Once Burned (Morelli Family, #3)

by Sam Mariano

  I glance briefly at the kitchen, seeing there’s no food, so I ask, “Should we go out to dinner?”

  “No.” She turns to glance at me over her shoulder, then she pats the couch, inviting me to sit.

  A little uncertainly, I take a seat on the couch beside her. I do a double take when I realize she’s wearing lingerie. I don’t know why she owns lingerie at all, but she’s wearing this slip of powder blue satin, lace trim, and it’s damn distracting. I want to double check the time. Elise typically doesn’t change into pajamas until right before bed, and right now I’m dreading going to bed if that’s what she’s going to wear.

  Jesus, did the air stop working? Why is it so hot in here?

  I tug at the collar of my shirt, shifting uncomfortably. I don’t look at her, because… well, she’s not wearing enough clothing to be looked at.

  “Everything okay?” I ask, glancing at the blank television, since that seems safest.

  She scoots forward, inching a little closer to me. Her book is still between us, thank God, but I have to physically force myself not to move away as she advances. What is she doing?

  “How was your interview?” she asks.

  “Uh, good. It went well.”

  “Good,” she says pleasantly.

  I nod, still staring at the television. “So, you didn’t cook today. Do you want to put some—Uh, change clothes and we could go grab something? I’m kind of hungry.” And also desperate to get clothing on her body, which will be necessary if we leave. “We could make a whole night of it,” I add, since she doesn’t immediately respond. “We could grab a drink, maybe catch a show. There’s a comedy show thing—I saw a flyer. Do you like comedy shows?”

  “If that’s what you want,” she replies.

  I finally force myself to look at her, but I focus only on her face, no matter how tempted my eyes are to drop lower. “Do you want to?”

  “I just said I did,” she says.

  “You said if it’s what I want. That’s not the same thing.”

  “Well, fine, then it’s what I want. Will you wear one of your suits?”

  I can’t hold back a faint smile. “Do you like when I wear my suits?”

  Blushing a little as she smiles, she nods her head. “I miss those.”

  Since we’re living in the real world again, I haven’t been dressing the way I did when I worked for Mateo. “I can wear more suits,” I tell her.

  “We should dress up for dinner.”

  “To go out? Yeah, sure.”

  “No, every night.”

  My pleasure wilts, just a bit. She wants to establish yet another Morelli tradition—the stupid formal dinners.

  My hand moves to the back of my neck, rubbing it. I try to reclaim the pleasant smile I had a moment ago, but it’s strained. “Sure, if you want to, I guess we could.”

  “I mean, I don’t have a lot of pretty dresses, but Mateo bought me a few before we left.”

  Of course he did.

  I’m losing enthusiasm about going out tonight.

  “We could just stay in, if you’d rather,” I say, watching her reaction to see if she actually wants to go out or she’s just going along with whatever I say.

  The expression on her face doesn’t change—not even a little. It’s like she literally has no preference. Nodding, she says, “Sure, we could do that.”

  Pushing up off the couch, I look around this tiny ass apartment, suddenly feeling caged. “I don’t want to stay in.”

  She misses a beat—not because she’s disappointed, but because I’ve just changed my mind so many times she doesn’t know what to get behind. “Okay, we can go out.”

  “Goddammit, Elise.” I go to run a hand through my hair, but it’s all gone. Dammit, I regret that haircut.

  She stands, frowning at me. “What did I do now?”

  “Stop agreeing with everything I say,” I say, even hearing how ridiculous I sound.

  She stares at me for a second, blinking several times, then she glares at me. “I’m trying to make you happy!”

  “I am happy,” I all but scream.

  Eyes bulging, she says, “Clearly! All happy people scream at their… their… whatever the fuck I am.”

  I rear back, never having heard Elise swear. The sound of that word falling from her lips suddenly drains the aggravation right out of me, but apparently hers is just picking up.

