Chapter 29
When Arlene awoke, the room was bathed in moonlight, a pearlescent gleam illuminating the walls. Her head was still atop Don’s chest, his hand in her hair, and their legs were tangled together in a way that made it impossible to tell where one of them started and the other began. She wanted to go back to sleep, to savor this moment and never wake up from this dream. Because all too soon, it would be morning and there would be Frankie and the picture and Harry and her mother to worry about. But here and now, it was her and Don and nothing else mattered.
She cast a glance at the clock on the nightstand. It was nearly two in the morning. They had hours more before reality came crashing in. She yawned and moved her arm, trying to shake some of the tingling sensation from it. Without saying a word, Don leaned down and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “I didn’t mean to wake you,” she whispered.
“You didn’t, don’t worry. I’ve been awake for a while.”
She turned her head to look at him, as he stroked her hair back from her brow. “Why?” She feared the answer. What if he regretted what they’d done? What if he thought it was a mistake? Or worse, a one-time thing, a thank-God-I’m-alive fuck, not a moment of passion ten years in the making?
“I’ve been thinking about my parents.”
That was not what she’d expected to hear. “I told you we shouldn’t have done it in this room.”
He chuckled into her hair. “No, it’s not that. I’ve been thinking about them living here, between these four walls, and never caring to venture any farther to see what else might be out there in the world.” He paused, but she could sense he wasn’t finished yet. “I’ve been wondering what they would’ve done today. If they were still alive.”
Arlene didn’t answer, pressing a kiss to his chest. Because they both knew the answer. Michael Lazzarini would have done nothing. He would’ve let his son rot, saying he deserved what he got. Don exhaled, the weight of the world in his breath. “Why did you come for me?”
She hugged him tightly, then lifted her head. “Did you doubt I would?”
He swallowed, then nodded. “I left you the clue, hoping you’d figure it out. But I didn’t really believe you—or anyone—would come. That anyone cared. I’ve spent my whole life thinking that I was something to be ashamed of, that because I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life stinking like fish, I was a disappointment. The first person who believed in me turned out to be a gangster who wanted me only for the money with which I could line his pockets.”
She bent over and kissed his cheek. “Frankie Martino was not the first person who believed in you.” She gave him a meaningful look, but there was still something lost and hurt in his eyes.
He leaned back against the headboard and put his arm behind his head. “You might’ve been the first,” he murmured. “But I didn’t give you a whole lotta reason to keep believing.”
She fumbled under the covers until she found his hand and wrapped her fingers between his. “That’s true. I thought you abandoned me. Not just me. Us. My parents believed in you too. But in putting this town, your parents, behind you, it felt like you wanted to forget all of us.”
He nodded and squeezed her hand. “I know.”
She looked up at him and met his gaze, something tortured and pained in his eyes. “Why, Don? Why didn’t you write? Explain yourself.”
“And tell you what? That I’d been the biggest idiot east of the Mississippi? That I was dancing and still dirt-poor because my manager took every cent I earned? That everything I was and could be was tied up with something filthy and evil? That I’d been arrested three times working gigs for Frankie in illegal watering holes? I would’ve rather told you I was on the breadline than tell you that.”
She cupped his cheek and held it tenderly. “Don’t you think I would’ve understood, would’ve tried to help you find a way out?”
He laid his hand atop the one she had on his cheek, drawing it to his lips and kissing it. Then he gently returned her hand to her and sat up, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. “I didn’t want you to help me. I didn’t want you to know anything about Frankie Martino. You or your parents. You’d always believed in me. How could I admit to you what a failure I was? That I’d become the two-bit chump my father always said I would be.”
“We never would have seen it that way.”
He dragged his hands down his face. “I know. That became all the more reason not to tell you. Then you would’ve been involved. And in danger. I couldn’t do that to you. Frankie already took someone I loved. I didn’t want him to hurt anyone else.”
Her heart fluttered at that. Someone he loved. Was he including her? “Tell me.” She scooted to the side of the bed beside him and leaned her head on his shoulder. They were naked before each other, and there was still so much they were hiding. But that ended now. It was time to put all their cards on the table. She pressed a gentle kiss to his bare shoulder. “Please, Don, I need to know. No more secrets. All they’ve ever done is hurt us both.”
He swallowed and nodded. “I had a girl in New York for a while. Her name was Mabel. She was a nice girl, a model. We met at the El Morocco coat check, both trying to make a run for the soda counter at the drugstore down the street. She was sweet. And beautiful, one of the most beautiful girls I’ve ever seen.”
