by Mj Fields
Another knock, this time louder.
I shut the drawer then hurry out of the room to open the door.
“Are you all right? You look pale.” Momma Joe touches my forehead.
“I’m good. I think he’s okay. We should go.”
She scans the room, not looking at me when she says, “Let me just check on him, and then we can head up.” She’s suspicious.
“You don’t trust me?” I accuse her.
“I never said that,” she says, walking toward his room.
“But you don’t.”
I’m trying to start a fight with her now? Fuck.
“Momma Joe,” I say as she is about to step inside the room.
She looks back at me skeptically.
I sigh. “Please don’t wake him. He obviously needs to sleep it off.”
Back to Black
Tris
As soon as we leave his room, I desperately want to erase what damage I had just done, but I know I crossed a line, and anxiety begins to creep in.
In the elevator, Momma Joe asks, “Are you all right?”
I look up at the white lights, counting up the floors. “Yeah.”
“Let’s not dwell on this, but it can’t be ignored. It’s already gotten back to your parents, and your father is very upset with me.”
I look over at her. “What are you talking about? I didn’t do anything wro—”
She holds up her phone.
Fuck.
I close my eyes when I see the screen shot of the picture that I took when I asked Matteo to kiss me. And then I read the text.
Zandor: Where is this taking place and why is it being allowed?
I roll my eyes. “I can kiss whoever I want to kiss. I’m not breaking any laws.”
“No, I suppose not, but you sent it to Marcello Effisto, and now he’s wreaking havoc on the Shore.”
“Yeah, well, he sent me a picture, too, so fair is fair, right?”
The elevator opens, and I step off as quickly as I can.
Momma Joe says nothing, but her heels clicking against the floor as she follows me down the hall, which feels a lot like I’m heading into a cage where I will again be on twenty-four hour watch, are like a death march.
Once inside the suite and the door is closed, Momma Joe says, “She’s here, and she’s fine.”
“Why the hell did she send the damn picture?” Dad’s voice comes through the speaker, and I turn around.
“Seriously?” I throw my hands up in the air.
“Seriously, Tris. You were raised better than to pull that shit right there,” Dad snaps.
“Yeah, well, newsflash: I grew up into my own imperfect person. Forgive me if I don’t fit the Steel mold. I’m tired. I’m going to bed and—”
“She’s covering for him,” Momma Joe interrupts me. “He is a—”
“You sure about that, Momma, or are you just siding with her because that’s what you do?” Dad asks.
“Oh my God, really, Dad? Don’t start a fight with her because you’re pissed at me.”
“I’m not pissed, Tris; I’m concerned.”
“Oddly”—I pull my crossbody over my head and toss it on the couch—“they both carry the same tone.”
“At least I’m consistent.”
“Zandor,” Momma Joe scolds him, and I hear my mom in the background do the same.
“I didn’t mean it like that. I just mean I haven’t flipped shit. I’ve done the things I’m told to do by our therapist and—”
“Six months,” I call as I walk toward my room in the suite. “Six months, and I am no longer your responsibility or burden. Goodnight all. Forever Steel.”
I shut the door behind me and, like always, I listen.
“She take her meds today?”
“Zandor …” Momma Joe sighs.
“I love you, Momma, but you have no idea how fucking hard this is. You have no idea how scary this is. None of us ever tried to—” He stops.
He can’t even say it.
“She was hurt, angry, scared, and full of guilt and shame.”
“She didn’t have to be. We get it. God, we get it more than anyone. We were feeling it, too.”
“There you are, then.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dad’s voice sounds like a teenage boy.
“It means she carries hers and yours. You must let it go. I am begging you to so that she can.”
“I don’t blame her, not one bit. I am not ashamed of her. She is fucking amazing.”
“Then ask yourself why.”
After a brief pause, he responds. “What if she does it again? What if that little cocksucker, Marcello, gets in her head and I can’t stop her this time?”
Momma Joe whispers, “He’s trying, and she’s not letting him.” Then she tells him about the texts and the videos.
“I’m gonna kill him with my bare fucking hands,” Dad growls.
“You just let her deal with it exactly how she is. Be there, but let her come to you.”
“But, what if—”
“Stop that now. She feels that, too. She’s counting down the months until she can fly.”
“Did she say that?”
Now he sounds manic.
“She didn’t have to say the words. I see it. How can you know when you see her like this?”
“What the hell are you doing?” he asks.
“Proving a point.”
I crack the door to see for myself what she’s doing.
“And that is what?” Dad asks, annoyed.
“Showing you that sometimes you have to step back.” She pulls the phone back from where she had it smooshed to her face. “To see things clearly.”
“Momma, I am an ocean away and—”
“She’s getting over him the way in which we all do. We—”
“With all due respect, Momma Joe, if you say by getting under someone else, I may flip shit.”
I quietly close the door as she says, “I do think that is the quickest way, but what I was going to say is, sometimes seeing yourself with new eyes has the same effect as stepping back.”
