Chapter 32 The Weight Of Morning Light 2
Falcone looked up, and there were indeed shadows under his eyes, a tightness around his mouth that suggested tension or pain or exhaustion. Possibly all three. "Good morning to you too."
"Maria said you've been up since four-thirty."
"Maria talks too much."
"Maria's worried about you. Rosa too." Cedric moved into the room, setting his coffee down on the edge of the desk. "What are you working on that's so important you can't sleep?"
"Various things. Supply chain issues. A territorial dispute that needs mediating. Financial reports." Falcone's eyes tracked Cedric's movements with that intensity that never quite went away. "And preparing for Saturday."
Cedric's stomach did a small flip. "Preparing how?"
"Making sure everything's perfect. The menu, the wine selection, the flowers for the table. Making sure no one who might alarm your mother is anywhere near the house." Falcone leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes. "Making sure I don't say or do anything that will make her hate me on sight."
The vulnerability in his voice was unexpected. Cedric had seen Falcone confident, controlled, commanding. Had seen him dangerous and gentle and everything in between. But anxious? Worried about making a good impression?
That was new.
"She's not going to hate you," Cedric said, though he wasn't entirely sure that was true.
"She might. Probably should, considering." Falcone dropped his hand, meeting Cedric's eyes. "I'm taking her son away from her. In a sense. Pulling him into a world that's dangerous and complicated. What mother wouldn't hate that?"
"You're not taking me away from anyone. I'm choosing to be here."
"Are you? Or are you just making the best of limited options?"
The question hung in the air between them. Cedric thought about Marcus's texts, still sitting in his phone. About the meeting he kept postponing. About the wire he'd thrown away weeks ago and never looked back.
"I don't know," he admitted. "Maybe both. Maybe it doesn't matter." He moved closer, perching on the edge of the desk next to Falcone's laptop. "I'm here. That's what matters."
"For now."
"Yeah. For now." Cedric picked up the cold coffee, made a face at the temperature, and set it back down. "That's all any of us have, right? Now. This moment. Tomorrow's not guaranteed."
"That's a depressing philosophy."
"It's a realistic one." Cedric reached out, his fingers finding Falcone's jaw, tracing the line of stubble there. The intimacy of it still surprised him sometimes~how easy it had become to touch, to be touched. How much he craved it. "Come back to bed. Whatever you're working on can wait a few hours."
"I can't. There's too much~"
"Falcone." Cedric's voice was firm. "You're exhausted. You're not going to do anyone any good if you work yourself into the ground. Including my mother, who you're trying so hard to impress."
"I'm not trying to~" Falcone stopped, sighed. "Fine. Yes, I'm trying to impress her. Is that so wrong?"
"It's kind of sweet, actually. In a controlling, type-A, slightly obsessive way."
"I'm not obsessive."
"You've been planning a dinner party since midnight. That's pretty obsessive."
Falcone caught Cedric's wrist, holding his hand against his jaw. His thumb pressed against Cedric's pulse point~a gesture that was becoming familiar, grounding. "I want her to see that you're safe. That you're happy. That I'm not~" He stopped.
"Not what?"
"Not using you. Not hurting you." Falcone's eyes were dark, serious. "Not the monster she's probably imagining when she tries to figure out who her son is living with."
"You are kind of a monster though."
"I know." No denial, no defense. Just acceptance. "But I'm trying to be less of one for you."
Cedric's chest tightened. "You don't have to change who you are. I'm not asking you to do that."
"Maybe I want to anyway." Falcone pulled Cedric's hand down, pressing a kiss to his palm. "You make me want to be better. It's inconvenient and uncomfortable and I don't entirely know what to do with the feeling."
"Join the club. I don't know what to do with any of this."
They sat like that for a moment, Falcone holding Cedric's hand, Cedric perched on the edge of the desk, the morning light slowly growing stronger beyond the windows. The city was waking up~Cedric could hear traffic starting to build, the distant sound of sirens, all the noise that came with eight million people trying to exist in the same compressed space.
"Come on," Cedric said finally, pulling gently on Falcone's hand. "Just a few hours. You'll think more clearly after you rest."
"I don't need~"
"Yes, you do. And I'm not taking no for an answer." Cedric stood, tugging more insistently. "You can't take care of everyone else if you don't take care of yourself first. Pretty sure that's like, basic life advice."
Falcone allowed himself to be pulled to his feet, which was answer enough. He was exhausted, whether he wanted to admit it or not. Cedric could see it in the way he moved, the slight heaviness to his limbs that wasn't usually there.
