Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
SLOANE
O ur flight lands at a private airport in Vancouver, and then we’re transferred to a helicopter that takes us to a remote island. We land in the middle of a clearing with light rain and a chill in the air. The pilot gives us a map and tells us how to get to our safe house before lifting off and leaving us in the middle of nowhere.
Guilt is still eating at me because of Luca being beside me in the first place, and now it only grows in my stomach, clawing at me like a fucking bear coming out of hibernation, angry and starving.
Luca sighs, and it’s the first sound I’ve heard from him since the warehouse. He walked away from his life to keep me safe, and even though I wanted to tell him he didn’t need to, I wanted him with me.
I didn’t want to be here alone.
“Alright, this way,” he says, and I grab my bag and trudge behind where he takes the lead.
The hike to the safe house is treacherous, and by the time we get there, I’m soaked and shivering.
We push inside with a key that Ardesia gave to Luca and close the cold, rainy weather outside.
I sag in relief and toss my bag onto the table.
“It says here there are two bedrooms. So, you choose which one you want, and I’ll take the other,” Luca says, and I don’t argue with him.
Gio texted me to be careful and that my job would still be there when I got back. I hadn’t told him the details, but I told him I had to get out of town for a bit. I knew he’d understand, but wouldn’t understand me disappearing again. With all he’s done for me, I can’t make him worry.
I chose the room with the connected bathroom with a Jacuzzi tub, while the other only has a regular bathtub and shower. Luca says nothing as he takes his bag into the other room and shuts the door, likely getting out of his wet clothes.
Once I realize there’s hot water, I strip out of my clothes and shower to warm my bones. I stay far too long, but the water never runs out, so I don’t feel bad about it.
When I’m toweled off, I dry my hair. But all the while, the images of Lorenzo’s blood soaking through my fingers and his frantic eyes play over and over in my head. I shiver as I shake them away, but my subconscious is trying to taunt me as they come right back.
Even though I’m safe in this cabin in the middle of nowhere, part of me wonders if my mind will be my worst enemy while I’m here.
I trek back out into the living room, looking over shelves filled with books and the plush couch with a flannel blanket folded on the back. The cabin is decently sized, with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a good-sized living room, and a dining room with an attached kitchen. There’s a door in the dining room that I decide I don’t have the nerve to investigate behind, and instead, I sit down at the table that seems handmade.
“Two of Ardesia’s men just left. It seems we’re not fully alone on this island,” Luca says, sliding me a sandwich on a napkin.
I tear into it, nodding at his words.
I’m mentally exhausted. I didn’t sleep last night or on the six-hour plane ride, and it’s growing darker outside again now.
I don’t have the space to answer him or even banter back and forth.
I’m so tired.
When my sandwich is finished, I head for my room, leaving the unspoken words between us for later. I stop at my bedroom door, though, guilt washing over me again. I nod in defeat for a moment before trudging back into the kitchen.
“What? What’s wrong?” Luca asks, and his concern for me, even though I’m behaving out of sorts, only worsens the guilt.
I don’t say a word, though. I wrap around him, burying my face into the side of his neck when he bends into my body.
We stand like that forever, just holding onto one another for strength.
“Thank you,” I whisper into his neck, and it’s all I can muster.
I leave him stunned in the kitchen as I get into bed and close my eyes.
“You shouldn’t be out here with me, you know?” Mary says, biting her honey bun as I gobble mine up.
I shrug. “I know. But what else am I supposed to do?”
When I left, Mom was strung out on the couch, a cigarette burning in the ashtray on the coffee table, and Dad was nowhere to be found.
“It’s Friday afternoon. Shouldn’t you be off playing with friends or something?”
I don’t have the heart to tell her I’m like her; even though I have a home, I’m a nefarious spirit who wanders the world without a proper place. I’ve never felt that I belonged anywhere before.
“Got no friends?” she asks.
“You’re awfully nosy today,” I spew, turning to meet her eyes.
They’re the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen, like looking into the crystal blue waters of an arctic river. Her hair is blonde and matted, grey streaking through some bits.
“I’m just saying, is all. You’re with me more than you should be, kid. I’m not a good influence.” Her face turns sad before she turns back to her honey bun. “Not that I don’t appreciate when you come around.” She raises the sweet treat in the air in appreciation.
I bite mine and sit silently with Mary for a few more minutes.
“I don’t have any friends,” I answer her question finally.
She doesn’t immediately reply, and I think she hasn’t heard me until she finally says, “Well, you’ve got one.”
I turn to her, hoping she won’t say something stupid like ‘Jesus loves you.’
She smiles, her decaying teeth covered in filth showing behind her lips. “Me.”
I can’t help it. I smile back at her. It might not be much, but it’s something.
My mom always says I have a way of latching onto people that I shouldn’t. She says I see down to the very soul that animates people and can judge it on instinct within the first moments I meet someone. It’s how I know my mom isn’t a good person and how I know Mary is.
“One day, I won’t be here, kid.”