Arlene tangled her hand with his and squeezed, urging him to continue. “Did he…did Frankie kill her?”
He shook his head. “No. But he killed her career. He robbed her of the life she wanted and deserved.” His eyes welled with tears and he closed them. Arlene dusted his eyelashes with kisses, tasting the salt pooling there. Her heart hurt. For Don and everything he’d lost because of Frankie.
“He sent one of his boys after us. Threw lye in her face. It scarred her permanently. She still wanted to be with me, to marry me. Clung to me the whole cab ride to the hospital, while I knew that this was the end. How could I go on seeing her, knowing that next time Frankie might send something worse? I brought her to the hospital and then went out and got so drunk I didn’t know who or where I was for three days. I wanted to protect her. So, I left her alone. Frankie sent one of his goons to the hospital to tell her I’d broken things off because of her face. Because it repulsed me.
“When I’d sobered up enough to realize what he’d done, I tried to contact her, to explain it wasn’t true. That I couldn’t see her again because I’d already ruined her life. But she didn’t answer a single phone call. I went to her apartment even, knowing it was a risk. But it was empty. Frankie had bought her a ticket back to her hometown in Pennsylvania. The last time I ever saw her was that terrible night, her face blistering over as the acid ate through it.”
He buried his face in his hands and broke down. Arlene wrapped her arm around his shoulders and held him, letting him cry until there were no tears left. She suspected he’d never let himself feel the weight of this so fully. When he was through, he wrapped her in a tight embrace and pulled them down to the mattress together. She brushed a kiss to Don’s lips.
She understood now. Why Don had never told her about Frankie. Why he’d completely disappeared, never writing, never calling. “Is that why you didn’t reach out about the funeral?”
Don bit his lip and nodded. “I wasn’t lying when I said that Frankie hid your telegram from me. That I found out too late to do anything about it. But even if I had, I don’t think I would’ve come. Probably wouldn’t have even called. I would’ve been too afraid. To give Frankie proof that there was somebody else I cared about. Someone else he could hurt or abuse to make me fall in line.”
Arlene laid her head against his bare chest and snuggled in to him. They lay in silence for a moment, his hand absentmindedly caressing her back, wandering up and down her spine. She’d thought that Don had forgotten her, had left her to grieve alone. When he’d been trying to protect her. “The other night, I thought you’d abandoned me again. That you’d tucked me into a taxi and gone off to make whoopee with Eleanor. When I called you at the hotel, to come because my mother was sick—”
A look of concern flashed across his face. “She’s fine. Took a spill, bruised her hip pretty bad, but she’s okay.” Don swallowed and then looked at her, waiting for her to continue. “When I called and you weren’t there, I felt—” Her voice broke. He squeezed her hand, urging her to continue. “I felt like I’d been a prize idiot. Trusting you. Thinking you’d changed. That our date meant something.”
She looked at him and his eyes were closed, a mask of guilt obscuring his face. “Of course you thought that. I hadn’t given you any reason not to think the worst of me.”
She reached out and gently cupped his cheek, turning his face toward hers. “Hey, hey, no, look at me. Don, that’s not true. I just, I was so hurt when you left before, so caught up in my schoolgirl crush, that I was determined not to let you break my heart again. When you never wrote, never so much as sent a Christmas card, I thought that maybe you’d never been the man I thought you were.”
He hissed. “God, I’ve been an ass.”
“So have I. It was wrong of me to be so cold to you when you arrived here. To try to hold you at arm’s length. To doubt you when you told me there had never been anything between you and Eleanor. To make you sneak out of my house in the middle of the night. I made you feel like I was ashamed of you.” She reached out and clasped his face between her hands, looking into his eyes. “Don, I could never be ashamed of you. I’m prouder of you than anyone I’ve ever known. Proud that you escaped this house and your father and chased your dream. That you achieved it. It was all I ever wanted for you.”
His eyes glistened, and it broke her heart a little. “And all I ever wanted for you was this—to direct, to write. Listening to you win that Oscar over the radio was one of the best moments of my life. I was so damn happy for you. You had what you always desired most in this world.”
She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around herself. This old secret would haunt her forever if she didn’t release it. “That wasn’t what I desired most in the world.” She couldn’t look at him and spoke the words toward the bed, while she picked at a stray thread in the quilt.
He extended his arm and pulled her back against him. She could never get enough of the feeling of him, warm and solid, pressed against her. “No?” he asked, whispering in her ear and kissing at the spot behind it on her neck.