  Her arm flies off to the left, like she’s angrily pointing at some invisible thing. “You tell me nothing. You drag me out of my home, out of my life, you drag me to this strange new place and you give me no direction. I have no idea what you want from me! I don’t know why I’m here. I try to do the things I’m accustomed to, but it doesn’t please you—you don’t like when I cook and clean, you hate that I have the audacity to enjoy it. I have no routine. I have no purpose in this life, Adrian. I have no place in your life, and every day I wait for you to give me one, or for me to somehow figure it out, but I don’t know. I don’t know, and you won’t tell me. I try everything I can think of to please you, and I’m out of ideas. I don’t know how to make you happy, so if you know what you want, maybe you should clue me in, because I do not know.”

  “I don’t want you to try to please me, Elise. I just want you to be yourself. I just want you to… be happy.”

  Tears glisten in her eyes as she screams, “I don’t know how!” She angrily dashes away a tear that falls, visibly shaking with emotion. “I need direction. I need to know what I’m supposed to be doing with myself in order to know if I’m doing it well. Right now, I’m empty. I am lost. I have never felt so useless in my life.”

  I have no idea what to say to her. I have no idea how to help. My mind is blank, but I struggle to come up with something. “You’re not an object, Elise, you don’t have to be useful. If you’re looking for purpose, I’m more than happy to help you find that, but… I don’t know how, either. Maybe would you like to look for a job?”

  “Like a cleaning job?”

  “No.” I shake my head, frowning. “No, Elise. Just a job, a normal job, where you could interact with other people, maybe make some friends.”

  “I’m not good at making friends,” she tells me, sitting back down, her shoulders sagging.

  “You’re very nice, I’m sure it’ll be easy,” I tell her, taking a seat on the couch.

  This time the tears that gather in her eyes appear to be tears of frustration. “Why did you make me leave?”

  White hot anger courses through me, but I leash it this time. “I didn’t make you leave. Mateo asked you, and you agreed to it.”

  “I didn’t have a choice.”

  I roll my shoulders, cracking my neck. I clear my throat, trying to keep my cool. “Yes, you did. You know you did, because at first you said no, and then you changed your mind.”

  Her teary eyes dim when she remembers why. “If you wanted me to be yours, you could’ve kept me there. You didn’t have to leave. We didn’t have to come here.” She says ‘here’ like we’re literally in the worst place in the world. “You could’ve just told him. They could’ve moved me like we moved Meg. I could’ve kept my position.”

  I wish we did live at the mansion right now, so I could go to the gym and take my aggressions out on a punching bag. Because every single word out of Elise’s mouth fills me with more rage.

  “It wasn’t a position,” I barely manage to get out through my locked jaw. “It was slavery. He didn’t pay you. He took you from your home when you were little more than a child, he took you out of school, he isolated you in his house. Mateo isn’t your goddamn savior, Elise.”

  “I know that,” she snaps. “I get it, okay? He’s bad. I get it.”

  “I did all of this for you,” I state.

  “I didn’t ask you to.”

  “I didn’t expect a thank you,” I shoot back. “But you’re acting like I’ve wronged you in some way, and I haven’t.”

  “And you’re telling me you want me to be myself, but then when I
am, it’s not good enough. So if you want some alternate version, you’re going to have to specify what fucking features I need to add.”

  “Oh my god, Elise. I don’t want you to customize yourself for me.”

  “But you don’t want me to do what I’ve been doing for the past six years of my life.”

  “Clean if you want to clean. Cook if you want to cook—I don’t care. Make 50 fucking muffins every morning if that makes you happy. I don’t hate that you do it, I just… I don’t want you to feel like you have to. Or it’s all you can do. I don’t want you to feel like you’re still…”

  I don’t know how to finish that sentence without further pissing her off, and she does not swoop in with a nod of understanding to save me.

  “I wasn’t unhappy there,” she states.

  “But you’re unhappy here,” I say, because it’s not a question.

  Her gaze falls back to the dark television screen, and she looks drained. “I just need a purpose. It’s not that I can’t be happy with you, I just… I don’t have any idea what you want from me. I need to know what you want from me. I don’t care if it doesn’t make sense to you—you want me to be myself, you want me to be honest, that’s what I need. I need structure. I need… someone to tell me what I’m supposed to do.”

