Ghosted you but wants you back

Nazzo gripped the steering wheel of the black SUV with one hand, the other arm slung loose over the top like he owned the whole damn block. The early evening light was fading over Brooklyn, turning the sidewalks into long shadows and the air thick with the smell of rain that hadn’t decided to fall yet. His mind wouldn’t shut up. It hadn’t since he saw her again a few days back, that quick, accidental run-in that hit him like a hook to the ribs he never saw coming.

Two years. He’d ghosted her clean after college, no explanation, no goodbye, just vanished into the family shit like a coward. Back then it had felt like the only move—keep her out of the wolf life, keep one foot in the normal world he was never really built for. But the truth sat heavy in his chest now: there’d been no good reason. Not really. He’d just been too chickenshit to let it get serious, too scared of what it meant that she was the only person who ever made him want to be more than just Gesualdo Mancuso’s hot-headed middle son.

He’d tracked her address through a couple of family connections he shouldn’t have pulled. Knew roughly what time she’d be walking home from her shift. Knew it was crossing a line. But lines had never stopped him before. No more pretending.

His ice-blue eyes scanned the sidewalk as he rolled slow down the quiet street, thick dark waves of hair messy from running his fingers through it too many times already. Every memory from college kept slamming into him—her laugh when he’d come back from a rugby match beat to hell, the way she’d let him lay his head in her lap while she ran her fingers through his hair, the charged banter that always felt like foreplay even when they kept it light. The good nights. The ones before he let the family pull him under. Before he decided he wasn’t good enough to keep her.

Then he saw her.

His chest tightened hard. Fuck. She looked even more beautiful than she had two years ago, like the time apart had sharpened everything that already made his head spin. Nazzo’s pulse kicked up, that familiar reckless heat flooding his veins. He eased the SUV alongside her, rolling the window down smooth, one arm still draped casual over the wheel while his other hand rested near the gear shift. The gold chains at his neck caught the last of the light. He let the cocky smirk pull at his full lips even as his stomach twisted with how badly he hoped she wouldn’t brush him off.

“Ey, principessa,” he called out, voice low and rough with that Sicilian-Brooklyn edge, the words rolling out like gravel wrapped in smoke. “Brooklyn’s a small borough, huh?” He let the line hang there, acting like this was pure coincidence, like he hadn’t been thinking about her nonstop since that run-in, like he hadn’t gone out of his way to put himself right here. His ice-blue eyes stayed locked on her, predatory focus softened by the way his chest ached just looking at her again. He wanted this. Needed it. Needed to see if she still felt it too, if those years hadn’t killed whatever they’d had.

Nazzo tilted his head slightly, smirk deepening even as his knuckles cracked once against the wheel out of nervous habit. “C’mon, baby. Hop in. I’ll give you a ride home... or wherever you wanna go. Ain’t lettin’ you walk the rest of the way. Not tonight.”

Inside, the tension coiled tight—part hope, part possessive hunger, all of it wrapped around the fear that she might turn and keep walking. He wasn’t sure he could handle that. Not after two years of pretending he’d done the right thing by letting her go.

Nazzo bounced lightly on the balls of his feet in the dim back room, the concrete floor cool under his sneakers as he stayed loose. His mind was a steel trap tonight—lead hand high, feint to the body to drop the guard, then explode over the top with the right. Pivot on the guy’s slow side and punish it. No wasted moves. No bullshit. Just lock in, win clean, and remind every asshole in Brooklyn why the Mancuso name still carried weight. He rolled his shoulders, the big rose tattoo on his neck flexing with the motion, gold chains shifting against his bare chest. The wolf was already awake, pacing, hungry. Nothing else existed.

Until the promoter barked his name and the doors swung open.

Nazzo stepped into the roar of the underground arena, ring lights blazing down like fire. The crowd screamed his name, but his ice-blue eyes sliced straight through the chaos, scanning row after row with a single purpose. He had invited her himself two nights ago—cornered her after she got off work, voice low and rough as he told her to come see him fight, that he wanted her there, no excuses. Just her in the crowd. Now the invitation hung in the air between them like live wire.

And there she was.

The sight of her hit him harder than any punch ever could. That same spark, still burning after two fucking years. His chest tightened with a raw, possessive ache. He had ghosted her like a coward back then, burying the only good thing in his life under family blood and underground fights, telling himself it was better that way. But seeing her now, right where he’d asked her to be, made every regret roar back to life. Maybe this was the sign. Maybe she wanted him again the way he still wanted her—deep, ugly, and unrelenting.

His mouth curved into that cocky smirk before he could stop it. He caught her eyes across the ring and gave her a slow, deliberate wink, the kind that always used to set the air between them on fire. Then he rolled his neck, slipped between the ropes, and let the world shrink to the fight.

The bell rang.

Everything sharpened into pure instinct. Jab, circle, test the reach. He moved like liquid violence, but beneath the focus he felt her eyes on him the whole time, burning into his skin. It poured gasoline on the fire already raging in his veins, turning every punch meaner, every step faster. She was watching. She had come because he asked. The thought made him dangerous.

A heavy fist crashed into his nose in the second round. White-hot pain exploded across his face, cartilage crunching loud in his own skull. Blood flooded warm and metallic over his lips and down his chest. Broken—again. He spat red onto the canvas and grinned through the throb, the wolf fully unleashed now. Nothing he wasn’t used to. He came back harder, relentless, shoulders driving forward like a freight train. Between combinations he stole quick glances toward her in the crowd, checking, making sure she was still there. The tension coiled tighter in his gut with every look. Don’t leave, bella. Not tonight. Not when I’m finally done running.

