by James, Ella
“Ice hockey,” I rasp, and swallow hard to clear the roughness. “We do this rec league in Brooklyn.”
“Is that how you learned to skate?”
I nod. “My friend Alesso talked me into it. And Leo.”
“I remember those names.”
“From work?” I close my eyes, tugging more air into my lungs.
“From when we were younger. Does your brother play, too?”
I nod. “Just started last year. He’d come to so many games…”
“Just wore him down?”
I nod. He likes to be familiar with something before he wades in. “We’d been playing for seven years.”
She traces a line on my back. “When do you play?”
“Thursday evenings.”
“What do you play? What position?”
“Usually center.” I shake my head. “That mean anything to you?”
“Not even one thing.”
I look over my shoulder, and she takes the opportunity to duck under my arm, squeezing between the front of me and the back of the couch. She warps her arms around my chest and kisses my pec. “Do you like it, playing?”
“Yeah. When I can’t go, my brother plays. We have a few fill-ins because sometimes something comes up.”
She nods. “That makes sense.”
She trails a finger down my side, and when chills follow, she says, “Come back to bed.” She kisses my chin, and then we’re open mouthed and moaning. When we break away, I can’t help laughing. “What the fuck is this?”
“This is us,” she giggles. “Isn’t that a TV show?”
She clasps my hand and tugs me toward the short hall. Back in the bedroom, I grab a sweatshirt for her and an undershirt for myself. She props pillows up against the headboard. When we’re sitting with our backs against them, she pulls my arm into her lap and traces the veins from my elbow to my wrist. I close my eyes and lean more heavily against the pillows. She strokes my fingers, and I curl them.
“Does that hurt?”
“Yes.” I spread my fingers back out for her. Every time she touches me, it hurts—because I know it has to end soon.
“I never want to hurt you again.” She sounds so earnest.
I smile with a shake of my head. “You will never get that wish, la mia rosa.”
“I can’t stand to think of you without me.”
I catch her hand with mine, squeezing.
“I want you to be okay,” she whispers.
“I’m okay.” I open my eyes, finding hers. “Don’t worry about me.” I smooth her hair back, and she shuts her eyes. I can’t help putting an arm around her, pulling her against my chest, inhaling her sweet perfume.
“Can we still keep running?” she asks softly.
“I think you should stop the running.”
“Can we see each other somewhere, sometimes?”
“Where?” I kiss her forehead. “Where would be safe? Rosa, put yourself first. You worked hard to get where you are. Put it first. You said you like it.”
“I don’t like this.” Her voice quavers, and I hug her—maybe too hard.
“I tried to make you go this morning.”
“Yes, but I could feel it.”
“Feel what?” I hold my breath, knowing she’ll say something else that hurts us both.
“How you’re the same.”
“I already told you I’m not the same.”
“You are the same. You’re my cuore, with a lot more scars. It makes me sad that you’re alone.” She sniffles, and I ruffle her hair, forcing a laugh. “I’m not alone.”
“Who’s with you?”
“Dogs.”
She shakes her head. “You said they’re fosters.”
“So I’ll keep one.”
“But it has to be the perfect dog. To replace me.” Her lips flutter over my cheek.
“There’s a lot of good dogs. Dogs are awesome. You should get a dog, too. Are you lonely, rosa?”
“I work a lot, and my friends come over.”
“What about Jace?” I try not to let my voice go too low on the question.
“He comes maybe twice a week. We watch TV. Sometimes he brings dinner.”
“That’s good.” I’m surprised to find I mean it. “Tell him I said hello.”
“I’m not telling Jace a damn thing.” She laughs. “He’d lose his mind.”
I nod slowly. I can’t be offended; it makes sense. I’d feel the same way if I were her gay fake fiancé.
“He’s just scared about me getting hurt.”
I lean on my arm, shifting so the sore spot on my back won’t hurt as much. “I understand.”
She kisses my jaw. “You want to watch E.T., or just keep talking?”
21
Elise
“Either way.” His voice is low and soft. He doesn’t look pained, but I wonder if that fresh scar he has is hurting—because he keeps shifting around, tensing sometimes when he moves.
“What’s the matter?”
“My back. But it’s fine.”
“Where does it hurt?”
He looks down.
“What happened? Can I ask that?”
“You can.” He gives me a strained smile.
“Can you tell me?”
He smiles tiredly again.
I need to find another way to ask my question—one that won’t incriminate him. “What made the wound?”
He bites on his lower lip, his dark brows gathering as if he’s thinking. “A bullet…filled with something acidic.”
Wow. Can that be legal? Of course not, I answer myself. “So it still hurts?”
“It’s okay.” He pats the pillow behind my back. “Relax. It’s an old TV, but I’ve got a remote in the nightstand.” He leans over, opening the drawer and plucking out a small, gray remote before I can offer to do it for him. When he leans back against the pillows, I rest my cheek against his chest, and he wraps a heavy arm around me.
He kisses my hair. “Love this smell.”
“It’s called Midnight Eden.”
“Midnight Eden…” He inhales. “I used to think it smelled like gold.”
