Dark Secrets(28)

What man did that?

Who would turn down sex just because they didn't want you to think it was a reward for opening up to them?

The answer was pretty damn clear.

No matter how much he declared the contrary, Danny was a good guy.

And for some reason, that was terrifying.

Bad guys, douchebags, fuckboys, players, they were all easy. You knew they were nothing but trouble. You knew where you stood with them, and it was usually with one foot out the door.

But the good guys, they were dangerous.

They could sneak in with their patience and their consideration and their genuine concern about your comfort level and happiness. They could get under the surface and sink in and lay hooks and you weren't even aware they were doing it.

Until one day, you needed or they needed to pull away.

And the hooks got pulled, taking a healthy chunk of you with them, leaving you missing pieces that had been whole before.

It wasn't that she had never known any good men in her life; she had. Appearances of bad aside, Xander, Gabe, and K were good guys. They did some wrong things, but always for the right reasons. Their moral compasses were always pointing due north. They would drop everything in their lives to come to her, to help her, to support her if she needed it.

They were good.

But she had never been interested in any of them outside of a strong friendship.

They didn't run the risk of hurting her.

Danny did.

He was maybe the first guy she had ever been interested in who did. Because she generally chose guys she, at least at a subconscious level, knew there was no future with. They lived out of town or they were not serious, not in a settling down stage, too self-obsessed, too distant, too addicted to work, too... something to allow them to get in deep enough to hurt her.



       
         
       
        

Piss her off? Abso-freaking-lutely.

But not hurt her.

She walked into her apartment, flicking on the light, and locking the doors.

It was too late for regrets.

If there was one thing she learned that absolutely always applied to adult interactions, it was there there were no takes-backsies. Everything said and done was out there to be interpreted and catalogued and probably brought back up at anytime from now until forever.

So she wasn't going to go back on her word. She wasn't going to put her mask back up and throw herself back over her wall and hide.

She was an adult and she was going to do the right thing. She was going to try.

Why Danny, some random nobody, got to be the one standing there waiting for her outside of her comfort zone was a mystery. He was attractive, true. But she had known attractive men before. He was alpha. But again, that wasn't new to her. Most of the men she interacted with were alpha in their own ways. He seemed to be able to read her, which was new and intriguing. He had some fighting skills. That was always a plus.

Though all that being said, she knew next to nothing about him.

As she stripped out of her clothes and climbed in the shower, she resigned herself to figuring him out.





--





That resolution took a whole new meaning when she showed up well before Danny the next day and found herself cornered in the office by Anthony.

"What do you want, Ant? I'm not in the mood."

"You're always in a mood," he countered and even from a few feet away, she could smell alcohol on his breath already. She wondered then, and for about the millionth time, why Vin hadn't gotten him help. It didn't even have to be obvious if he was worried about his business partners and competitors getting wind of a weak link in the family. He could have said he was on business and ship him to detox and rehab.

Why a man as careful and smart as Vin would let him run around drunk at four in the afternoon for years was completely beyond her.

Faith sighed. "Again, Ant. What do you want? I have a bar to set up."

"The new guy."

"What about him?" she snapped, not used to Anthony being so cryptic. Usually he had a runaway mouth with no filter.

"Something felt off with him," he said, stepping inside and closing the door, something he never did. Mainly because he wasn't supposed to be in the office at all, around hundreds of thousands of dollars at all times that Vin didn't trust him with even though Anthony, like Gio and Salvatore, made an obnoxious income because of Vin's legitimate and illegitimate business ventures. But also because he never wanted to be that close to Faith. Ever.

"Oh, take your bruised ego back out of this office," she said, shaking her head as she swiveled her chair away from him. She didn't have time for his fragile male pride. 

"Stop being such a bitch and listen," he snapped, grabbing for, and snapping her chair back in his direction.