“This man is too old and too worldly.”
“This man, this Matteo Arias, could have given not only all of you, but your father, a run for his money when going after what he wants.”
“Highly doubtful,” Dad huffs.
“He sees her as she is—beautiful and deep.”
“And how’s that any different than—”
“He’s not a bull in a china shop like all of you when you go after someone. He sees her, and he’s just as mesmerized and intrigued by his feelings for her as she’s realizing hers for him. He sees that, too. He’s dancing with her, Zandor. I wish you could see that. And he’s holding something back for her, I believe. But mark my words, when he knows she’s ready, he’s going to pounce, and like your father, he’ll say the word, and she’ll be gone with him like I was.” I hear a finger snap. “I’m telling you. See her, do not smother her.”
“Not even two nights, and I feel like I can’t fucking breathe, Momma Joe.”
“And I’m sure she feels that, and it hurts her enough that she has to look away. So stop. Please, stop. I can’t have this family be torn in two when we need each other the most.”
“Patrick sees her, and he—”
“Patrick’s heart was broken recently, much like he believes hers was—by betrayal and broken promises. He doesn’t know what she went through. Not all of it.”
When I have had enough, I walk into the stark white bathroom and look at my own bottles of pills.
Opening my mouth, I drop just one of them, the one that I know will knock me out, and hope to hell it works so I’m not awake all night, wondering why Matteo is taking so many pills and why none of the bottles say his name on them.
He’s probably a drug addict.
Figures that I would start falling for someone as equally fucked up as I am.
Hey, but at least, this time, I didn’t bre
ak him.
When the alarm sounds, I regret setting it just as much as I would regret sleeping the entire day away and allowing these drugs to work.
I force my eyes open and try to take in the calming surroundings and the sun’s warmth through the floor-to-ceiling, arched windows.
When I roll over to hit snooze, Momma Joe is beside me, white duvet pulled up to her chin.
Eyes still closed, she sighs. “The most annoying sound in the world is an alarm clock going off while on a vacation.”
“You slept with me?” I’m not sure if I’m annoyed or shocked.
Smiling, she opens her eyes. “Of course I did. No one is allowed to go to bed angry with me and not wake up to me beside them.” She rolls over, back to me, and hits snooze. “Mind you, that is usually only reserved for the two men who’ve earned the privilege of being in my bed.” She rolls back over on her side and smiles. “But, in all seriousness, look at me; how could anyone wake to such beauty and still be angry?”
“And now I know where Dad gets his confidence,” I half-joke.
“Ah, yes, and it’s inside you, too. That little bastard just threw a mountain of dirt on it. What remains on you is very little, and you have to shake it off.” She reaches over and pushes my hair away from my face. “And you’re doing that with your art and your new friend, yes?”
“I’m not sure about Matteo.” I roll onto my back and stretch.
“Because that annoying little winged pissant is buzzing around your ear still?”
“No, it’s because I really don’t know him at all.”
Like at fucking all.
She places her hand over her heart. “But in here, does he feel right?”
I place my hand over mine. “I don’t trust this.”
She begins making a buzzing sound, looking above her head, then reaches up and slaps her hands together. She looks back at me with a big smile. “And now?”
“Did you just kill imaginary winged pissant Marcello?”
“If that’s what it takes, then—”
I sit up. “You and Dad need to stop with the murderous comments.”
She sits up, too. “You eavesdropped.”
“It was about me, so …” I shrug.
She sighs. “He loves you and—”
“He’s smothering me; you said it yourself.”
“Protective men do that. It’s incredibly sexy when—”
“Ew.”
Laughing, she interrupts me, “I was going to say, not your father. And come now; don’t tell me you don’t look at my boys or your cousins and feel all sorts of giddy at the way they love.”
“Again, ew.”
“Fine,” she concedes. “A movie, like The Notebook? Doesn’t that—”
“Yeah, I guess. But tell me honestly, when your father acted like that, you didn’t get annoyed?”
“My father wasn’t protective; he was possessive. He treated his children as belongings. Jonathan was the first man who ever truly wanted to see me by his side. He said so much. I knew its truth the moment I allowed him to sweep me off my feet.”
I flop back down. “Marcello was—”
“A tyrant since birth, and how I prayed he’d grow into being a protective man, yet he turned the opposite direction and became possessive, and that is never a good thing.”
“He told me he loved me and wants me to come back. He said so when he texted last night.”
“And how did that make you feel?”
“Angry. I asked Matteo, who looked like he was about to die to kiss me, and took a selfie and as you and Jersey know, I sent it to him out of anger and vengeance.”
“And after that?”
I flop back. “Guilty, because I used Matteo as a prop.”
“The kiss was bad, then?”
I look over at her. “No.”
She smiles as she leans down and pops a kiss to one cheek then the next. “And there you have it.” She slides out of bed. “I’m going to my room to order breakfast and take a shower. Any requests?”
“Carbs, lots and lots of carbs.”
