‘My head was in the way.’
‘My aim is very good.’
‘That’s the wrong answer.’
‘What’s the right answer?’
‘The fact that you don’t know says it all.’
‘I’m a good shot,’ he protested.
I glared at him. ‘I’d like to be alone now.’
‘What?’
‘You’ve seen me. I’m clearly alive. I am not communicating with any “fucking Marinos” as you call them. I am putting food in my mouth and consuming water regularly. You can go home now.’
‘But I want to help you, Sophie. This isn’t good—’
‘Nic.’ I sighed. ‘There’s nothing you can do for me.’
‘I love you,’ he said, pleadingly.
The words hit me right in the chest. He had never said that to me before, and now here it was, laid bare, in the lowest moment of my life. There was nothing but truth between us – the cold, hard truth, and those three little words that suddenly felt so huge. I had wanted to hear that for as long as I could remember. I had wanted someone to look at me the way he was looking at me just then. But now that I had it … it felt hollow. It felt wrong. And I knew, deep in my gut, that I wasn’t in love with him. I never had been. I’d been infatuated with the idea of love, and at a time when I had so little of it in my life, he had waltzed right through my defences and become that idea. I didn’t know what or who he really was beneath that.
‘You don’t know me,’ I said quietly. ‘Not really, not properly. Our whole time together has been about trying to make it work against all these crazy odds. It’s been about obstacles, not about each other.’
‘I know what I feel,’ he said resolutely.
A little broken part of me wanted to laugh. ‘You couldn’t even look at me when you heard I was a Marino.’
‘I was caught off guard,’ he protested.
‘When you love someone, you don’t lie to them. You don’t point a gun at their head. And you don’t turn your back on them when they’re at their most vulnerable.’ I swallowed hard. ‘That’s not love.’
He shook his head.
‘I think you love the idea of me,’ I whispered. Saying the words out loud hurt, but there was a tinge of relief in it too, as if the twisted fairy tale I’d been trying to make work was over, and I was OK. I had stopped trying to change him, trying to change myself to fit with him. ‘But we’re not right for each other, are we? We end up lying to each other, hurting each other.’
Nic ground his knuckles against the doorframe. ‘I told you. I would never hurt you.’
‘There’s more than one way to hurt someone.’
‘Yeah.’ His face twisted, from confusion to something else that I couldn’t place. ‘There is.’
I scrubbed my hands across my face, feeling exhausted all of a sudden.
‘We can talk about this again,’ he said quietly. ‘When you’re feeling better.’
I didn’t want to look at him any more. How could I, knowing I had gone to him when I should have gone to my mother? How could I lean on him with the image of his pointed gun burnt into my mind? He would always put his duties before everything else. He was a soldier first and a person second.
When I didn’t reply, he sucked in a breath and said, ‘We’ve heard your uncle and Donata are in New York meeting suppliers. I don’t know what their plans are, but when you’re feeling up to it, I think we should talk about your safety.’
‘He won’t come back here,’ I said. ‘Not after what he did. There’s too much heat on him.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure.’
I slammed back against my pillow, fear and rage competing inside me. ‘I need to be alone right now, Nic.’
‘I’ll come back when you’re feeling better.’ He hovered in the doorway for a moment longer. ‘And Sophie? Thank you for saving my life.’
In place of hers, I thought, as bitterness twisted inside me. What was I supposed to say to that? You’re welcome? It didn’t matter. He had disappeared into the hallway. Something sour curled in my stomach. Skirting around that night had opened the gates, and the images were slithering into my mind like snakes, and I had to shut them out and block my ears to keep them away. Not yet. Not now.
I waited until I heard the soft thud of Nic’s feet reach the bottom of the stairs, then I buried my head between my knees and rocked back and forth in my bed, trying to calm my thoughts. Think of something else. Think of anything else. It was so hard; every part of me was bound up in my mother, in the diner, in my uncle. I dug my nails into my palms and concentrated on the little half-moons of pain. The minutes ticked by, slowly, and the cloud inside me got heavier. The sun had disappeared. It was getting dark and there was a quiet touch of relief in it.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
THE BREAKDOWN
‘Sophie?’
