Chapter 31
Vincent da Silva
The lights blared off the side of my house when I pulled under the roof of the carport and cut them off.
Getting out, I shut the door and lingered, staring through the glass panes into the dining room and kitchen inside.
The cricket chirps fell in tandem with the frogs croaking, the sounds of a typical, fall night in Alabama.
Tight with anxiety, my insides quaking, I thumbed my nose and coughed, reluctantly going inside.
When I’d left hours earlier, I’d left wearing only jeans.
No shoes, underwear, socks, shirt, nothing.
Nothing to bind my ribs, just jeans, and it was uncomfortable.
Right away, I felt the shift in the atmosphere.
I knew something was different. My heart pounding on my ribs, I dropped the keys on the dining room table and lunged forward, my lungs refusing to work.
Not feeling any pain, anywhere, the panic was overwhelming, numbing all my senses.
I shoved open the bedroom door and stumbled, hyperventilating.
It was empty. Dash wasn’t there.
“No, no, no, no,” I chanted, spinning on my toes and racing for the stairs. Bounding them as fast as I could, sweat was dripping into my eyes, burning my sight. At the landing, I jogged down the long hallway to the far back bedroom, accidentally bursting through that door, as well.
Empty.
“Oh, shit,” I croaked, backing into the wall. My strength giving out, I slid down to the floor, my elbows on my knees, and covered my face. All the emotions I’d gone through the last few hours coming to a head, the pressure snapped and a sob burst forth.
They were gone. I lost Billy and Dash and Piera, all within a matter of hours. Violetta and the kids were in Tennessee, starting a whole new life with Tyler Warren. I was all alone. I had no one, nothing. Solitude.
My feet slipping across the floor, my ankles crossed, as did my arms, hugging my broken ribs.
My head banging to the wall, I peered down the length of my nose at the bed where Piera had been sleeping every night for the last two weeks.
Now it was empty, leaving behind just a small teddy bear I’d bought her when they first moved in.
I snorted and coughed, swiping my cheeks dry.
I used to buy a teddy bear for Violetta every year on her birthday, not ending that tradition until she became a mother and asked me to stop treating her like a child.
She had been so ready to be a grown-up, but she’d kept every single bear I’d given her, tucking them on a shelf in her closet.
Had those found their way to Tennessee, as well?
Or had they been stashed in one of the boxes that went to storage?
When I purchased the small, pink stuffed animal with a heart shaped nose for Piera, I hadn’t even realized I was repeating the pattern until now.
Though my head had been constantly reminding me I was fooling myself, my heart had been invested, hoping for the miracle that would make this living arrangement permanent.
Sniffing and rubbing my nose, I rose to my feet, surprisingly with little discomfort. Striding across the room, I plucked the bear from the pillow still dented for her tiny little head. Studying its features, my thumb stroked over the silky fur, the pain now throbbing in my soul, not my wounds.
My chin on my chest, I continued to stare at it while slowly walking back down the hallway. Descending the stairs, I went to the master suite and laid down. Not where Dash had been sleeping, but the other side. I curled on my side, setting the stuffed animal where his head should be.
“I love you,” I whispered to the silent isolation.
Heaving a sigh, I closed my eyelids and splayed my palm out where he should be, pretending I could feel his heart beating against my palm.
Reality crashing into me of everything I’d lost today, my arms curled into my chest, my face turned to the pillow, and I huffed, having never felt so goddamn dismal in my entire life.
Dario “Dash" Mangiacavallo
Sunday 09.29.2019
Hobbling with a cane, it clicked on the hardwood floor, my irritation level skyrocketing the more the unwelcomed guest punched that goddamn doorbell. Over and over and over!
“Goddammit, stop!” I bellowed, hissing at the pain in my guts.
The floors switching to brick in the foyer, I snatched the door open and roared, “What, motherfucker?” just to deflate and turn hollow at the sight of Vincent.
No shirt on, he was full blown blubbering, tears pouring off his face, his eyes sunken. Trembling so severely, his teeth were rattling, he shoved past me into the house and stomped into the living room.
Fear lacing my blood, I closed the door and staggered after him as quickly as I could, my palm sweating on the brass head of the cane.
He was pacing like a wild, caged animal, his shoulders heaving, foam building in the corners of his mouth.
Okay, I knew he’d be upset when I snuck out of his house a few days ago and refused all his calls, but this was a bit excessive.
“Vin?” I asked cautiously, approaching slowly.
A sob shook his frame, and he came to a sudden halt, hunching forward to press the heels of his palms to his eyes. It was then I noticed the pistol gripped tightly in his left hand.
The floor falling out from beneath me, all the air zapped from my lungs. Holding my free palm out, I stammered, “Now hold on, brother. What’s…” I gulped, my mouth running dry with flashbacks from Georgia. “What’s going on, Vinny?”
“He did it,” he croaked, sounding like a lost little boy. Turning swollen, bloodshot eyes toward me, his brows shot up and I cringed at the absolute devastation shining in his hazel irises. Usually a bright gold, they were dull, almost empty.
“What? I-I don’t…Who did what?”
“Billy,” he whispered with a crack to his tone. He gulped and shuddered, turning ghostly pale.
Billy, his lover. The one I heard him break up with the day I left his home.
The man he had devoted himself to for most of his life.
The reason he refused to let anything truly happen between us and why he kept falling back whenever anything did.