  I feel like I’m trying to walk up the side of a steep mountain with no rope. Despair sweeps over me and I’m so tired. I’m tired of this, and it’s only been nine days.

  It’s just not enough time. She just needs more time. She’ll normalize eventually, but I need to take it slow. I need to take baby steps.

  I need to give her a fucking task.

  I feel dirty just thinking about it, but if it’s what she needs, is it any better if I refuse to give it to her just because I think it’s fucked up?

  I want to rake my hands through my hair again, but I stop myself this time before I try. “Okay. I… I’ll try,” I tell her.

  “I only want to make you happy,” she states, and her voice is so small that I do feel like a monster. “I’m not trying to be an inconvenience.”

  “You’re not an inconvenience, Elise. As you pointed out, you’re only here because I wanted you to be.”

  Responding to the flatness in my voice, she stands, placing a reassuring hand on my arm. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  I don’t feel right about her touching me right now, but I don’t know how to pull away without making her feel rejected. “I’ll try to be more supportive,” I state. Dropping my arm so she has to pull hers back, I say, “Right now I think I need to get some air, if that’s okay with you.”

  Elise sighs, but nods her head.

  Retrieving my keys from the hook where I left them, I lock the door behind me and head for the nearest bar.

  Chapter Four

  I don’t make it all the way to the bar. I prowl the city for a bit first, trying to think what the hell I can give Elise to do that will give her some direction. I wind up going in and out of shops, searching for something. I pick up a journal with pink and white watercolor on the front. Maybe a journal’s a good idea. Even the 16-year-old girl I’d talked to in that jail cell had more self-direction than Elise does now, but that was also when she’d only been there for a year. I remember at one point she told me she wanted to write the story of her life, not necessarily for anyone else to read, but just for her, just so she had some tangible evidence that it all had really happened.

  Reflecting on that, I go back and pick out a second one. I have an idea to meet her needs and force her to reflect on herself, but I’m not sure if it will work, mainly because I don’t know if she’ll welcome it. I’m supposed to assign her tasks like I’m her fucking boss, but does she just mean chores? My inner teacher has different ideas, tasks with more depth, tasks that might help her discover things about herself.

  I should’ve realized this would be more work than I was expecting. I should’ve expected there to be a rocky adjustment period. Whether or not it was just, she’s right—I did rip her away from her life (and perhaps more importantly, a lifestyle) and leave her stranded in a new one with no idea what was expected of her. I’m a 33-year-old fucking man, so I just figured she would be able to figure that out without me telling her, but that was my fault. I need to be less defensive and more compassionate.

  Goddamn Mateo.

  Finally, I go to the bar. I order a double straight up, and before the bartender can leave I slam it back and order another.

  I need to not be sober.

  I really didn’t drink that much before working for Mateo, but for the past five years, it’s been a part of my routine, and now that Elise is turning out to be more damaged than I realized, I just need something to clear my aching head.

  I’m finally starting to feel less sober when someone hops up on the stool beside me. I turn to glare at them, since there’s a whole empty bar, but I recognize the guy.

  Colin McGregor. He’s a freelancer, but he did some work for Mateo a while back.

  With a jarring slap on the back, he says, “Adrian fecking Palmetto. How the hell are ye?”

  I close my eyes at the sound of his Irish brogue. “I didn’t come here to socialize, McGregor.”

  “No? What’d ye come for, then?”

  “To get drunk.”

  He laughs at that, signaling for the bartender to come over. I guess he isn’t going to move. That sucks. While the bartender’s here, I raise my hand to tell him I need another, too.

  “Celebratin’?” Colin asks.

  “Celebrating?” I ask, wondering what the hell I have to be celebrating right now.

  “Ye sure got out at the right time,” he says, tipping back his beer and taking a big gulp.

  “What are you talking about?” I ask, grabbing the new drink the bartender sits down and wondering how much I should worry about paying this tab.

  “Mateo Morelli,” he says.

