True North

by Nicole French

  I exhale. “Okay. Do you know when the boys will be showing up?”

  Carolina shrugs. “They were coming from Guarapari, so it’s hard to say. Maybe they find some traffic I don’t know.”

  “Wow.”

  His deep voice, the only one speaking English, curves through the air and wraps me in its warm embrace. I turn around and I’m immediately blown away. I forget sometimes how well Nico cleans up. I’ve seen this suit before––it’s his only one, the all-black ensemble he wore at Thanksgiving, which was also his uniform when he worked at a swanky club in LA. But I haven’t seen it since moving back. And…wow is right. For him, not me.

  Unlike most of the other men in the room, who are dressed, as my father stated, in standard black-tie regalia––black tuxedos with white shirts––Nico’s in his all black suit, with a matching shirt, tie, and vest. He should be a shadow, but instead the monochromatic outfit just makes his skin glow. His thick black hair has been tamed a bit, swept off to the side slightly, and the sole bit of color in his outfit is a red pocket square. He looks elegant. Maybe a little dangerous. And he’s all mine.

  His gaze burns over me as he takes in my dress, my hair, the jewelry, even the dainty gold cross gifted from Bibi.

  “Damn,” he murmurs under his breath, pulling slightly at his collar. When his eyes finally meet mine again, they gleam. “Wow. You look crazy good, baby. For real, you look amazing.”

  I blush under the heat of his gaze. He doesn’t hold back, just continues to stare in awe––an emotion he rarely hides when he feels it, but which I haven’t seen this naked before.

  “Thanks,” I whisper. “You––you look––I mean…gah.”

  Behind me, Carolina laughs. “I think she mean you look nice too,” she clarifies snarkily before walking away.

  Nico takes my left hand and strokes my knuckles, lingering over the bare ring finger. “Sorry I’m late.”

  I shake my head a little. “Please. There’s nothing to be sorry for.”

  “We had to wait for your dad to get back from the airport. And then, well…let’s just say he wasn’t too happy when he remembered I didn’t have a tux.” Nico’s mouth twists sardonically as he remembers. “He cares a lot about what other people think, huh?”

  The clouded expression makes my fists clench. I hate that look, that lingering insecurity that comes out every now and then. I hate anything or anyone who makes Nico feel like anything less than the amazing person he is.

  “He cares too much,” I tell him. “It’s his Achilles’ heel. I think you look incredible. Isn’t that what matters?”

  Nico brightens, a shy smile replacing the frown. “You bet your ass it is, sweetie. So riddle me this: do you care too? Or would you be willing to dance with me on an empty floor?”

  I glance at the dance floor, which is indeed mostly empty with the exception of a few younger attendees and an older couple swaying off to the side.

  I turn back. “I am always willing to dance with you, Mr. Soltero.”

  ~

  An hour later, the dance floor has filled up along with us, and we’re both a little sweaty and worn out after dancing to song after song that could probably be pulled from cheesy pop albums of the eighties and nineties.

  “I gotta say,” Nico calls before he spins around on his heel. “I wasn’t expecting to get down to Shania Twain on my first trip to Brazil. It’s like they didn’t get out of the nineties pop chart hell, huh? K.C. would be freaking out down here.”

  I giggle. “I think it’s just this DJ. You don’t ‘feel like a woman’?”

  Nico grins. “Nah. But I liked watching you scream it with everyone else. You’re so cute when you sing, baby. Off key, but really damn cute.”

  I shove him in the shoulder, which he just takes as an excuse to pull me closer. As if on cue, the Spice Girls stop singing, and for the first time, the DJ puts on a slower song. Mariah Carey’s “Honey” isn’t anything that’s going to kill the mood, but the tempo, a little slinkier than the manic pop songs, gives Nico an excuse to pull me closer, swaying me back and forth to the lazy rhythm.

  “What is it with you tonight?” he murmurs as he starts to roll his hips in a way that obviously comes from the years of practicing salsa in his mom’s kitchen growing up. “You look…you look different. Something’s different.” He spins me out, then pulls me back in. He looks across the room to make sure my dad is still engrossed in a conversation with a few other men, then sneaks a quick kiss. “You’re fucking glowing, baby.”

