Thou Shall Not • book two

fill you in

Naomi's POV

Although I've lived in New York for a long period of my life, Atlanta's traffic seemed to be worse.

I fought the urge to beat my head against the window of our limo as we stood still in traffic for the 45th minute of the hour. The sounds of honking horns becoming more irritating by the second.

I was highly irritated, and it didn't help that our exit was only a few feet away, but about 5 cars stood in the way of letting us off.

I glanced over at Roman who wore a blank expression on his face. Sunglasses perched on his noes and his lips curved in a slight downward position as though he was thinking of a bad memory, and truth was, he probably was.

Last night wasn't bad, it just wasn't very good. The most eventful thing that had happened was the short confrontation with Jimmy, but it had caused Roman's attitude to shift and it has yet turned back to normal.

He went the rest of the night saying minimum words to his my parents and myself. He rudely ignored AJ when he tried to speak to him after the dinner was over and when we returned back to the hotel, he didn't even bother telling me good night after he had taken his shower and climbed in the bed next to me.

This morning he kept to himself and barley touched any of his breakfast.

Roman had a bad habit of making situations worse to himself than what they really were.

I just wanted him to be civil and that's hard for him because it's not what he wants to do. If it were up to him, he would have already told Jimmy off a countless amount of times.

We see this situation two different ways.

He sees Jimmy as being disrespectful. And don't get me wrong, Jimmy has been more than disrespectful. He's been flat out ignorant and self absorbed and that's only from what I've seen of him on TV. But can I really blame him?

I see Jimmy as being upset, and I know he still is. I know Jimmy better than I know myself and I know that he still hurts from what I did to him. Now he's expected to play nice with Roman as well as myself and he can't do it. And he had every right not to.

"You think incredibly loud." Roman's voice rung out into the quiet car.

I gave a small laugh, "How can you hear anything over these damn horns?"

"It reminds me of New York." He told me, "Noisy to the point that you can't even think. I miss that."

"Then why'd we move?" I asked him.

"I love the water more." He told me, then sighed, "I always thought about moving back to Florida, just not the way we did."

"Without me?" I asked quietly.

"Without the family drama." He said, "You know damn well I wouldn't have left you in New York."

"I know." I said with a small smile, "I just wanted to hear you say it."

He smiled a bit before taking his sunglasses off and leaning his head back on the seat.

"We should have never came." He mumbled, "I could be at the movies with Joelle right now. Or helping AJ. Or just being with you."

"But we're not there." I told him, "We're here. And there's no turning back."

"Yeah." He mumbled, "I know."

I sighed before turning his head towards me.

"I'm not gonna keep ranting to you about this." I told him, "Stop letting this get to you. Stop letting Jimmy get to you."