I sniff his chest. “What’s your scent?”
“Soap. Shampoo. Maybe my shaving cream…which I should use tonight.”
“Don’t use it. I want you to leave me scruff-burned.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.” He kisses my hair. “Not even your skin.” He sounds tired, his voice dropping an octave.
“Are you sleepy?”
“No way. I’d never miss this.”
“So…that means you want me here?” I’m partway teasing, but his brows arch and his lips part, like he’s troubled. “That wasn’t the problem,” he says, somber.
“Oh, I know. I was just kidding.”
He takes a few hard, shallow breaths, as if he’s struggling to fill his lungs.
“You okay?”
He won’t look at me.
I stroke his cheeks and his eyes shut. “It’s…hard to be so close to you.”
I press my palm against his chest, below his throat.
“That feels good.” His lips curve.
I kiss his jaw, and then his collarbone through his shirt.
“I’m so sorry that I wasn’t there for you,” I whisper. “With your father,” I add in a voice that quavers.
I can feel him swallow. “Don’t be sorry. It was my fault.”
“I just want to find a time machine and hold you.”
He’s carefully still as I trace my fingertips over his sculpted arms, along the lines of his chest. When he starts to pant again, I press my palm back under his throat.
“Who takes care of you? Does Isa?”
“Isa’s like a sister.”
“But you said she’s gone a lot.”
He smiles, strained. “I’m not like this when you’re not around,” he whispers.
“Is this a Sampson and Delilah situation?”
“No.” He runs a hand over my shoulder
, looking heavy-lidded. “This feels good.”
I shift my focus to his hair, running my fingers through his dark locks, stroking his forehead as I do. He groans softly. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I want you to feel good tonight.”
He covers his face with one of his hands. I curl up against his chest and hug him. I don’t move for a long time, while he breathes in gusts and tears fall into my hair.
“Sorry,” he says thickly.
“Don’t be sorry.” I kiss his wet eyes. “Spend this night with me. Let’s make each other feel good. Then go home and get a dog.”
His hand cups my cheek. “What about you?”
“I work all the time.” I smile. “My dog would be lonely. I’ll get a fish.”
He hugs me.
“Thank you for protecting me. For watching out for me and all that.” I kiss his jaw. “I love you too,” I whisper. “It’s our secret from the world, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t know.”
He holds me all night. We talk of so many things, in whispers, between kisses. When the sun rises, he takes me one more time.
* * *
Luca
I can barely walk her back to her place. My legs feel weak. My stomach feels like I’m on a boat. When we get inside her cabin, she wraps her arms around me and kisses my cheek.
I kiss the tiny salamander tattoo on her arm and touch the lemonade one on her ankle with the tip of my boot. I smooth her hair off her forehead and kiss her brow and eyes and cheeks and lips and chin.
“Be careful,” I rasp. “Don’t be scared. I’ll be watching out for you. But still, be careful.”
“Anything more you want to tell me?”
I shake my head. “Just that Aren doesn’t like you. I’ll be watching, though. I’m gonna keep you safe. I really don’t think you should run in the park, though, especially before daybreak.”
“Is there something specific?”
She means a threat. I shake my head.
“Do you like running near me?” she asks.
“Yes,” I confess.
“So let’s keep doing it together. It’s really not that risky. Don’t tell me where you are. Maybe sometimes, once a month, you can run by me. Like, beside me. Only for a minute. We could do the same thing that you did the one time,” she says softly.
I shut my eyes, picturing Elise pinned against a tree. “I don’t know if I could stop there. Out in public isn’t safe enough now.”
“Safety is a false paradigm.” She touches my mouth, smiling sadly. “I can see you gearing up to argue. But just don’t, Luca. Just this one time, don’t tell me how you’ll ruin me. You’ve played the cards you were dealt as well as you could.”
“I graduated from Columbia.” As soon as I say it, I can feel my face and neck warm.
“Are you serious?”
I look down as I nod.
She hugs me hard, pulls away grinning. “Oh my God, when, Luca?”
“Class of 2010.”
“What was your focus?”
“Philosophy.” I laugh, slightly embarrassed.
“Really?”
I nod.
“That makes me so happy. Did they pay?”
I nod again, and her grin is huge. I wait for her to ask me if I’ll ever go legit, but she doesn’t. She strokes my lightly bearded cheek and wraps her hand around my nape and kisses my throat and whispers, “Avoid purebreds…if you can. They don’t live as long. You know?”
I nod.
“Crying means you have a big heart. So you have to take care of it, okay? For me.”
I look down at my feet so that won’t happen again.
“Don’t do reckless stuff. Don’t be stupid. Please try not to do illegal things.” She laughs. “That makes things really hard for me.”
“That’s why last night was selfish…on my part,” I whisper.
“It was something we both needed.”
“Did you need it?” I can’t help running my hand down her arm, taking her hand in mine. “Do you feel better? Or neutral—and not worse?”
“I really do.” She kisses my lips softly. “Don’t fret. I feel good.”
I grin. “I don’t fret.”
“Oh no? What do you do?”