I snapped my head up.
Luca was standing in my room. He was so close to me his knees were brushing against my bed. How had I not sensed him before now?
I sat up, shrouded inside the bedcovers. His hair was swept back from his face so his blue eyes shone unnaturally in the duskiness. His mouth was quirked to one side, frowning, but otherwise he looked well. Smoke inhalation obviously agreed with him.
I didn’t have the strength to be indignant. ‘I want to be alone, Luca.’
He glanced at the door, his teeth nipping across his lower lip. ‘Why have you fashioned yourself like an Eskimo?’
‘Excuse me?’
He gestured at the duvet pulled over my head and around my shoulders. ‘That can’t be good for your burns. You must be incredibly overheated.’
‘I’m fine.’
He pinned me with his gaze. ‘Are you?’
‘I don’t recall inviting you up here.’
He lowered himself to the floor and sat on my carpet, leaning back on the palms of his hands. ‘Come on, Sophie. You should know well enough by now that I make a habit of showing up to places I’m not invited.’
His gaze was appraising. I had the horrible sense that he was leaning right over the waters of my soul. It occurred to me then, rather inappropriately, that this was the first time he had spoken more than a few words to me since he had twined his fingers in my hair and crushed his lips against mine. Stop.
I regressed further into my Eskimo-blanket. ‘What do you think you’re doing here?’
‘I’m waiting,’ he said.
I shook the duvet off and tossed it behind me. ‘What are you waiting for?’
‘This.’
‘This?’
‘Conversation, Sophie. You need to talk to someone.’
For one precious, golden minute, there was nothing but incredulity filling me up. ‘Now you want to talk to me?’ I said.
He screwed his face up. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Nothing’s changed,’ I said. ‘I’m still a Marino.’
He gestured at himself. ‘And I’m a Falcone. Who cares?’
‘You did, Luca. That day at your house.’ I wasn’t really mad about that – it made sense, given everything – but it bore mentioning, especially since I sure as hell wasn’t going to mention the other reason he acted so weird at the Council. ‘You cared,’ I repeated, trying to shake off the sting that came with the memory.
He leant closer. ‘You’re damn right I cared,’ he growled. ‘I cared that the Marino standing in front of my entire family with a red target on her forehead was the only Marino in the history of the world that I have ever and will ever care about.’
‘Oh,’ I said. Beneath the dull thud of grief there was something else flickering inside me. ‘You didn’t care about the … the name.’
‘Not the name.’ He held my gaze, unfaltering, unblinking. ‘Just the girl.’
I looked at my hands interlocked on top of the duvet. ‘You really aren’t like them,’ I murmured.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not.’
I thought of my own family. The safe, the switchblades
, the ring. Evelina. God. The things I knew. The things I wished I didn’t know.
I shook my head. ‘If you knew how badly I’m tangled up in this Marino thing …’ I trailed off, my words falling into breathlessness. It was too much to think about.
He offered me a conspiratorial smile. ‘If you knew how badly I’m tangled up in this Falcone stuff …’
I grimaced. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘I’m not going to judge you,’ he said. ‘You’re the same person you always were. So please,’ he leant back again and this time his smile was soft, ‘don’t worry about all that other stuff, Marino.’
‘OK, Falcone.’ I scowled at him and he scowled right back. ‘But I really just want to be by myself right now, so if you think I’m just going to sit here and spill my guts to you about what I’m feeling, then you’re wrong.’
‘That’s fine.’ He shrugged, looking past me towards the slivered gap in my curtains. ‘Did you know it’s going to be a blood moon tonight? You should open your curtains so you can see it.’
‘Are you being for real right now?’
