Miracle (The Pagano Family Book 6) (15 page)

As if she’d timed the ride for this moment, the doors slid open when she finished her speech. “I love you. I want my life to be with you. That’s true even if another word never passes your lips.” She rose to her tiptoes and kissed his chin. “Your move.”

Then she turned and walked out of the elevator. When the doors closed again, she hadn’t looked back.

~oOo~

Angry, confused, and wall-to-wall miserable, Joey got all the way to his Jeep—into it, with the key in the ignition—before he felt the full impact of the decision he was making. He would lose her. Fuck, he was giving her up.

I want my life to be with you
. That was what she’d said.

But what kind of life? If he couldn’t even fuck her without ending up in the ER?

She knew that, though. She’d been there. She’d stayed with him.

Could she be happy with someone like him? Forever? Or would she someday realize she needed more than he could give her and leave?

He pushed on the cannula at his nose and steadied his breath. His fucking useless lungs. His fucking useless mouth. How could she be happy forever with half a man?

In his first therapy session with Carole since his father’s funeral, grappling with Pop’s death and with all his losses since, he’d lost his shit, so much so that Carole had come up from her chair and knelt before him, putting her hands on his.

She’d asked him if he’d ever stacked pebbles on the beach. He’d thought she was nuts. Then she’d launched into a big story, on her old hippie knees before him, about stacking rocks, making a tower of them, how the taller the stack climbed, the more calm and focus was needed to find and place the next stone.

Sometimes,
she’d said,
a child or a dog or a bird runs past and knocks it down. Sometimes the wind takes it. But the stones are still there. You can build it again, and the next time, it’s easier, because you know the stones you need. You know the way they fit.

He’d gotten the metaphor. What he’d newly lost he might regain, as long as he kept fighting. But if he didn’t? Would Tina stay?

Only she could know that.

Lose her now or lose her later. That was his choice. His risk.

He got out of the Jeep and went back up to the RTC.

~oOo~

He went straight through the waiting room, through the door, past the reception area, down the hall, to her office. They were supposed to be having lunch, so he knew she didn’t have an appointment.

Without knocking, he went into her tiny box of an office.

She was at her desk. Crying. And that was his fault.

Flummoxed for a moment by the rush of guilt, he simply stood there.

She sniffed and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “What do you want, Joey?”

The more important question was what
she
wanted. “Can’t…talk. …Can’t…breathe. …Can’t…fuck. Want… …that?”

Tossing the tissue toward a wastebasket—and missing—Tina got up and came around to sit on her desk, right in front of him, before she answered. She crossed her arms. With her white coat on, she looked exactly like a doctor about to give a diagnosis.

“One—you just did talk, and I understood what you said. You talk. You just do it differently. And every word you say is important. That’s not a bad thing. Two—you swim twenty lengths of the pool three times a week, Joey. You can breathe. Which leads me to three—it’s your
head
in our way. It’s your anxiety that makes it so hard for you. For us. We can fuck—we fucked brilliantly a couple of weeks ago. If you used your cannula”—she pointed at it on his face now—“you might even be completely fine.”

“Not…sexy.”

She laughed. “You know what’s not sexy? Not having sex.”

And that was his point precisely. He couldn’t give her what she needed. “You…need.”

Her sigh was practically a growl. “I don’t
need
. I would
like
to fuck you. Absolutely. You’re hot, and I love you: my two ingredients for wanting to fuck. I would like to try some safer ways for us to do it—like making sure you’re oxygenated. And managing what’s going on in your head.”

“Not…not…” He knew the fucking word. Where was it? “Not crazy.”

“No. Jesus, Joey. That’s not what I’m saying at all. You’re not crazy, you’re not stupid, you’re not fucking weak. But you
are
anxious, and you know it.” Another sigh, this one weary. “I want you. That’s what I want. You. If it turns out that we can’t fuck, then that’s okay. What I want is to be with you. That’s enough for me. I don’t know how else to say it. I feel like I’ve said it about a million times, but I guess you think I’m lying. Thanks for having so much trust in me. That’s great.”

He didn’t think she was lying. He thought she was wrong. But he had no more words; getting out those he’d said had tapped him dry. He could only stare at her and feel hopeless.

She stood up from the desk and was only a few inches away. For work, she wore her hair in a ponytail, and it was so thick that it stayed damp all day around the elastic, where it was gathered together. The soft scent of her shampoo caught him, and he took a deeper breath.

Hooking her hands around the straps of his tank’s pack, she pulled lightly and looked up at him through the long bangs that sheltered her brown eyes. “You came back. Because you don’t want to lose what we have. Right?”

He nodded.

“Do you love me?”

Nodding wasn’t enough, but it was all he could do.

“Then please don’t leave me. I don’t need to fuck you, Joey. I just need you.”

What she saw in him, she made real.

Though he was still wearing his cannula, he bent his head and kissed her.