She looked at him then, finally ready to confess. “You were,” she said as she exhaled, the words coming out in a rush of breath. He grabbed her hands and clasped them together between his, kissing her fingers. He looked slightly stunned.
“I never knew,” he whispered, dotting her hands with kisses. “I was sure you thought of me as a brother, some punk kid you grew up with.” He looked up at her and there were real tears in his eyes. “I would’ve never, ever hurt you on purpose.”
She was crying now too, tears streaming down her face. But she couldn’t repress a smile. “I know that now.” She lifted their hands, still interlocked, and kissed them. A ray of moonlight hit the penny lying on the nightstand next to the bed. It brought back the memory of that day, as fresh as it were yesterday. “Do you remember what I said the day that I gave you that penny?”
He got a bemused look on his face. “That it was for luck. It’s why I’d held onto it all this time.” But a flash of recognition appeared in his eyes. “Wait, no, there was something else. You said it wasn’t just for luck. But the train left the station before you could tell me.”
She bit her lip, worrying it with anxiety. “I wanted to tell you…that you were my dream. That I gave that to you so you wouldn’t forget me. That it was how I wanted you to know—and to remember—that I loved you.”
He nodded and reached for the penny, pressing it to his lips before setting it back on the nightstand. “I think some part of me must have sensed that. As long as I had it with me, I felt like you were there. Reminding me that you were rooting for me. When I was in a tough spot or nervous or on the verge of something big, I’d touch it and be instantly reassured.”
The words made her heart swell. He had never forgotten her, never abandoned her. He’d carried her with him every day, touching the penny like a talisman when he needed her most. “I wanted to be there for you so badly,” she confessed.
“You were.” She dusted his face with kisses. His cheeks were covered in a layer of scruff, a result of his having not shaved for two days, and it burned her lips with a blend of pleasure and pain. She sighed with happiness and leaned her head against her pillow, placing a kiss on his shoulder. She didn’t want to pop the bubble of contentment that filled this room. But there was still one thing she had to know.
“At the cannery, before you went down the chute, you told me something, I don’t know if you remember or—”
He stopped her mouth with a kiss, exploring her with a leisurely passion that made her hungry for him anew. When he came up for air, he murmured against her lips, “Do you think I would forget telling you that I love you?”
She laughed, a mixture of relief and joy, against his mouth. “I was afraid that—”
He held her face between his hands and looked in her eyes, pressing a kiss to her open mouth once more. “I’m tired of being afraid. I don’t want you or me or anyone I love to be afraid anymore. And I especially don’t want you to doubt me. Arlene Morgan, I love you. With all of my heart and soul and my dancing feet, I love you.”
She smiled and nudged her nose to his, kissing him gently. “And I love you. I always have.”
“Well.” He smirked, his hand finding its way back to her breast. “I’ve got some catching up to do, but for all the days you’ve loved me, I promise you a hundred, no, a thousand more.”
He slid his hands down her back and gripped her bottom, rolling her onto her back, and sucked at her neck. This was bliss. This was better than the night she had won the Oscar. This was everything she’d ever dreamed of and never imagined could really be hers. But he stopped all of a sudden and sat up. “Shit.”
She nuzzled his back. “What is it?”
“We still have to deal with Frankie.” She put her hand to his shoulder and kissed his neck before wrapping her arms around his waist and pulling her gently to him, careful not to hurt his ribs.
“Well, that’s easy.” A plan was already forming in her mind.
“Easy? He’s going to be hopping mad after this morning. I’m surprised he hasn’t burst in here and killed us both already.” He started to fumble with the bedsheets. “Arlene, where did Joan and Dash and Flynn go after you brought me here? Shit, they’re in this now too. If Frankie’s got to them, I’ll never forgive myself.”
“Relax, they’re holed up together at the studio. I told them to go there and lie low until they heard from us.”
“Eleanor?” he squeaked.
“Running interference with Frankie already. She cooked up a story about how she was there to try to talk some sense into you.” Arlene kissed a line across the back of Don’s shoulder, working her way to his neck, his jawline scratchy with stubble, his dimple, and finally, his mouth. “We’re working on it. And everything will be easier now because we’re together.”
She kissed him fiercely and then pressed her forehead to his, stroking his cheek with her thumb. She stared into his eyes, losing herself in their depths, the kind assurance of them. They’d always reminded her of licorice. “And don’t you remember?” He gave her a blank look. “There’s nothing we can’t do together.”