He raised his eyebrows, the movement making his eyes seem impossibly huge and bluer than ever. ‘Have you never seen one?’ he asked. ‘The moon looks like it’s been dipped in red paint and it glows so bright you can barely see the stars. It’s one of those phenomena that remind you how—what? Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘OK, Mufasa. I get it.’
Luca’s mouth dropped open and I had the absurd feeling of laughter catching in my cheeks. ‘Excuse me for trying to enlighten you about the wonders of this universe.’
‘Don’t waste your breath on me, Nature Nerd. Save it for the space documentary you so obviously want to make.’
He shook his head. ‘See what happens when I try to be sincere? You stomp on my dreams.’
‘I’m not stomping on them, I’m making fun of them. There’s a difference.’
‘Is there?’
‘It’s very subtle.’
‘So are you going to let me finish?’
I was pulled back into myself, the amusement draining from the ache in my cheeks. Had I been smiling? I frowned, scolding myself. I rubbed at my chest, trying to soothe the sudden roaring pain inside it, demanding to be felt.
Luca was talking again. What was his game plan? Did he really think I was interested in astrology at a time like this? ‘What are you still doing here?’ I interrupted. ‘I mean, seriously.’
He fell out of his sentence. I watched him weigh his words, surprised at how accustomed I had become to the subtleties in his body language. ‘We went through a big thing, Sophie. You went through a big thing.’
‘So?’
‘So?’ he repeated with emphasis. ‘I’m worried about you.’
‘Don’t.’ The pang was growing deeper. I lay back and looked at the ceiling.
‘You saved my life, Sophie. Again,’ he added after a beat, like he couldn’t quite believe it. I wasn’t sure which shocked him more, the fact that he kept almost dying, or that I kept saving him.
‘That’s 2-1 to me,’ I said, without feeling any amusement. ‘You owe me a grand gesture.’
‘I thought it was a bouquet.’
‘One is a bouquet. Two is a grand gesture.’
‘Name it.’
‘Go away. Is that grand enough for you?’
‘That’s too grand.’
I exhaled noisily at the ceiling.
‘So what’s going on with that old lady in your kitchen? She’s been here all week. I asked her if she was your grandmother and she called me a worthless heathen and told me to mind my own business. Millie had to force her to let us inside and when Nicoli tried to make a sandwich she threw a fork at him. As someone who has thrown many forks at my brother I wouldn’t advise it. He has a very bad temper …’ Luca kept talking, filling the space with words upon words, waiting for me to bite.
I unbunched the duvet and pulled it over me again with a groan. He could sit in my room for ever and burn a hole in my carpet, but if he thought he could get me to open up to him he was wrong.
He changed tack. ‘What did you say to Nicoli earlier? I’ve never seen him look so contrite. Was it the whole beard thing? It makes him look creepy, doesn’t it? A couple more days and he’ll turn into Rasputin. That’s a historical reference, by the way. It’s very funny, I assure you …’
I had done a history project on Rasputin. I smiled despite myself, then bit the inside of my cheeks and concentrated on the soreness as I made myself remember my mother’s face.
Finally Luca fell silent, defeated by my stillness. I could still feel his presence. I smelt the faintness of his aftershave in the air. I was keenly aware of his every exhale, his every quiet movement.
He didn’t budge, didn’t even take out his phone. He just sat staring into the darkness, and for what? After ten minutes I sat up again and burrowed over my duvet, freeing myself from its clinging heat. I sat facing him on the bed. ‘Can’t you take a hint?’
‘I can,’ he said. ‘But that doesn’t mean I have to follow through on it.’
‘Well, it’s inappropriate for you to be here. This is my bedroom.’
He lifted his brows. ‘You’ve been in my bedroom.’
There. So he remembered. He didn’t seem to care, but at least he hadn’t forgotten about it. ‘Sorry,’ he said quickly, dipping his head and running his hand across his jaw. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’
We sat in silence. After a little while, he turned away from me and lay back against the carpet, folding his arms behind his head. I studied his profile, the sureness of his brow line, his straight-edged nose. Then I turned away too. What a time to be so superficial and distractible.
