Chapter Seven

Patrick

After I close the door, I keep my hands behind my back, wrapped firmly around the bouquet of roses I picked up for Holly on my way over. I know it’s a lousy apology gift, but it’s a start. I just hope she accepts them after I tell her the truth about everything.

“Here,” I offer when she gets back to me, passing them to her. “I saw them and thought of you.”

“Thank you,” Holly murmurs, glancing from the blooms to my face. “You didn’t have to.”

“Oh, but I wanted to,” I insist.

She smiles down at them before lifting them to her nose to take a deep breath of their soft aroma. Then, she gestures for me to follow her, suggesting, “We can sit down in the living room if that’s okay with you.”

“That sounds great,” I respond, starting to feel nervous about what I have to tell her. It’s been so long since I’ve opened up like this with another person.

I follow her into her living room, and when she settles onto the couch, I sit next to her. We’re close enough that our knees touch. There’s a kind of anxious energy radiating from Holly, and I feel terrible for effectively abandoning her while I figured out my own mess. It wasn’t fair to her, and it’s clear to me that I should have been more considerate of how she was feeling.

“So,” she begins after a moment, taking a shaky breath, “how have you been?”

“I’ve been okay,” I admit, drumming my fingertips along the top of my thigh. “Been doing a lot of thinking the past couple days. There are some things that I haven’t told you that I think you need to know before we get too serious.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” she jokes weakly. I can tell she’s worried, though. There’s an obvious strain in her voice, and her body is held tight like a spring about to go off.

“I guess you’ll be the judge of that,” I mutter, knocking my knee against hers, hoping the contact brings her some sort of comfort. I know it helps ground me. “I told you I had a daughter on that first night we met, but I never told you about her mother. There isn’t any case of a crazy ex-wife, but she isn’t around anymore. When my daughter Jeannie was a few years old, Delilah was diagnosed with brain cancer. We lost her a little over a year after the initial diagnosis.”

“I’m so sorry,” Holly whispers softly, reaching over to rest her hand over mine. I hadn’t even realized I was starting to shake until she stopped it. “I can’t imagine how difficult that was.”

“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through in my life,” I continue, a weight starting to lift from my shoulders as I open up. “But we made it through. I was really messed up about it for a long time, but I’ve healed. I still love Delilah with all of my heart, but that doesn’t mean I’m incapable of loving someone else.”

“Of course you still love her,” Holly reassures me, squeezing my hand compassionately. “I think I’d be concerned if you told me that you didn’t.”

I give her a warm smile. While I hadn’t expected her to be upset or doubt my ability to be with someone else, I didn’t think she’d know exactly what to say to make me feel better. She’s so full of surprises and so full of wisdom that I still haven’t gained despite the years of experience I have on her. I wonder what she’ll be able to teach me if she still wants to stick around after this next part.

“Is that what you were worried about?” she asks when I don’t respond after a few seconds. “I don’t care what happened in your past, especially not when it’s something like that.”

“No, it’s actually not what I was worried about. At least… it wasn’t my main concern,” I confess with a grimace. “I’ve also not told you about what I really do for work.”

“You haven’t,” she notes carefully. I can tell she’s already skeptical about what I do, and I can’t say that’s surprising. I’ve been dodgy about it, and Holly’s not an idiot. She must know something’s up.

“Well, that’s because it’s… complicated,” I continue, running my free hand through my hair. “And I’m worried that once you know about it, you won’t want to be around me anymore. Not that I’d blame you if that’s the decision you made. I know I need to give you the opportunity to make your own decision before we get too far into this.”

“Patrick…” she trails off, looking down at our intertwined fingers. “You’re scaring me a little.”

“That’s not my intention,” I assure her, tightening my hold on her. “But I can’t deny that you might be scared of me after I tell you this.”

“Tell me, then,” she insists a little impatiently. I think she’s going to pull away from me, but she stays right where she is.

I sigh, the speech that I prepared on my way over leaving my mind. Then, I continue, “I’ve been doing the same thing for most of my life. I worked with a group of people in New York and did some bad things.”

“Bad things?” she questions, looking away from me to stare at a point on the wall next to her tv. “I don’t think I know what you mean.”

“I’d rather not elaborate but…” I shake my head. I need to just be upfront with her. I can’t keep beating around the bush here. “I work with the Russian mafia. My position used to be hands on, but when Delilah got pregnant with Jeannie, I packed us up and moved us to Cherrywood Village. I thought that coming to a small town would be my way out.”