The man I was insanely jealous over, the main reason I left.
“Okay, I’m gonna need some more deets here, Vin, cuz you’re freaking me the fuck out. I don’t understand. What did he do?”
Rambling incoherently, he was pacing again, shaking his head, the tears steadily flowing.
“He married her, he wanted a wife, he always wanted a wife. She’s so beautiful, she’s fucking perfect.
He said he would. He threatened years ago when I was in jail.
I was supposed to go to him. Becca went out of town, we would have had three whole days.
” He paused to look at me, shrugging his arms out.
“We never get that much time together, all to ourselves. A few months ago, we had a couple days, but we wasn’t alone all the time.
This time, we woulda had no interruptions. ”
He skidded to a halt, my sight lowering to bare feet when they squeaked on the hardwood. Staring out the glass doors to the back deck, he muttered with a broken tone, “I told him no. I…broke up with him, instead.”
I dared a couple steps closer, glaring at the pistol. In my mind, I was planning a swift advance where I could successfully snatch it from his hand before he had a chance to react. With the pain still lingering, however, I wasn’t so sure I could do it.
“You…you did the right thing, Vinny. Like you said, he wasn’t never gonna leave her. You deserve happi—”
He spun around and sneered, foaming again, snot smearing over his upper lip from crying so hard. “It’s because of you.”
I did a doubletake and bristled, blinking rapidly. Why the hell did that sound like an accusation?
“If it wasn’t for you, I woulda been there this weekend,” he argued, tucking his wrist inwardly to point at the floor with the barrel. “Nothing woulda changed. We woulda had our time together, his wife woulda come home today, and I would still be his dirty little secret.”
Swallowing the knot in my throat, I panted, “That ain’t no way to live, baby. Someone out there is willing to love you without hiding you.”
“But you won’t,” he replied, further stunning me frozen.
My jaw fell and I began panting heavier, my brain whirling.
“I left him because I love you and now he’s dead.”
Taken aback by…well, every goddamn thing he just said, I choked on an inhale and nearly puked from the rollercoaster of emotions. “What?”
He was swaying, sobbing, wiping at his face with the hand holding the gun. “He did it.”
“What did he do, Vinny?” I ordered, my knuckles starting to hurt from gripping the cane so tightly.
Rage flickering in his eyes, they turned dark, bleak. “Because I fucking love you, he’s dead.” He stood upright and pointed the gun to his head. “And he can’t be alone over there, Dario. He can’t. I can’t let that happen. It’s my fault.”
Adamantly shaking my head, I waved my palm, my insides shrinking and growing cold. “No!” I croaked, again mentally revisiting Georgia.
His frame sagging again, he whimpered, “I did this to him, I owe him.”
Clenching his lids, his lips gleaming over his teeth, I reacted on panic and instinct.
The cane clanking to the floor, I lunged forward, tackling him with my shoulder colliding to his chest. We both grunted and he stumbled backward, our weight so severe, we shattered the glass and spilled onto the deck.
He landed on his back with an oof, the wind knocked from his lungs.
When his arms hit the floor, the gun bumped from his hand and slid across the wood.
I clamored to my feet, dripping sweat and holding the worst wound on my right side.
Limping over, I scooped it up and clicked the button to drop the cartridge.
As hard as I could, I flung it into the woods over the side of the deck, heaving a grunt from the pit of my stomach.
“Are you fucking crazy?” I boomed at the top of my lungs, tossing the pistol aside.
Sobbing, he curled into a ball on his side, shards clanking off, blood staining his back from torn flesh. His arms around his ribs, he wailed, his face turning into the floor. “I killed him, Dash. I fucking killed him.”
Huffing, I released the anger and tugged the thighs of my sweats, squatting, my palm still pressing to the hole in my stomach.
Doing my best to ignore the agony, I petted his bicep and gently urged him to his back.
When he looked up at me, his expression was no longer that of a full-grown man but a frightened, ruined little boy, desperate for a protective wing. “I killed him.”
Rolling my eyes, I hissed through my teeth and lowered to my knees.
Carefully swatting away as much of the broken glass as I could, I flinched, tearing up my palm in the process.
Thunder echoing in the distance, I laid down on the deck beside him and scooted closer, cupping his cheek, transferring a tiny bit of my blood to his beard.
Whispering, I said, “You ain’t responsible for this, baby.
I know it fucking hurts, but you didn’t do this. ”
“He told me he would and I said he was bluffing,” he answered just as quietly.
My heart going out to him, I was grieving right along with my friend, his pain mine, his sorrow mine. “You ain’t responsible for his actions, though.”
His features twisting, he burst with a sob, absolutely lamenting.
Cursing under my breath, I cupped his nape and tugged him closer, burying my lips in his hair.
Scooting the last couple inches between us, I slid an arm beneath, getting sliced up on more tiny shards.
Not phased, I embraced him tightly, clinging, petting, whispering, soothing his torment.
Even as the rain started, we laid on that deck while he broke down in my hold.
“I got you, baby. It’s okay. I got you.”
Vincent curled further into my chest, his face in the crook of my neck.
Weeping uncontrollably, he clung to me and, despite the dismal situation, a selfish part of me reveled with his nearness, that he came to me in a time like this.
Though I wish it were under different circumstances, I couldn’t help but acknowledge how thrilled I was to have him in my arms.