I thought of my mother again. I remembered being six years old and missing the ice cream truck when it came by my house. I had chased after it and just as it disappeared around the bend at the end of my street, I tripped. I started to cry as blood dribbled down my legs. My mother was on the phone to one of her clients at the time and had been watching from the window. She rushed outside and folded me into her arms. I could smell lavender and sunscreen. Don’t cry, sweetheart. We drove to the corner store and filled a basket with every colour popsicle imaginable. At home we packed the freezer until it was overflowing. She smiled at my blue-frozen lips. Now you’ll always have backup, so you don’t have to chase the truck if you miss it.
There – that pain again, sharp and twisting. I gasped, falling back into myself.
‘Are you thinking about her?’ Luca asked.
I didn’t answer.
I heard him shift and caught his outline in my peripheral vision. He was sitting up. ‘They say internalized grief takes longer to heal.’
I opened my mouth and then shut it again. I had nothing to say.
His voice twisted into something soft and sombre. ‘When my father died I didn’t cry for three weeks. It’s not that I wasn’t sad. I was sadder than I ever imagined a human being could be. It felt like something was burrowing inside me, trying to claw its way out. Even gunshot wounds pale in comparison.’ He smiled a little, wryly. ‘But for some reason I couldn’t talk about it, I couldn’t cry about it. It’s like everything was trapped inside me, and the longer it stayed that way the more it felt like it was ripping me up. I kept wondering what was wrong with me, why I couldn’t grieve the way my brothers were. Why I couldn’t just feel it and … let it out.’
‘Why couldn’t you?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I think I was too scared to cry. I never knew how much grief felt like fear. I was terrified of my life without my father in it. He was a part of my identity, and when he left it was like he took a chunk of me with him.’
‘The best bit,’ I whispered, feeling a deep thud of empathy.
‘Yes,’ he murmured. ‘The best bit.’
‘Do you think he did?’
‘Maybe.’ He jerked his head. We still weren’t looking at each other, but I could see most of
his face now. His brow was furrowed. He was lost in another time and place. ‘But at the time I never considered that he had left behind a part of him, too, in me.’
‘His best bit?’
I caught the corner of his smile. ‘I like to think so.’
Slivers of moonlight were peeking through the gap in my curtains, streaking across the carpet. I could see Luca’s hands bathed white beneath it.
I found myself moving closer, straining to see him and wishing he would look at me. ‘Does it get easier?’
‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘They say it gets better but I think the pain becomes bearable not because it’s quieter or lessened, but because you get used to it being there. Life goes on, and you go with it.’
I frowned, rubbing the pain beneath my chest. ‘I can’t imagine I’ll ever get used to this,’ I conceded.
He turned to watch me in the darkness. The moonlight fell across his face, alighting the deep cobalt in his eyes. ‘You’d be surprised at what you’re made of.’
‘I don’t think I will be.’
‘I do.’
My throat was starting to feel wobbly. ‘How do I do it?’
Luca got to his knees so that we were leaning towards each other at eye level. He didn’t touch me, but something inside made me feel like maybe he wanted to. I wanted him to. His hands were hovering close to mine. ‘You embrace the pain, Sophie. Don’t fear it. Let it wash over you. Use it as fuel to spur you on.’
‘I don’t want to think about that night.’
‘You have to, sooner or later.’
‘I should have saved her.’
‘You couldn’t have.’
‘I didn’t try hard enough.’
‘Sophie.’ Luca came closer still. I was overwhelmed by his smell, fresh and familiar. My fingers were starting to shake. I could feel the walls starting to buckle, the things I had kept hidden beginning to emerge once more. ‘When I pulled you out of that fire you were nearly dead. Even if you had gotten to her it would have been too late for both of you.’
I gaped at him, and something flashed at the back of my mind. I remembered the feeling of hands on my ankles, my shoulders, my waist, dragging me from her. ‘You pulled me out?’
Inferno (Blood for Blood #2) Page 28
