Kristen Ashley - The Promise

This began the deep state of shock I was currently experiencing.

This was because it had been at least an hour after I’d gone out to the garage to ask for it. Yet he came back, remembered, and started looking right away without me even raising my eyebrows to give him a hint there was something I’d asked him to do and wanted him to do it.

Then he couldn’t find it.

It wasn’t anywhere in his “office,” not the desk, not in the mess of papers shoved what appeared to be randomly in an expanding file, not even in the piles that were definitely randomly piled against one wall.

He then went to the kitchen where he had not one but three drawers that were shoved full of junk that included bits of paper, stubs of bills, even envelopes that should have been thrown out.

It wasn’t there either.

Now he was sorting through the shit in the dining room to find it, so much of it that it might take a year to go through all of it.

I had offered to help, but he told me he remembered what it looked like and I probably wouldn’t be able to spot it, even if I had it in my hand.

And I was in a deep state of shock because Benny was a Bianchi. I’d known him for years and this was not him. This was not any of the Bianchis. Not even Theresa.

The reason why it wasn’t was because he was not pissed. He wasn’t even acting annoyed, frustrated, or the slightest bit impatient.

He’d been searching for a slip of paper with a bunch of digits written on it for forty-five minutes. A slip of paper he, personally, didn’t give a shit about. It was a slip of paper that would help me. He probably wouldn’t need to use it unless his router got screwed up which, if it hadn’t after a year and he used it only for his TV, it probably wouldn’t.

I expected him to give up, tell me to suck it up and use my phone or haul my ass to an Internet café. I even expected him to blow, taking the frustration of his seriously lacking filing system out on me.

He didn’t do either.

He just kept looking.

I could not process this.

I couldn’t because Vinnie Junior would have looked for fifteen minutes and given up. He’d be apologetic, but he’d move on and it would be me that would search for whatever was needed.

Vinnie Senior would tell Theresa to look for it, even if she didn’t know what she was looking for. But while she was looking, she’d keep asking him if this was it or that was it, which would force him to start looking. And then he’d finally blow his stack, not at anyone, but it would blow all the same, because he hadn’t put an important piece of information in a place he could find it.

And seven years ago, Ben was like his father.

Now he was not.

“Fuck, here it is.” I heard him mutter, and my focus went to him in the dining room.

He was moving to me with a piece of paper in his hand. He got to me, handed it to me, and immediately wrapped his hand around the side of my neck, bending in to kiss me as I stood completely motionless, still in shock.

He kissed the top of my head, let me go, and said as he moved to the stairs, “Check that, honey. I gotta get my shit sorted and get to the restaurant but wanna make sure you’re covered before I go.” I pivoted so I was standing facing the stairs. I saw him stop five up and look down at me. “If it’s still fucked up, I’ll go over to Tony’s. I can see his system on mine and he’ll probably be cool with you tappin’ into that.”

I felt my lips part.

Ben turned and jogged up the rest of the stairs.

I stared up the stairs, looked down at the paper in my hand, then back up the stairs.

He was late.

He looked for that piece of paper and he did it until he was late.

He also didn’t really have to look for it for me if neighbor Tony would let me use his Wi-Fi.

But he did it.

Patiently.

For me.

I didn’t know what to do with this and I knew why.

It wasn’t just Vinnie Junior. It wasn’t Vinnie Senior. It wasn’t about how Benny used to be.

It was my dad, who could be mellow but who could also have a short fuse. He never would have spent forty-five minutes looking for something, even if it was important, even if it was my dad who lost it.

If he couldn’t find it in five minutes, he’d shout, “You need it, find it your-fuckin’-self,” and stalk away.

And I knew this because, needless to say, in the way he lived his life, there were a lot of important things that were lost. He had kids and a lot of women who needed those important things, asked for them, he couldn’t find them, and he lost his mind because he lived his life the way he did and he didn’t want anything dragging on it.

Like keeping track of important things.

Like his women and kids.