~oOo~

A week later, in the middle of May, Joey sat at Quinn’s bar with Luca and John as Hugh Quinn poured their celebratory drinks—shots of Maker’s Mark for Luca and John, and ice water for Joey.

They’d just come from the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Colonial Shore Market Square—the ‘lifestyle center’ project Pagano & Sons had been working overtime on for nearly a year—well more than a year if they counted all the time spent getting the job. They’d come in on time and within the bump for the budget. Darren Tyler, the Tyler of Tyler-Orvo, their client, had been a massive pain in the ass to work for, and they’d had a shitty winter season to overcome, but they’d managed it. The job was big, and Luca and John had put together an excellent bid, so the company had a good cushion—one they might not need, because other jobs were rolling in. Colonial Shore was high profile work, and they were reaping the benefits of the good, timely job they’d done.

A couple of years ago, they’d all been worried about whether they could keep Pop’s business going. Now it was secure. If only he’d lived to see it.

Luca lifted an eyebrow at Joey’s glass of water. “You sure, little bro? Not even one? We need to toast, and you can’t do it with water!”

“Luc,” John muttered. “C’mon.”

Yeah, Joey wanted a shot of Maker’s. He missed the hell out of getting drunk—the warmth that spread out from the center of his gut and made him feel okay about everything, the confidence it created. But booze fucked with his meds and turned him into a slack-jawed Cletus on top of it. He was in no position, especially not these days, to take the risk.

He lifted his glass. “Good.”

Luca nodded. “You’re right. Sorry.” He lifted his shot glass. “To a job well done and work that honors everything Pop worked so hard for.”

John lifted his glass. “To Pop.”

“Pop,” Joey echoed, lifting his glass.

~oOo~

After several rounds of celebratory shots, each with a decreasingly comprehensible toast, Luca and John were no more capable of speaking coherent sentences than Joey was.

Drinking water while his brothers drank whiskey made him, by default, the designated driver. Quinn helped Joey pour them into his Jeep. As he was getting them buckled in, he intended to take them each home.

When John groaned and leaned on the closed window like he was trying to put his head through it to puke, Joey pushed the button to lower the glass just in time—and then decided that he was taking them to the house, which was closest, where they could sleep in their old beds and he could get Carlo to help wrangle them inside, instead of little midget Manny and very pregnant Katrynn.

He sent a text to his brother, hating how much more slowly written words came to him now, and then he drove toward Caravel Road.

Carlo was standing on the front walk near the driveway, in pajama bottoms, when Joey pulled up. He peered into the Jeep and grinned. Luca and John were both basically unconscious. “Celebrating, I see.”

Joey nodded and got out.

Carlo took charge of Luca, and Joey got John. They went through the kitchen door and got as far as the hallway before Carlo stopped and looked over his shoulder at Joey. “I’m never getting this oaf upstairs. I’m gonna drop his ass on the sofa. John can have the guest bed.”

Joey nodded and went to the guest room. He got John down on the bed, pulled his boots off, and tossed a blanket over him. With a second thought, he went to the bathroom and got the little plastic wastebasket and set it next to the bed.

Carlo was in the kitchen, filling two glasses with water from the dispenser on the fridge door, when Joey came in. There was a bottle of aspirin on the island. He held out one of the glasses. “Take this in for John, will ya? And a couple of aspirin, too. And—hey. You got a minute to talk before you go over?”

It was after midnight, and Joey kind of felt like shit. It was strange: he was happy about work, and he was glad his brothers were so happy, but he’d sat there while they’d gotten drunk, and he’d felt left out. Even when they’d held forth at great inebriated length about how important he’d been to their success, how brilliant his scheduling was, how great he was at seeing problems before they were problems and working around them, it had been like they were talking at him, not with him.

Well, obviously they had been. He’d gotten out maybe ten words in five hours.

Being with Tina was so very much easier. He didn’t talk much with her, either, but it always felt like they were having a conversation. Even when they were with other people—at her house for dinner with her family, or at this house for dinner with his, whatever—he felt part of things. He didn’t know what she did that made that true.

But Carlo wanted to talk, so he nodded. He could give him a minute. He took the water and aspirin and set it on the nightstand for John, and Carlo went to the living room to do the same for Luca. They were due killer hangovers, his brothers.

When he went back to the kitchen, Carlo was pouring Coke over two glasses of ice. “Let’s go sit outside. It’s beautiful tonight.”

Joey wondered what the hell, but he took the glass Carlo offered him and followed his eldest brother to the back yard.

They sat on patio chairs, facing each other. Carlo took a long drink before he started in on whatever this was. “I need to ask you something, Joe. I need you to be honest.”

From habit, Joey checked his pocket for his phone. If this was some big conversation Carlo wanted to have in the middle of the night, he’d need the ability to write it.

“Does Trey talk to you?”

Joey’s chest felt a little tight right away. He had his tank, and he glanced down at it. He hadn’t needed it when he’d muscled John from the Jeep to the guest room, but he thought he might need it sitting out here talking with Carlo.