They squeeze me over and over, until I retch out the salty ocean water. My back slams against packed sand. I’m pushed to my side. I’m coughing harder than I ever have in my entire life.
When I finally blink open my eyes, Damiano is heaving over me, looking irate. He’s soaked to the bone, water dripping down his hair and onto my face.
“Holy shit,” I choke out.
“Who goes swimming at night when the sea is rough like this? You could have drowned, you idiot,” he hisses. He looks angry enough to kill me. Darkness clouds his eyes.
“I’m sorry. I just wanted to…cool down.”
He’s staring at me like he wants to take me apart piece by piece just so he can see exactly where nature went wrong. “There’s AC at the club. You would have cooled down if you’d stayed put like I told you to.”
I close my eyes and shake my head. “No.”
“What do you mean no?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
He grips my shoulders and gives me a hard shake. “You don’t get to say that to me after I just dragged you out. You nearly died.”
He’s not wrong. I might have died if he hadn’t come to my rescue.
Would that really have been so bad?
That would have been one way to keep my violent urges from ever causing havoc again.
Am I really considering suicide? No, I can’t give up. Not after everything I did to get away.
A sob works its way up my throat. It sounds awful.
Damiano’s grip on my shoulders loosens. “Talk to me.”
“I hurt him,” I say as tears overflow my eyes and slip down my temples.
“Nelo?” He barks a laughs. “Who gives a fuck about him? He’s gone to the medic. They’ll give him a Band-Aid and tell him to fuck off.”
I move to sit up, and Damiano moves his hand to my lower back to help me.
“You don’t get it.” The truth wants to spill out. I want to tell him every detail of everything that I’ve done so that he can see for himself that I’m not worth even a second of his concern.
But when I look at his face, I realize that I’m a liar. I like his concern. I don’t want to reject it. I want to burrow deeper inside of it.
“I was violent,” I mutter, folding away everything else I was about to tell him. “And I didn’t even feel bad about it in the moment. What kind of a person does that make me?”
Damiano exhales an exasperated breath. “You acted on instinct. You wanted to protect Astrid. That makes you a good friend.”
“My instinct was to stab him with an ice pick.”
“Many would have done worse.”
“I doubt it.”
“I don’t.” He tips my chin up. “Look, I know what you’re feeling.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. What you did feels violent, but it wasn’t. By its nature, violence is peak selfishness. What you did wasn’t that. You acted with the goal of defending a friend.”
“How do you know all that?”
“Violence is a part of my job.”
“You mean people getting into fights and stuff at your clubs?”
He looks away and scratches the side of his mouth. “Yeah.”
“I thought Ras and his team dealt with all that.”
“Most of it. But sometimes, it needs to be dealt with by me. Like tonight. To deal with violence effectively, you need to understand it. A habitually violent person generally isn’t very smart. They can’t figure out how to deal with a situation. They fail to control their emotions and lash out. When you know what to look for, nearly every act of violence can be preempted. Sometimes all it takes is a few carefully chosen words. Other times, you can only stop it with your own show of force. That’s what you did tonight.”
“I escalated things instead of stopping them.”
“You got Astrid away from him, didn’t you? You created a distraction. You made Nelo change his target.”
“To me.”
“Forget what he said to you,” Damiano says. “He’s never going to hurt you.”
I allow his words to settle over my skin and seep into my blood like a dose of a drug. It’s so tempting to believe him. “You won’t let him.”
“No. I already told you, didn’t I?” He reaches for my cheek and drags the tips of his fingers down to my lips. “I’m going to make you mine, Ale. And I always protect what’s mine.”
A wave crashes, lapping at our toes. I part my mouth and dart out my tongue. He tastes like salt and safety and desire.
I want to be drenched in it. Just for one night, I’ll allow myself to believe he’ll keep me safe.
He sees my intent before I can voice it, and he pushes his fingers into my wet hair, bringing my lips to his. God, it feels so good to kiss him.
But he cuts the kiss short and glares at me again. “Cazzo, I still can’t believe you almost drowned.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “It was stupid.”
“Yeah, it was.”
I run my hands up his muscular chest and tangle my fingers into his dress shirt. “Make me feel alive again.”
His eyes flash with heat, and then he’s all over me, pressing my back into the sand and settling his powerful body over mine. He lets me feel the weight of him, like he knows how badly I need to be anchored to something right now. My fingers dip under his shirt and I draw long lines down his back with my nails. This earns me a pleased grunt and a tug on my bottom lip.
He pushes off me and eyes my drenched clothes. “Take your shirt off, unless you want me to rip it off you.”