The final round turned ugly and perfect. Nazzo dropped the guy with a left hook that came straight from hell, followed by a right cross that put him down for good. The ref waved it off. The bell rang. Win.

Adrenaline surged through him like lightning, heart hammering against his ribs. Sweat and blood ran down his shirtless torso, dripping from his swollen, broken nose and the reopened cut over his eyebrow. The crowd was a blur of noise and hands reaching for him, but Nazzo ignored every last one of them. Trainers, promoters, screaming fans—none of it mattered. He jumped down from the ring and cut straight through the sea of bodies, people parting fast when they saw the look on his face.

He stopped right in front of her, close enough that the heat rolling off his skin and the sharp scent of fight—sweat, blood, faint cigar—filled the space between them. His chest still heaved, broken nose pulsing with every heartbeat, but the cocky smirk stayed in place, softer at the edges now, laced with something hungrier.

“Ey, bella,” he said, voice low and rough with that Sicilian-Brooklyn drawl, thick from the fight and everything else he wasn’t saying yet. He dragged the back of his hand across his bloody mouth, eyes locked on hers. “Told you I’d win. You came tonight like I asked... so you stayin’ for the rest of it, or you gonna make me chase you again?”

Nazzo could not sit still in the heavy silence of his Brooklyn apartment any longer. The walls felt like they were closing in, every tick of the clock driving the knife deeper into his chest. Three days of nothing from her. Three days since he had watched her slip away while he was still being dragged off that rival’s bloody body, his knuckles split open and his rage still roaring in his ears. He had sent the first messages like a man drowning: “Baby, let me explain. You okay? “ They sat unanswered, and the fear that had been gnawing at him since college came roaring back full force. She had seen the wolf now. Not the charming rugby player who once rested his head in her lap, but the hot-headed enforcer who lost all control the second another man touched what he already thought of as his.

He paced the dark living room, cracking his bruised knuckles until fresh blood beaded along the scabs, the sting barely registering through the storm inside him. A cigar burned forgotten in the ashtray, smoke curling uselessly toward the ceiling. He had snapped at Lero and Caz earlier, told them both to fuck off when they tried to talk him down, because none of them understood how badly he had fucked this up. She was not even officially his, yet he had wrapped his arm around her waist all night like she belonged to him, and then he had proven exactly why she should run. The thought of her deciding the violence, the family, the unpredictable rage was too much made his stomach twist into knots. He had already lost her once by ghosting her after college.

He could not survive losing her again.

By eleven o’clock the anxiety had become unbearable. Nazzo grabbed his keys without bothering to change, the black button-up still open at the collar, dark jeans rumpled from hours of restless movement. He drove through the quiet streets with his jaw locked tight, heart hammering like it did before a big underground fight. When he pulled up outside her place he killed the engine and sat there for a long moment, gripping the wheel until his knuckles screamed. Then he pulled out his phone with unsteady fingers and typed the last message he had promised himself he would not send.

”I’m outside. Please, principessa. Just talk to me.”

He stepped into the cool night air and walked to her door, broad shoulders tense, messy dark waves falling into his ice-blue eyes. When the door finally opened he straightened, one hand instinctively running through his hair as he stayed planted right there on the threshold. He did not step inside. He gave her the space he knew she needed, even as every instinct screamed at him to pull her against his chest and never let go.

“It’s been too long without you, beautiful,” he said, voice low and rough with that thick Sicilian-Brooklyn accent, the words scraping out like gravel. “Three days of this silence and I’m losing my fucking mind, baby. I keep seeing that night over and over, the way I dropped those drinks and went after him like a goddamn animal the second his hand was on you. I know you saw me then. The real me. Not the guy from college who let you take care of him after games. You saw the wolf. The enforcer who doesn’t think, just swings, because the idea of anyone else touching you makes me want to burn the whole world down.”

His chest rose and fell heavily, ice-blue eyes locked on her with raw, desperate intensity. His hand twitched hard at his side, fingers curling like they ached to reach out and wrap around her waist, to pull her close and smother her in the same possessive hold he had kept her in all night before everything exploded.

But he held back, knuckles still scabbed and bruised from the fight, the tension in his muscular frame vibrating through every inch of him. “I’m not sorry I hit him. That piece of shit knew exactly what he was doing, pushing me, whispering in your ear like he had any right. But I should have kept control. For you. I’ve been trying so hard to show you I’m all in this time, that I’m not the same idiot who walked away after college. Instead I showed you the worst part of me, the part I never wanted you to see up close.”

Nazzo swallowed thickly, the cocky smirk that usually lived on his full lips nowhere to be found. Only raw honesty remained, edged with the kind of fear that made his voice drop even lower, almost breaking. “I’ve been terrified you’d look at me and decide this life, this version of me, is too much. That you’d walk away for good because I couldn’t keep the violence in check when it came to you. But I can’t let you disappear on me again. I won’t survive it.”

He leaned one broad shoulder against the doorframe, still refusing to leave, the air between them thick with everything he was holding back. His hand flexed again, the need to touch her, to claim her, to smother her in the intensity of how badly he wanted this almost overwhelming him. “Yell at me. Curse me out. Hit me if you need to. I can take it, bella. I can take whatever you give me. Just don’t shut me out. Please, principessa. Stay here with me in this, even if it’s only to scream at me. Don’t walk away. I’m begging you.”

His voice cracked on the last words, ice-blue eyes never leaving her, every muscle in his body coiled tight with the desperate, all-consuming need for her not to close the door on him tonight.