Guns and Roses

17: Secrets

I was wrapped up in Luca's arms when I felt a presence in the room. They were creeping closer towards Luca until I leaped from the bed and tackled them to the floor. I had one hand around their throat, sitting on them with my knees holding their arms down, and a gun pointed at their forehead. Once I was fully woken up and realized who it was, I yelled in a whisper, "What are you doing here?" I quickly got off of Marco and stood up.

He got up and straightened out his suit. "I told you I would get here in two weeks. Who is he?" He wasn't whispering at all and Luca started to shift around, looking for me.

"Go downstairs. I'll talk to you there." He rolled his eyes and left. I quickly put my gun back and put my pillow in my place. Luca cuddled it with a sigh and went back to sleep. That was cute. I checked my phone for the time and realized it's five in the morning, on our Friday off. I groaned and left the room to go downstairs. "Why are you here early," I asked Marco when I entered the kitchen.

He shrugged. "Didn't have much to do, so I decided to come a day earlier. Who is he? You've only been here for two weeks." Has it been? It felt way longer than that.

"We are together." Before he can ask, I cut him off. "Yes, in a serious relationship."

"Huh." He rubbed the side of his jaw with his hand. "And this one's going to last?"

"Go fuck yourself, Marco," I glared at him.

He dared to laugh at me. "I missed you, μωρό ξάδερφος. (baby cousin.)"

I walked up to his side and hugged him. "I missed you, too."

He hugged back and asked, "What's with this accent?"

"What accent," I asked innocently.

"Ana," he said with a warning tone.

I sighed and relaxed, letting my natural, and weirdly mixed, Greek-Italian-New Yorker accent out. It's very hard to fake an accent. It takes a lot of work. "Fine, fine."

"Why are you pretending?"

I walked over to the fridge and started to make breakfast for the house. I first pulled out dough to make my γιαγιά (grandmother's) spanakopita. It was a Greek breakfast pie with spinach and feta in a crumbling puff pastry. While I was making that, I made some cornettos like how my nonno made them. "You told me to stay hidden, not draw attention to myself," I replied as I laid out the uncooked pastry dough.

"I didn't mean for you to change yourself. I just meant not to get arrested." He pulled out some coffee and started to make his usual morning cappuccino.

"And I didn't," I said as I finished mixing everything and started to lay everything out in a pan.

"You know," Marco said a few minutes later, "You never really told me who was in your bed."

I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. "Why do you need to know?"

I placed the spanakopita in the oven and finished up what I was doing for the cornettos. "Because I love you and I don't like seeing you hurt."

I froze. It was rare we ever verbally said our love to one another, so hearing him say that shocked me. He really was serious. I looked over at him. "I love you, too, Marco. But you have to trust me to make my own decisions." I turned back to my pastries and said, "He's good for me. I'm not the bitch I was back in New York. I've... changed. For the better."

"And slacking off more," he joked. I laughed with him. "Back in New York, you would have been up and ready by the time I arrived."

"Because I was plagued with nightmares."