  Now is the time. I should tell him now, right? But before I can, Nico stops dancing and reaches into his jacket pocket, though his other hand remains firmly on my back, keeping me close.

  “I, uh, picked something up the other day,” he says as he withdraws his hand. “I saw it and thought of you. I was going to wait until we were back home, but…” He looks over me again, taking in the apparent beauty he hasn’t stopped talking about for the last hour solid. “I don’t know. Something…I feel inspired. I want you to have it now.”

  He opens his hand, and what I see makes my heart stop.

  It’s a ring. A simple gold ring that gleams against the fine lines in his palm. It’s delicately engraved, like the gold has been spun together to weave an imperfect, yet perfect design all the way around the thin band.

  I look up. “Nico…”

  Nico chews on his upper lip for a second, then gives me a shy smile. “I know it’s not a diamond, Layla. One day I’ll get you one, I promise. If that’s what you want, baby, I’ll do whatever I need to do to buy you the biggest diamond in Manhattan, I swear to God. Layla, I just want to make you happy. That’s it––”

  I lay my hand over the ring, a gesture that stops his babbling.

  “I don’t want a diamond,” I tell him, keeping our eye contact solid so he knows I mean it. Then I look down. “I love this. It’s so perfect, Nico. It’s simple and beautiful. It’s so us.”

  “I want you to have it,” he says. “I didn’t do it the right way the other day. I didn’t get to tell you how beautiful you are to me, inside and out. How brave. How much I love the way you open your heart to the world, again and again. How much you want to make it better. How you inspire me to be better, every damn day.”

  His words make me giggle, the awkward kind that only happens when you feel so much your chest might split open. I reach up to swipe away a few errant tears that spring unbidden––not from sadness, but from joy.

  “Layla,” Nico says, tugging me just a little closer. “Will you marry me?”

  I bite my lip, then hold out my left hand. “Of course I’ll marry you, Nico Soltero. Tonight. Tomorrow. I’m yours, body and soul. Don’t you know that by now?”

  He slides the ring on my finger, and it fits, just like I knew it would. I examine it in awe. Nico knows me sometimes better than I know myself––why would my ring size be any different?

  “What are you thinking?” he asks tentatively.

  I look back up at him to find, even now, a little insecurity playing across his chiseled features. “I think I’m the luckiest freaking woman on the planet right now,” I say honestly.

  Nico grins, that signature smile that lights up every room he’s in. That lights me up. “I think we need to celebrate. I’m going to get some champagne from the bar.”

  He turns to leave, but I tug his sleeve back. “Just…just water for me, okay? I don’t want to drink.”

  His face screws up with immediate concern. “Baby, you’re not going to go crazy if you have a glass of champagne with me. Come on, it’s our engagement. We should toast, don’t you think?”

  I shake my head. He thinks I’m stopping him because I’m afraid of taking a step backward, to that dark, crazy time when I was spiraling without him. That I’m so scared of going there that I won’t even have a cocktail. But that’s not it.

  “Layla,” Nico says, taking a step closer. “What is it?”

  He waits patiently, the expression on his face kind and ope
n. And I know in that moment, that nothing I could tell him would ever push him away. Nico loves me, loves us, unabashedly, with all that he is. There’s nothing to fear.

  So I open my mouth to tell him the truth, the news that’s going to change both of our lives. The news that has me petrified and overjoyed all at once. That I’m dying to share and at the same time, terrified to say out loud.

  “I’m––”

  “What is that on your finger?”

  Before I can say a word, my father comes charging through the crowd, his voice booming over the music. He storms between Nico and me and grabs my hand, the one with the gleaming new piece of delicate gold jewelry, practically ripping it off my arm Behind him, Nico’s face turns black. He really doesn’t like my dad, and clearly he’s not cool with the way he’s touching me at the moment.

  My father, however, doesn’t care. He shakes my finger, and the two veins over his temples look like they are about to burst.

  “Layla,” he demands. “What. Is the meaning. Of this?”