  That makes me surly. “I don’t wanna talk about him. I’m—He’s an asshole. Elise thinks I’m a bigger asshole than he is, and that’s… that’s stupid.”

  He raises his dark eyebrows, and I can’t blame him, since I’m not making much sense.

  Waving him off, I say, “Forget it.”

  “Lady problems?”

  “I’m not domineering enough for her,” I state. “I think. I don’t know.”

  “Then be more domineerin’,” he says good-naturedly, with a wink. “It’s fun.”

  “I don’t wanna be an asshole.”

  “Ladies like assholes, Adrian, don’t ye know anything?”

  I roll my eyes, reaching for my drink. “Whatever.”

  He goes back to drinking his beer and I go back to my whiskey. He keeps up essentially all of the conversation, because all I want to do is enjoy my drink in peace and I keep hoping he’ll leave.

  It takes a lot longer than it should, because I’m distracted by my own problems, but my mind finally circles back around to what Colin said when he first sat down.

  “Why did you say that?” I ask.

  He spares me an uncertain look, since he hadn’t been speaking at all.

  “Earlier,” I specify. “You said I got out at just the right time?”

  “Oh,” he says, nodding with his whole body. “Oh, I meant the shootin’.”

  I sit up a little straighter, scowling. “What shooting?”

  “Ye haven’t heard?” he questions, eyebrows rising like he’s shocked. “Little John tried to take him out last night. Missed, hit his bird instead. Right after he popped the question, if ye can believe it.”

  I feel like I’ve just entered an alternate reality. I look at the glass of alcohol, wondering if it’s possible I’m drunker than I realized and I’m imagining all of this.

  “Colin, what the fuck are you talking about? Mateo proposed to—I’m assuming Meg? Not Mia, because… no, it couldn’t be—there’s no…. But Meg…. Salvatore…”

  “I think maybe ye’ve had enough,” he tells me, eyes dancing with amuseme
nt. “Ye’re not making any sense, lad.”

  “Someone tried to kill Mateo?”

  Colin nods.

  Just like that, I’m not mad at him anymore.

  I mean, I am, but… I’m not.

  “Is she okay?”

  “I don’t know. I’m stayin’ the feck outta that one. Thinkin’ about spendin’ some time back east, head back to Boston until the dust settles here.”

  My head is spinning, and now I’m really regretting the alcohol. Shit. I need to get my head on straight. I need… I need coffee.

  Fumbling for my phone, I find Elise’s number in my contacts. I got her a phone, assuming she might actually leave the house on occasion, and that I’d need to reach her.

  Widening my eyes to try and focus, I manage to type out, “Heading home now. Make me coffee.”

  A moment later she types back “ok!” with a little smiley face.

  I shake my head, slipping my phone back into my pocket. “Didn’t even say please.”

  “What’s that now?” Colin asked.

  “Nothing.” I look at the liquor still in the glass, debating whether or not to finish it. I need to get my shit together so I can call Mateo, don’t I?

  Then again, Mateo’s not my responsibility anymore and I do have to pay for it.

  On a whim, I throw back the rest of it. Slamming it down with a thud, I gesture for the bartender. “I need to leave.”

  “Are ye okay?” Colin asks, watching me stand.

  “Yep, I’m… I’m good,” I tell him, nodding a bit unsteadily as I reach for the bill. I reach into my wallet for a depressing sum of cash and slap it down on the counter. “I need to sleep and Elise is wearing—anyway, it’s good. I need to go sleep.”

  “Wait,” Colin calls, hopping off the stool.

  I turn back and see he’s holding up the little plastic bag I’d forgotten about.

  “Oh, yes,” I say, falling back to grab it. “Can’t forget those.”

  By the time I get home, I’ve completely forgotten I asked Elise to make me coffee. All I can think about are the soft pillows on our bed.

  As soon as she hears me stumble through the door, Elise heads to the kitchen to get me coffee. “We don’t have any mugs,” she tells me, pulling out a blue plastic cup and looking at it a tad uncertainly.