Her words burn my chest, and I snap my face toward hers. “Don’t say that.”
Unruly anger seeds in my belly that I can’t control, but it’s out of sadness at the thought of losing her. She’s the only bright thing I have in my life; these moments with her are all I have.
“It’s just the facts, kid. I’m not getting any younger, and these streets aren’t getting easier. You’ll need to learn to survive on your own pretty soon. And let me tell you, it’s hard. But you have something I don’t: fire in your gut. If you keep that, you can live through anything this world throws at you, you hear me?”
I nod at her, my eyes burning with tears.
She smiles again. “Awe, now, don’t cry yet. I’m still here, ain’t I?”
I sniffle and nod, returning to watching the people on the street before us come and go as we eat the rest of our honey buns in silence. But I don’t shy away when Mary reaches for my hand to hold it. It’s the first time I’ve ever felt what it’s like for peace to shroud me.
The first time, I felt like someone loved me.
I snap awake, sitting up and gasping as tears fall down my cheeks in rivers. It was only two weeks later that I found Mary dead. Her foreboding had rung true, and I lost the only friend I had in the world that day. From then on, life got rough. She’d been right. But I never forgot her words. I’ve kept the fire in my gut.
“Sloane? Are you alright?” Luca asks from a corner near the end of the bed.
I wince as I look through the dark of the room for him.
He’s in a chair, covered in a blanket.
“What are you doing over there?” I ask him.
He clears his throat, folding his blanket as he stands, placing it to drape over the back of the chair as he stands and heads for the side of the bed nearest me.
“I wanted to make sure you were alright. I must’ve fallen asleep,” he says, sitting beside me and brushing my hair back off my sweat-covered forehead.
Losing Mary feels nearer tonight, like it wasn’t years ago. While I know it’s the dream, I can’t help but lean into it some and let the sting travel through me.
“It was only a bad dream.”
“Want to talk about it?” he asks, and I flutter my eyes to look at him.
He looks worried; lines mar his forehead as he smooths and brushes through my hair with his fingers.
I tell him about Mary. About the things we shared, how she was there for me when no one else was, even if she was a homeless alcoholic, down on her luck.
I’ve never talked about her before. Dante was the first person I admitted to knowing Mary. It had felt so freeing.
He listens adamantly, his face never giving away any thoughts.
“She sounds like an amazing woman,” he finally says, and I nod in agreement, overwhelmed by how it feels for someone to see me . I want to see through the facade and the sass to the truth of who I am.
“She was.”
“It doesn’t matter how you knew her, Sloane. She was a part of you and how you grew into who you are today. If she’s important to you, talk about her more often. Give her life beyond her death.”
Emotion chokes me. “Sometimes I wonder where she’s buried; wonder how I can visit her? But then I think I’m being silly for wondering.”
“It’s not silly to love someone, no matter what walk of life they’re from.” His words seem to affect not only me but him as well. Something unspoken passes on his face, but he seems to toss it away.
“Did you ever try to get my dad clean?” I ask him, and I don’t know where the question originated. I try to disassociate Luca from my father because they’re so different, and the things I’ve done with Luca are hard to comprehend when I think of him as my dad’s friend.
“Many times, yes. But I think a person must want to get clean before they’ll be receptive to help. And he never found that drive inside himself. I think you got all the fire your parents never had. Is your mom still…” he trails off, but I know what he’s asking.
“Yes, she’s still using and still selling herself. I don’t think she’ll ever stop. It’s just who she is.”
He drops his hands into my lap, grasping mine inside his.
They’re massive and smooth. His thumb rubs over the top of my hand, and I nearly sigh with contentment at the feel.
“I hoped you were the answer, you know? When you were born. I thought you would be the precious reason Ray and Belinda found to get clean and live life on the straight and narrow. It was so fucking foolish of me.”
The way he talks about my birth as if he held me when I was a baby makes me realize the age gap between us that’s always been there. I’d been refusing to see it before because of how attracted to him I am, but now it’s alive and well, floating between us like a stark reminder of all the reasons we’ll never be together.
“I wasn’t enough,” I tell him. “It was a good thought, but I wasn’t enough.”
He tips my chin up with his forefinger and thumb, looking deep into my eyes with his. “You were always enough. They were the problem.”
When he leans in and hovers over my lips, I can’t help how my body responds.
My thighs press together to rub out some of the throbbing in my center, my breathing speeds, and my eyes close.
He stays there for what feels like an eternity before he kisses my forehead, and then his weight shifts off the side of the bed.
“Goodnight, Sloane.”
I don’t immediately open my eyes. I sit there and imagine that he hasn’t left. That he’s still hovering in the space before me, fighting the urge to kiss me.
“Goodnight, Father,” I whisper as I open my eyes to my empty bedroom.
For a moment, I wonder if I dreamt of him being there.
As I lay back and close my eyes, I send up my second prayer for Mary’s soul, asking that God saw in her what I had and let her walk through his pearly gates into her afterlife a healed and happy woman.
Even though I know I come from a life where happy endings don’t exist.