in and didn’t want him to think they’d let me off for two years without some form of payback. I didn’t even bother fighting back, just let them erase a gang I no longer wanted to belong to anyway. After the shanking a few months later, I got a needle and ink off my cellmate and changed it completely.”
“But why a crucifix?” Aliyana asked carefully.
Sighing, I said, “Mamma used to cross my forehead with holy water every night when I was a kid. I don’t know why, but when I picked up that needle that had erased my past, the image was in my head and before I knew it, a cross was on my face.”
“Axel,” Aliyana said, and lifted her head. “About your mamma—”
Covering her mouth, I shook my head. “No more. Fuck, girl, I can’t take no more talking about all this shit tonight. I’ve told you more than I’d ever planned to ever tell anyone. I need you to leave it alone now.”
I just couldn’t go there about my mamma. It was one part of my locked heart I never wanted to open. I wouldn’t be able to take the guilt.
Aliyana nodded, getting I couldn’t talk no more. My head was spinning with whiskey, but more than that, it was spinning that Aliyana came back to me knowing who I was.
Smoothing back the lines on my forehead Aliyana confessed, “I can’t believe that I am completely and utterly infatuated with Axel Carillo.”
I froze at her confession, my heart slamming against my ribs and, smiling, she peppered kisses all over my neck. “No one will be happy about us. They won’t understand. But I can’t bring myself to care.”