“Man worry.”
“Don’t man worry on my behalf.”
She takes my hands and kisses them, gives them a squeeze. “Take care, you promise?”
“You too,” I rasp.
I hug her so fucking tight. We’re both staring at each other the whole time as I walk to the cabin’s door and out onto the porch. She drifts into the doorway as I push the screen door open. Down a stair, and one more look back. Then I’m really walking away. I don’t let myself look back again.
22
Elise
I spend the next week listening to the recordings from the device I planted in my cooler. Also, verifying everything he told me. My new assistant, Leonard, is running like a hamster on a wheel, taking up my slack with normal work tasks. He’s such a good sport, I request a raise for him on Wednesday morning. By five o’clock, it’s been approved—powers of the big, black chair, which is how I’ve come to think of the D.A.’s office.
Thursday afternoon, Team Houdini gathers for another meeting, but I rain check. I send one of the building’s gophers to get me a matcha green tea latte from the café down the street. While I drink it, I check one of the last things on my list: his parents’ obituaries. But it’s obituary, because there’s not one for his father. I think of why and feel sick to my stomach. I think of Luca seeing that and I can’t—truly can’t—see him as anything besides a victim in what happened in the day or two after.
Next, I look up his friends Leo and Alesso. I have files on them both, because they work with him now. Of the two, only Alessandro had a brother. A missing person report was filed for him the month after our graduation.
Whoa.
I stare at a picture of the guy—grainy and gray, from a newspaper archive. It’s just…weird to see him. I’m surprised when tears sting my eyes.
I reach out and turn my computer’s screen off, and then I rest my face in my hands.
Everything he told me—that I can verify—seems true. Is true. I don’t think he lied to me. Not ever. I just…know it in my soul.
I drag a breath in through my nose and blink at my black monitor. Then I finish off my latte, pack my things, and head home half an hour early.
I step inside and look around my living room, so much the opposite of Dani’s. I like color: teal, clay red, pale blue, lime green. I set my bags on a table by the back door and slump onto the couch, pulling a blanket over myself as I look at the ceiling.
Jace is coming over later. I don’t know what we’ll do. Probably watch TV. Normally, I’m thrilled to see him, so I cook or pick out wine and linger in the living room. Tonight, I end up in bed with a book. I’m half asleep when he strides into my room, wearing navy dress pants and a pale pink button-up, his sleeves rolled up and collar open.
“In the bed! It’s seven-thirty.” His brown eyes narrow as he sits by the footboard. “What’re you reading?”
I hold up my copy of A Thousand Mornings.
“Mary Oliver. That’s good stuff.”
I nod, rapidly realizing I’m not going to be able to fool Jace. He tilts his head a little. “You going to cut to the chase or make me dig around a little while?”
He gives me his soothing Jace smile, plus expressive eyes that always make me feel seen. I realize that the only other person who’s ever made me feel that way is Luca.
“Um”—I pick at a thread on my duvet—“maybe make you dig around.” I give him an apologetic smile.
“Damn, that look’s one of your serious faces. Something from work?”
I shrug.
“Dare I even ask?”
I sit up. “I think you just did, Jacey Baby.”
He stretches out on his back beside me, folding his hands behind his head, and I’m reminded o
f another man in that same pose, on another bed inside a little cabin. It makes my heart ache.
“How was your day?” I evade.
He gives me a weak smile. “I’m going to make you dig, too.”
I scoot over closer to him, so I’m kind of curled toward him but the two of us aren’t touching.
“Something with work?”
He waggles his brows.
“Are we having the same bad day?”
He gives me a sad smile, and my stomach slow rolls.
“Should we open some wine?” he asks.
“That bad?”
He lifts his brows.
“Oh no. I’ll go get something. What’re you in the mood for?”
“Anything.” His voice sounds dark. Jace is picky—much, much pickier than me—so just the lack of request is odd in itself.
I pick a merlot I know he likes and return with two glasses. Jace is sitting on “his” side of my bed with his legs stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles, thumbing through a copy of The New Yorker. I smile at his gold and pale blue paisley dress socks.
When he doesn’t look up, I hand him his glass and tug on his foot. “Tell me.” It’s murmured—because I’m nervous.
“He’s not giving it to me.”
“What?”
He looks down into his glass. “Yep.” The word is sharp. “He told me today.”
“What the hell? How can he do that?”
He doesn’t move, not even to blink. I think I see tears gather in his eyes.
“God, Jace, I’m so sorry.” I lean in close and give him a hug, and he hugs me back, but it’s perfunctory; I can tell. When I pull away, he still won’t look at me.
“Damn. Can I ask questions? What did he say?”
“He says he knows it’s fake between the two of us. Called me the F-word. Said I can’t trick him. Unless I have a kid, he’s not giving me his company. Wealth should be passed down and shouldn’t end in…” He shakes his head, wide-eyed and gray in the face.
“Is this because we didn’t go to dinner with them last week?”
“No.” His lips press flat. “It’s not your fault. Don’t take that on. It was always going to be this way. I should have never played these fucking games with him.”