  ~

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Nico

  I freeze. We both freeze. But I don’t miss the way Layla takes a step toward me, like she’s looking for shelter. I hate that her own father makes her feel that way, but I get it. Goddamn, do I get it.

  “What?” Dr. Barros shakes Layla’s hand, then drops it like it’s burning.

  He takes a long drink of something that looks like whiskey, then sets his empty glass on a nearby table before standing up, swaying a bit. Great. He’s mad and shitfaced.

  “What is the meaning of this?” He lets out a long string of Portuguese, and from the way some of the other people’s eye bug out, I’m guessing it’s pretty foul.

  “W-we’re getting married,” Layla says.

  She holds out her hand with the simple ring that barely stands out in this room full of rich, flashy ladies with even flashier jewelry. But the gold on her finger gleams in the light.

  “Nico asked me. And I said yes, of course,” she tells Dr. Barros, sticking her chin out a little in this fuckin’ adorable away that would make me want to kiss the living shit out of her if I wasn’t so worried about the look on her dad’s face right now.

  Because I know that look. I’ve worn it a few too many times myself. It’s the look you get when you’re about to explode.

  “Married,” Dr. Barros repeats, and I can practically see the steam coming off his head. “To––this?” He gestures at me like I’m a piece of fuckin’ furniture. Like I’m a thing, not a person.

  “No,” he says. “I forbid it.”

  “Well, that’s too damn bad,” I pipe up. I can’t help it. I’m so tired of this guy treating me like I’m less than him, treating Layla like she’s a fucking puppet. He has no fuckin’ right. “Last I checked, Layla and I are both adults. And I’m pretty sure you haven’t given a shit about her for the last year and a half anyway.”

  Layla shakes her head at me, clearly telling me to shut the fuck up. “Dad,” she says. “Please. Let’s just talk about this somewhere quiet…”

  “He’s a criminal,” Dr. Barros states a little too loudly, and the word causes another few onlookers to murmur a little. Slowly, people around us are taking in what’s happening. The dance floor is growing still, even with Montell Jordan blasting on the speakers.

  It takes everything I have not to stare at the floor when the English speakers in the crowd look at me with renewed, slightly fearful interest. No. I’m not guilty of anything but falling in love. That’s not who I am anymore. It’s not who I’ve been for a long time now. Maybe I never was.

  “What are you talking about?” Layla asks as she comes to stand in front of me. It makes me proud. My baby is valiant, guarding me from her dad. In her white and gold, she’s an angel, but the good kind, like Gabriel––the kind that don’t fuck around, you know?

  “You think I don’t look him up? You think I don’t find that he was in jail?” Dr. Barros demands wildly, his English uncharacteristically sloppy––I’m guessing that’s the work of a few too many scotches. “Layla, he is nothing. He comes from nothing. He is becoming nothing. He is not good enough for you!”

  “He’s a hero!” Layla hisses defiantly, reaching behind to take my hand. “He’s a firefighter in the best city in the world. He saves lives, every day, and he definitely saved mine. What do you do besides give women bigger tits?”

  A laugh bursts out of my chest before I can stop myself. I should be angry––fuck, I am angry. But the look on Dr. Barros’s face when his daughter says the word “tits” in front of a whole bunch of fancy rich Brazilians is fuckin’ priceless.

  “That’s enough!” he shouts. His face reddens even more as he looks around. Yeah, the dude has definitely been pitching back the sauce. “We are leaving. Now.”

  “No,” Layla replies.

  “Sim.”

  “No!”

  “Layla, we are going!”

  Dr. Barros grabs for Layla’s wrist and jerks her forward, twisting her arm painfully and forcing her to kneel slightly next to him. Any trace of humor disappears completely, and just as fast, blood roars in my ears when Layla tries to fight it, her face contorted in pain as she does.

  Oh. Hell. Fuckin’. No.

  It takes me less than a second to dart in between Layla and her dad, grab his wrist, and twist it enough that he has to let hers go. I thrust him away from her, allowing Layla to step backward behind me, suddenly released. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice her rubbing her wrist where he had grabbed it. Now I’m the one barely holding onto my temper.