“After that, let’s hit the hotel spa and lunch, and then book our flights home for a couple days. Then back to Italia.”
“Okay.”
Walking out of the bathroom after the longest shower ever, dressed in leggings and a sweatshirt while I read Momma Joe’s text telling me she left to pick up breakfast and would return shortly … I stop quick when I see Matteo standing in the doorway.
Well, Matteo or whatever the hell his name is.
He pushes off the door frame and runs a hand through his thick, dark hair before shoving his hands into his jeans pockets, pulls out his phone, and sets it on the dresser beside the door. Then he speaks and the app translates.
“I want to thank you for last night. It was appreciated. But you shouldn’t have had to do any of that for me.”
I pull up my own app and speak. “I don’t even know who you are.”
“Ask me anything, Tris.”
The questions come out like rapid fire, and his responses—some translated, others not—come back the same way.
“Who are you?”
“Matteo Arias.”
“Who is Arthur Schindler?”
“My lawyer’s connection in London,” is translated
“Are you a drug addict?”
He smiles softly and shakes his head. “I couldn’t be if I wanted to. You saw what two drinks does to me.”
“Why all the pills then?”
“I have a condition that requires me to take them.”
“That’s vague.”
“Vague is necessary.”
“Explain.” I walk over and drop my phone on the bed, grab a pillow to hold, because the way he’s looking at me, the sadness in his eyes, makes me feel like I may need to hold on to something, and then sit against the headboard.
“I have to protect myself in order to protect those I care for.”
“So, you hide a condition, one that causes you to be in severe pain from the people you love, in order to protect them? That makes no sense.”
“The information I just gave you is more than anyone, but my lawyer, has. It doesn’t have to make sense to anyone but me.”
“Well, then,” I whisper as look down.
I am about to ask about the proposal when he says, “My turn.” In English.
I look up from the pillow that I’m purposely fixated on because, leave it to the crazy chick to be insanely attracted to the … whatever he is. “Excuse me?”
He steps forward and motions to the bed, asking for permission to sit.
At this point, I am relieved I made the bed before my shower, and I’m also confused as to why that even matters.
He grabs his phone then walks to the bed and sits. Now closer and me not fixating on anything but him, I can see he looks exhausted as he turns off the app.
“Your ex-boyfriend, Marcello Effisto, has been messaging me on all my social media.”
“Oh my God, block him.”
He furrows his brows. “He’s in love with you, yet he trashes you and your reputation to anyone who you’ve kissed at your shows. He says you do that to hurt him because you still love him, and you are his. Please be honest with me, as I am being with you. Do you love him?”
“No!” I gasp.
“Tris, loving someone and being in love are not the same.”
“I’m not,” I insist as I look down at the pillow that I’m not strangle-holding.
“Why do you end your concert with a kiss, then?”
I glare up at him.
He smiles softly. “If love is true, it doesn’t go away. It remains in your heart.” He runs his hand through his hair as if to pull the thoughts from it. “Love even transcends death, Tris.”
“I hate him.”
He nods and looks at me sadly then down at the bed.
“Don’t. Don’t pity me. I’m not pitying you.”
He chuckles and peers up at me through insanely
thick lashes that are for real wasted on men. “Promise me you never will.”
Without thought, I shrug. “As long as you never look at me like that again, deal.”
He nods, his eyes smiling.
“Are you okay?” I ask as he asks, “Are you over him?”
We both smile, and both do so shyly.
He takes his phone and types in something, and the app speaks.
“I want to clarify pity versus concern. My concern is that allowing him to influence your actions gives him control, even though that is not your intention. I also believe that it’s driven by revenge for what he has done to you, which will not only stunt you from growing beyond him.”
“Um, Matteo, or Adam, or whoever you are, you have more explaining to do.”
He types in the app.
“I understand you have questions; please understand I am protecting people I care for by being vague.”
“Is someone trying to hurt these people? Is it the girls? Their dad, Hugo, seemed like a self-serving ass.”
He smiles at the last part.
“Oh my God, are they in danger?”
He types into the app.
“Physically, not at all. After our mother’s passing, I’ve been burdened with my family’s fortune. A fortune I fear that my brother, Hugo, will piss away on his lifestyle, and any stability they have will be lost.”
“But you were trusted with it, so they’ll be fine.”
“They need more love than I can give.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Our family is not like yours, Tris. We were not taught love.”
“So, you show them.”
“To the best of my ability and allowance, I do. I, too, am still learning what it is in the purest sense.”
“Yet you gave advice about my love life.”
“Still learning, but toxic love I know a little about. I was that person with the one woman I have loved in the romantic sense. Marcello, or anyone who would portray you in the way he does through messenger to someone he doesn’t even know, someone whose intentions toward you are not known and unsafe, someone who speaks for you and thinks he owns you, that’s not pure,” is translated.
“I’m toxic, too. I told you I’m fucked up.” I tap my head, a bit too hard, too.
