22. Valentina
Chapter 22
Valentina
L uckily for me, Darragh doesn’t take me out into some farmer’s field and leave me there. He drives in silence, while I squeeze my legs together on the seat, praying that the toilet paper holds up. I still can’t believe he put down his own shirt for me to sit on, and I absolutely refuse to bleed on it, even if I have to break every law of physics and biology to make it happen.
Turns out we don’t have to drive all the way into Meaford’s tiny downtown. The grocery store out on the rural highway into town is still open, though only for a couple more minutes.
“They’re about to close,” I say as I note the closing time listed on the sign compared to the time displayed on the clock inside the car.
“Not for us, they’re not.” He says it with such certainty. Like the thought of a shop closing before he gets what he needs is unfathomable to him.
But when you’re six-foot-something of tattooed, boxing champion mob boss, maybe you’re right.
It’s energy I recognize. I’ve seen it in my own papà and cousins more times than I can count. The sort of confidence that comes from having killed ten times more men than you’ve ever had to capitulate to.
I wonder if Darragh has ever had to submit to anyone in his entire life.
“I’ll be right back,” I mumble as Darragh pulls into a parking spot right in front of the grocery’s store’s glowing sign.
I thought those words would be indication enough that I plan to go in alone, but Darragh either doesn’t understand my meaning or willfully ignores it. Knowing him, it’s probably the latter. He gets out of the car at the same moment that I do.
“You don’t have to come in with me,” I tell him as he stalks around to my side of the vehicle.
“Please,” he says. “I know the rules. Good little Sicilian girls like you aren’t supposed to be out and about without a chaperone.”
Good little Sicilian girls shouldn’t be caught dead anywhere near Darragh Gowan.
“I’m not sure I qualify,” I mutter. I go to close the car door, but Darragh catches it with his hand, holding it open for an extra second or two. With his other hand, he reaches around me into the vehicle. His chest brushes mine, and my nipples and belly jump to attention in tandem.
When he pulls his hand out of the vehicle, he’s holding the shirt that he put down on the passenger seat. I expect that he’s about to put it on, but he doesn’t. Instead, he snakes it around my hips so that most of the fabric covers my ass, then he ties the sleeves together in a knot at my front.
So. Not only does he not want to let me bleed, but he apparently doesn’t want to let anyone else see it, either.
Is this protectiveness?
Or possessiveness?
I don’t even know if I’m leaking yet, but I decide not to bother arguing with the positioning of Darragh’s shirt around my hips. He gives the knot another small tug, letting his hands linger at my front just a little longer than is necessary.
Then, he lets go.
The doors open automatically as we walk through them. Mounds of colourful produce greet us ahead. Peaches are in season around here, dominating the displays. Darragh snags one from the top of the pile. His hand is so big that the fruit basically disappears in his fist.
To the left, a lone cashier sighs and turns towards us, no doubt about to tell us the store is closing. But as soon as she sees Darragh, all ink and skin and muscle, her mouth snaps shut so hard I’m almost a little worried about the state of her teeth and jaw afterwards. Her eyes, though, do the opposite. Widen to their limits in her young face.
Darragh apparently doesn’t even notice. He walks through the place like he owns it, despite his state of undress. We pass by a sign stating that valued customers are asked to wear shirts and shoes inside . Darragh takes no heed of it.
It’s bizarre, seeing someone like Darragh in a mundane place like this. A little grocery store on the edge of rural Ontario.
It’s bizarre that I’m here with him at all.
Best to get this over with as quickly as possible. I walk quickly through the aisles until I find the feminine hygiene stuff. I snag a package of pads from one of the lower shelves in front of me, then rise up on my toes to grab tampons from higher up. But Darragh’s hand is already there, above my head, grasping the box before I can get to it. If I could have even gotten to it in the first place. There’s a very good chance I wouldn’t have been able to reach it.
“Give it,” I say, but Darragh ignores me, striding purposefully away from me to the cash. I hustle to keep up with his long, denim-clad legs. He tosses the tampons down on the black conveyer belt, sets down the peach, and I add the pads.
For someone who seemed so concerned about getting out on time a second ago, the cashier takes ages to scan the items. Her scanner keeps missing the barcodes because her big blue eyes are glued to Darragh behind me. There’s a bright pink flush in her cheeks, and every time she makes some attempt at small talk, I’m 99% sure she’s only interested in Darragh’s responses. Even though he doesn’t respond at all. Just stands there like some looming fucking gargoyle.
“Here,” I say, pulling my wallet out when the cashier finally gets the three items tallied up. I grab a credit card, but Darragh plucks it out of my hand before I can tap it on the machine.