  “Get out of my way,” Dr. Barros orders. “This doesn’t concern you. This is a family matter.”

  “Well, then it does concern me, Dr. Barros,” I say. “Since Layla is my family, sir. And I’m hers.”

  He turns to me with a face full of rage, and surprises me when he walks close enough to make us almost nose to nose.

  “You will never be her family,” he informs me through capped, white teeth. “Never. Not you. Never someone like you.”

  I grind my teeth. I don’t like this guy at all, but I never wanted him to hate me. This isn’t someone Layla may ever be able to walk away from––you just can’t ask someone to do that with their own dad. And I don’t want Layla to hate me either for messing up their relationship more. Because when I look at her, see her blue eyes full of curiosity, fear, but always, always trust in me. In us. I don’t doubt it anymore. In fact, the insinuation that we’re not inextricably bound together makes me pretty fuckin’ angry.

  “Is that right, Doctor Barros? Well, where the fuck were you last year, or the year before that, sir?” I take a step forward, forcing him one step back. “Because I’m the one who’s been there. I’m the one that pulled your daughter out of some asshole’s apartment after he had beaten her black and blue. I’m the one who talked her into going home even though I wanted her with me. Your daughter is my heart and soul, sir. I would do anything. Lay down my life for her in a heartbeat. So there ain’t no fuckin’ way that anyone gets to talk shit about her, about us like that. Not while I’m alive.” I pull myself up as tall as my five feet, almost eleven inches will let me. “I don’t care if you’re her father. I don’t care if you’re the Pope. You want to mess with Layla? You’re gonna have to go through me.”

  Dr. Barros blinks, his dark, shadowed eyes burning into me and everyone else. Into his daughter. But my words fly right by him––maybe he’s too angry to really hear them in the first place.

  “Layla,” he tries again, straining, it’s clear, to keep his voice down. “We go. Now.”

  “No, Dad.”

  Dr. Barros gulps, hard enough that it makes his bow tie twitch. “Layla,” he tries again.

  “She doesn’t want to go with you,” I tell him.

  And then I make my biggest mistake––one that in all my years of training with fighters, of living in bad neighborhoods, of growing up in a city where you always look over your shoulder, I should hav
e learned by now. I turn my back.

  “Come on, baby,” I say, taking Layla’s hand and pulling her close. I press a kiss to her forehead, willing her to know that whatever happens tonight, I’m still here for her. I’m always here for her. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Maybe it’s the kiss, innocent as it was. Or maybe it’s the way that his daughter is looking at me, with big blue eyes full of love, the kind that drives me every day to be something better than I am. Whatever it is, Dr. Barros sees something that sets him off. And he attacks with a roar.

  “NOOOOO!”

  In a split-second, I’m wrenched away from Layla, and I’ve got a pair of slim, well-groomed hands flying at me. One cuffs me on the jaw, a sucker punch I’d be able to dodge on literally any other day, any other moment.

  “Sergio!” screams Layla’s aunt.

  “Dad!” Layla shouts.

  But I don’t know where they’re coming from, because I’m too busy fighting off the best of Brazilian society right now. Frank, my old trainer and mentor, used to say that half a good fighter is skill, and the other half is adrenaline. And that if you pit one against the other, adrenaline wins every time.

  Dr. Barros might be older––Layla said he’s almost sixty at this point––and he might be weaker than me, but he’s got fury on his side.

  Still, I’ve got a little of that too. A well of it, really, that will probably never totally go away. And when I think of the way he looks at his daughter like she’s nothing, that anger bubbles up in no time, and I’m ready to swing back.

  “Dad!” Layla shouts as Dr. Barros scrambles at me again, his fists flying toward my face.

  The guy is no fighter. His hands are soft, the slim fingers of a surgeon, not a soldier. I duck easily, parry him away as the crowd naturally spreads into a circle around the dance floor. He comes at me again, and this time, I parry away his fist, deliver an easy cross to his cheekbone, and as he falls back, grab hold of his wrist and twist him neatly into a half-nelson under my much bigger shoulder. I’m an inch or two shorter than the guy, but that means nothing in a situation like this.