They made their way upstairs in silence. The house was coming alive around them~Cedric could hear Mrs. Kozlov's voice from somewhere below, giving instructions to someone. The vacuum cleaner starting up in a distant room. Morning sounds. Domestic sounds.
When they reached Falcone's bedroom~significantly larger and more opulent than Cedric's, because of course it was~Cedric pushed him toward the bed.
"Get in."
"Bossy."
"Someone has to be." Cedric waited until Falcone was actually under the covers before climbing in beside him. The bed was enormous, king-sized at minimum, with the same ridiculously comfortable mattress and silk sheets as Cedric's room. "Now close your eyes."
"I'm not a child."
"Then stop acting like one and go to sleep."
Falcone made a noise that might have been amusement or annoyance, Cedric couldn't tell. But he did close his eyes, his body slowly relaxing into the mattress. The tension that had been holding him rigid started to ease, millimeter by millimeter.
Cedric watched him in the growing light. Without the usual control and guard up, Falcone looked younger. There were lines around his eyes that Cedric hadn't noticed before, faint but visible. Signs of stress or age or just a life lived hard. His hair was messed up from running his hands through it, and there was still that stubble along his jaw that Cedric had traced with his fingers.
He looked human. Vulnerable. Nothing like the crime lord who commanded respect and fear in equal measure.
"Stop staring at me," Falcone murmured without opening his eyes.
"How did you know I was staring?"
"I can feel it."
Cedric smiled despite himself. "That's not how sight works."
"With you it is. I always know when you're looking at me." Falcone's arm came up, pulling Cedric closer until they were pressed together, Cedric's head on his chest. "You look at me differently than other people do."
"How do other people look at you?"
"With fear. With calculation. With the weight of expectations and old loyalties and new ambitions." His hand found Cedric's hair, fingers threading through it. "You look at me like I'm just a man. It's... unsettling."
"You are just a man."
"I'm really not."
"Okay, you're a man who happens to run a criminal empire. But under all that, you're still just a person." Cedric's fingers traced idle patterns on Falcone's chest, feeling the steady thump of his heartbeat. "A person who needs sleep and gets anxious about meeting his boyfriend's mother."
"Boyfriend," Falcone repeated, something amused in his voice. "That's a remarkably juvenile term for what we are."
"What would you prefer? Partner sounds too business-like. Lover sounds too romance novel. Significant other is too clinical."
"How about mine?"
Cedric's hand stilled. "That's possessive."
"I'm aware." Falcone's fingers tightened slightly in his hair. "But it's accurate."
"I'm not property."
"No. You're infinitely more valuable than property." His chest rose and fell with a deep breath. "You're the person I think about when I'm supposed to be focusing on business. The person I rearrange my entire life around. The person who makes me want to be something other than what I've always been."
"That's a lot of pressure to put on one person."
"I know. I'm sorry." But Falcone didn't sound sorry. He sounded certain. "Close your eyes. If I have to sleep, so do you."
"I'm not tired."
"Liar. I felt you tossing and turning last night."
Cedric lifted his head, looking at Falcone with surprise. "How? You were two doors down."
"I hear everything in this house." Falcone's eyes opened, meeting his. "Every footstep, every sigh, every moment you're restless and can't sleep. It's like a sixth sense. The house tells me when you're awake."
"That's either really romantic or really creepy."
"It's both. Everything with us is both." Falcone pulled him back down, settling him against his chest. "Now stop arguing and sleep. We both need it."
Cedric wanted to protest, wanted to say he was fine, that he didn't need to be taken care of. But the truth was, he was tired. Exhausted, actually. The anxiety about Saturday had been building for days, stealing his sleep in small increments until the debt was impossible to ignore.
And lying here, in Falcone's arms, listening to his heartbeat slow as he drifted toward sleep—it felt safe. It felt right. It felt like maybe, possibly, this could work. Whatever this was.
The morning light filtered through the curtains, turning everything soft and golden. Outside, the city continued its endless cycle~people going to work, living their lives, making choices big and small that would ripple out in ways they'd never fully understand.
Cedric closed his eyes and let himself drift, Falcone's hand still in his hair, the rise and fall of his chest a steady rhythm beneath his cheek.
Just before sleep claimed him, he heard Falcone murmur something. It might have been "I love you" or it might have been his imagination or it might have been a dream already starting.
He didn't ask for clarification.
Some things were better left in the spaces between words.