“Put this shit away,” he says. He reaches into his own back pocket and produces a wallet. Light shines strangely on his forearm, which I only notice now is wrapped in plastic wrap. New ink?
I’m so distracted by trying to figure out which of the tattoos on Darragh’s arm are new that I’m too slow to stop him for paying for the order.
“Hey!” I exclaim. “Excuse me,” I say, turning my attention to the cashier as she puts the items in a small plastic bag. “Could you please refund the card he just used and use mine instead?”
“Your card? You mean this one?” Crap, Darragh still has it. Darragh holds up my credit card between his index finger and middle fingers, like it’s a playing card. Then, he tucks it behind his ear. And leaves it there.
“Um. A refund?” the cashier asks. “I’d have to get a manager…”
“Don’t bother,” Darragh says blithely. “We’re going.”
He sweeps the bag of items into his hand and walks away from the desk, leaving the cashier to stare at his back in his wake.
I guess I’d better follow him. I wouldn’t put it past him to drive away without me, leaving me stranded without either tampons or my credit card, just to make some kind of twisted point.
“Hey!” I call as I lunge out the doors after him. “I’m talking to you!”
“So talk,” Darragh says, taking out his keys and unlocking his car. My card glints behind his ear.
“Are you some kind of klepto?”
“Klepto?” Darragh pauses to look at me, then raises the bag in the air between us. “Pretty sure you saw me pay for this.”
“I mean my credit card! You can’t just keep it, you know. And don’t think I didn’t notice that you also stole that ribbon from my bathing suit.”
“I haven’t stolen shit since I was living on the streets in Dublin.”
Living on the streets? Darragh’s been in Canada for as long as I’ve been aware of the major players in the dangerous games of the underworld we live in.
Which would have to mean…
“You were homeless?” I ask, my voice cracking strangely. “As a child?”
His face twists into a mockery of a smile.
“I was never a child.” He opens the car door for me. “And like I said, I don’t steal. I do, however, have no problem taking what I’m owed. By force, if necessary. As it so often is.”
“So, what, I owe you a ribbon from my bathing suit?”
“No, pet.” His smile stretches wider. Haunted and terrible. “You owe me your entire fucking life.”
I gear up for a fiery response to that, but he silences my retort before it even takes form by pulling my credit card out from behind his ear and sliding it ever so gently between my bra strap and my skin. My breath stutters in my throat. Something raw and unnameable fractures at the back of his heavy gaze.
Then, without another word, he goes to the driver’s side and gets in.
Shaken and unsure, I follow.
The drive back feels like it goes much quicker than the drive to the grocery store. Maybe because I now know that Darragh really did mean to keep his word about taking me shopping.
When we get back onto the black beach road, he doesn’t drop me off at my cottage. He pulls into the driveway of his own and puts the vehicle into park.
“OK. Well… Thanks, I guess,” I say. I suppose I really should thank him for taking me into town, even if he did it alongside a bunch of his other usual bullshit. I reach for the bag, only for Darragh to snatch it out of reach.
“Not so fast,” he says. He turns to me in the car, and it’s like the air immediately vanishes. Breathing becomes ten times harder. He’s so close to me in this enclosed space. So big. Carved from shadows.
“What do you mean, not so fast?” I ask, clenching my thighs together ineffectually. At this point, the chance of my denim shorts surviving this night unstained as getting slimmer and slimmer every second. “Pass it over. I said thank you, didn’t I?”
“Didn’t ask you to thank me.”
“What, then?”
Was this all some cruel joke? Taking me all the way into town for stuff I needed only to whip it away at the last second?
“If you want these things, you’re coming inside.”
“Inside… Inside the cottage? Your cottage?”
“Obviously.”
“Um, no, actually! That isn’t obvious at all! Why the hell would I do that?”
“I already told you.” He rattles the bag, making plastic crinkle. “To get this stuff.”
I squint suspiciously at him, rapidly thinking through my options.
I settle on trying to take him by surprise, my hand darting forward to pull the bag from his grip. But Darragh uses his free hand to catch mine out of the air, his fingers closing hard and fast around my own.
“I’ve been a trained boxer since I was fourteen years old and a scrapper far longer than that,” Darragh murmurs, his voice dark silk and smoke. “You really think you have better reflexes than I do?”
“Apparently not,” I admit.
“Inside.” He releases my hand, holds fast to the bag, then gets out of the car. Before he closes the door, he fixes me with that hungry, empty-eyed gaze and says, “If you’re going to slide something into that reckless little body of yours tonight, it will happen in my house…”
His voice hardens. Grows teeth of its own.
“Or it won’t happen at all.”