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“Vito will help you when he arrives.”
“Hugo!” I cried, frustrated with him. “We need to talk about…”
“Vito. Will. Help. You.” He spit every word like he was cursing at me, and right after, the line went dead, leaving me there to listen to the tone.
Mustafa was forgetting that he was on my turf, in my own damn house, and I didn’t need a map to find his bedroom. I took the elevator and marched to his door, banging three times on it.
No answer, so I just banged again.
“Seriously?” This man walked into shootouts without thinking twice and was hiding from me? Who does that?
“What?” I heard him behind the door. The sound was very unhappy, almost anguished.
“Open the fucking door; you’re not a toddler. What are you going to do? Hide in here until Gino comes home to save you?”
I didn’t know if it was the toddler remark or my brother’s name, but something struck a nerve, and he finally opened the door with such force, I wouldn’t have been surprised if it flew off the frame.
“What, Catherinelle? What do you want?”
“To speak to you,” I simply said and shrugged with the innocence of a girl who wasn’t ready to lose her virginity in the kitchen with her brother’s best friend hours ago.
“I don’t.” The line between his brows depended, as he tried to intimidate me with his fighting look.
Instead of stepping back, I pushed myself up and got all in his face.
“Well, you should have thought about it before shoving your tongue down my throat, Mustafa.”
The look on his face transformed, just like I had slapped him.
“Cat…I don’t even know how to apologize.”
“Don’t apologize, just do it again.”
“Have you lost your damn mind?”
It was obvious Hugo and I weren’t on the same page about the kiss, but the disgusted expression came like a fist into my liver. I was expecting anger, not such a hurtful reaction.
I never was Hugo’s favorite Nucci. Hell, I wasn’t even his favorite person in this house, but this revulsion was beyond it.
“I didn’t mean to appall you,” I said after swallowing the gigantic knot in my throat.
I kept my face still as a statue, but I couldn’t stop the tears from gathering in my eyes. Hugo stopped me before I got to turn around and hide under my bed.
“Why are you crying?”
“Because we kissed, Mustafa, and it wasn’t a childish kiss behind the school gym. I can see the scratches on your chest. I had to use a lot of foundation to hide the bruises around my lips. That was two people trying to mark each other, and when you think about it, you look like you bit into a lemon,” I sniffed. “I don’t know why you treated me like I had leprosy all my life, but I…last night I thought that maybe…” ugh, I couldn’t find my damn words. “Would it kill you to be nice to me?”
He kept his face in check, but the arm he was using to grab onto the door frame flexed, his muscles getting even more defined than before.
“I am not a nice person.” I felt a depth to his words that he was trying to hid away.
“Well, no one is going to accuse you of anything different.” I let my head down and shook it slowly, disappointed in myself for letting him get to me again. “Is it me? Is it something I did?”
“Christ, no, Cat. You were…fuck.” His eyes fell on my lips briefly. “It’s not you.”
He started breathing more audibly, and the joints of his fingers were white from grabbing to the wood that framed his door with too much force. He was restraining himself. It was the first time I saw any sign that Hugo was close to losing control. I made a small step towards him, testing the waters, and then a couple more, leaving only a few inches of space between our bodies.
“Catherinelle, stop.”