Thinking on my dad and the way he used to be (and probably still was), Benny’s behavior was so difficult to process, I was standing where he left me when he came back down the stairs. Of course, it appeared he only changed from his grease-stained tee to a new one, which probably took him about two minutes, but still.

Seeing as I hadn’t moved, when Ben made it to me, his expression was set firm at concerned.

He lifted a hand, again curled it around the side of my neck, and he asked, “Babe, you okay?”

I looked right into his eyes and stated, “You searched forty-five minutes to find a password for me, makin’ yourself late, doin’ that shit for me.”

A new expression moved over his face and his fingers dug in lightly when he replied, “I see I scored with that, so it’s a hit to share that I did it so you can get on your laptop, but I also did it ’cause it’d suck the router went down or some shit, and I’d need it to get my TVs back online and didn’t know the password. So I also did it for me.”

He gave that to me straight-up honestly, not milking something he did for himself to score a point with me.

Yet another expression shifted over his features as he watched whatever expression shift over mine before he murmured, “See I scored with that too.”

“You grew up, Benny Bianchi,” I whispered, and that was when soft and sweet took over his expression, even as his hand at my neck pulled me closer.

“Way you made things easy on Manny today, more proof added to a pile you’ve been givin’ me that you did too, Frankie Concetti,” he whispered back.

“Yeah, but I like the way you did it.”

At that, he gave me surprised satisfaction before his eyes went dark in a way that made my heart race. His hand at my neck pulled me even closer, this time while his head bent to mine.

Then he kissed me. Not a sweep of the tongue, not a hot make out session where I ended up pressed to a wall. But it was deep, it was wet, it was long, and it was amazing.

He lifted his head and looked into my eyes. “Would kill to take that further, but I gotta get to work.”

Yes.

He grew up.

And I liked the way he did.

“You got someone comin’ to keep you company?” he asked.

“Yeah. My girl, Jamie.”

“Good. You two need dinner, call my cell. I’ll send one of the kids with a pie or some rigatoni casserole or whatever.”

The Bianchi rigatoni casserole. Second best to a Bianchi pizza pie, and there were some who (wrongly) would argue it was better.

Jamie needed some of that.

So did I.

“Thanks, Ben,” I whispered.

“Anytime, baby,” he whispered back.

It was me who went up to my toes to touch my mouth to his.

When I rocked back to my heels, he was grinning.

I returned it.

He took that in, his eyes dropping to my mouth to do it, before they came back to mine and he remarked, “I take it you didn’t test the password.”

I shook my head.

His hand swayed me slightly toward the living room when he ordered, “Get on that, honey. I gotta go, but if I gotta talk to Tony, I gotta go.”

“Right,” I murmured and broke from his hold to go to the living room.

The password written on the paper was one digit off the one Benny gave to me. It didn’t end in BB but in BAB, all of his initials. Benito Alessandro Bianchi.

And it worked.

***

I felt arms tighten around me and the haze of sleep lifted, slightly.

When it did, I felt a whole lot more, that being Benny’s body shifting into mine as he shifted mine to his.

I tilted my head back, opening my eyes, and through the dark I saw Benny.

Half asleep, my belly still did a dip.

“Go back to sleep, baby,” he whispered.

“The night good?” I muttered sleepily.

“The usual insane. Now it’s over. Go back to sleep.”

“Thanks for sending the casserole. Jamie loved it,” I told him, my voice fading.

“You need food anytime, I’ll feed you. Now go back to sleep, honey.”

I dipped my chin, pressed my face into his throat, and mumbled, “Okay, Benny.”

He gave me a squeeze.

I moved to drape an arm over his waist and I gave him one back.

Then I did as told and went back to sleep.

My hands on the steering wheel of my Z, I was aiming her toward Vinnie and Benny’s Pizzeria.

And I was freaking out.

It was the first time I was behind the wheel of my car since I’d driven it to Hart’s house, following the car Hart’s goons had Vi in.

But that wasn’t the reason I was freaking out.

It had been three days since the first day Benny and me tried on the idea of Benny and me to see how it fit.