“But it wasn’t,” she mutters, her voice hard. It sounds like she’s upset, but she’s still holding my hand. I haven’t scared her off yet.

“You’re right,” I admit, feeling my body get stiff. “I didn’t want to keep working. They found me, and a group of guys showed up at my door about a month after we moved in. I didn’t really have much of a choice in the matter.”

“I see,” she replies, finally detangling our hands. “Can I have a second to think?”

“Of course you can,” I agree, folding my hands in my lap. “If you want, I can leave. You can call me when you’re ready to talk, or you can just never talk to me again. It was just important to me that you knew about this.”

“I don’t want you to leave,” she says quickly, running her fingers through her hair. “I just… It’s a lot to process, I guess.”

“It is,” I acknowledge.

The two of us fall into a tense silence. So many things pop into my head, but I force myself to hold my tongue. I can’t imagine what Holly’s thinking right now. I need to let her sort through everything before I lay any more on her. The only bit of solace that I have is that she doesn’t want me to leave. We might still have a chance, but it’s all up to her.

This is even more terrifying than I thought it would be. We’re so close to our happy ending, but decisions that I made as a stupid teenager might keep us from that. I can only hope that she’s willing to take a chance on me and all the baggage that I carry around with me.

“So, there’s never any leaving it?” she finally asks, still not looking at me.

“Not if I stay in the states,” I mutter. “I suppose that I could leave and make myself a new identity. It would be hard, but not impossible.”

She hums, biting her cheek. “And if we were together, would I be in danger?”

“Not immediately, no,” I admit. But I know that I need to tell her the truth. She needs to be able to make an informed decision. “I can’t say that you’d be completely safe, though. I’m rarely involved in the things that are truly dangerous, but we have a lot of enemies. There’s always a chance that one of our guys gets caught and my name comes up.”

“What is it that you actually do?” she questions, finally turning to look at me. “You still haven’t really told me.”

“I’m the person that carries the money and washes it,” I explain.

“So you use the casino, then?” Holly guesses accurately.

“I do.”

“And Maxwell’s involved, too.”

“He is,” I confirm. Normally, I wouldn’t reveal any of my associates, but I’ve already made the decision that I’m going to be completely honest with her. “I think he was looking to get out of the action, too. So, our bosses built the casino and put him in charge of it. I’d argue that his end of the deal is more dangerous than mine, but I don’t know if that really matters in the grand scheme of things.”

“Is there anyone else in town that’s involved with this?” she asks.

“Not that I know of,” I answer. “It’s just me and him.”

She goes quiet after that, thinking about everything again. This time she keeps her eyes on me. I can almost see the gears in her head turning as she figures out what she wants to say next. Finally, she speaks.

“You know why I moved here?” she asks, not addressing anything else I’ve said.

“I don’t.”

“My family has been falling apart since I was a little kid,” she says, looking down at her lap. “My dad gambled away all of our savings, and my mom had a mental breakdown so bad that I practically raised myself.”

“I just couldn’t take the pressure anymore, so I left. I packed as much as I could into a rental car, cleared out my bank account, and came here to start a new life. But the only thing I knew how to do was work in casinos. It’s like I couldn’t get away from it.”

“That’s hard,” I respond, sympathizing with the story. It sounds like the two of us aren’t so different after all.

“It was,” she shrugs. “But I’m used to doing hard things. I’ve done them my whole life.”

“Me too,” I acknowledge, unsure of what else to say or how to comfort her.

She reaches over, grabbing my hand before continuing, “I think it might be nice to not have to do them alone anymore.”

“What are you suggesting?” I ask, not wanting to get too excited.

“I’m suggesting that I’m willing to take all of the dangerous things you might have in your past,” she declares simply. “I don’t want to lose you. And I’m more than happy to do something that might be a little difficult if it means that I get to have you.”

“Are you saying you want to run away with me?” I ask.

“Maybe,” she shrugs. “If that’s what you want to do. But if you wanted to stay here, that’s fine too. We can figure it out together. That’s what couples do, right?”

“That’s exactly what couples do,” I confirm, no longer able to keep myself from grinning. “So you want to be my girl?”

“Nothing would make me happier,” Holly declares.

I’m so overwhelmed by my feelings, by the affection that I have for her, that I use my free hand to cup her face and pull her into a kiss. She makes a surprised noise into my mouth before responding with fervor. I yank her closer, deepening the kiss and trying to put all of the things I still haven’t shared into this.