Chapter 5
Curse
The first thing I do when we get to my vehicle, hidden in the shadows of a nearby side-street, is retrieve the bag of clothes I’ve brought her.
There’s a non-descript pair of black sweatpants and a matching sweater in there for her.
I’ve got a winter coat for her too. It’s colder where we’re going than it is in New York.
Thank fuck I thought to bring this shit.
I can’t keep looking at her in her wedding lingerie.
She’s even wearing the sparkly silver shoes from the ceremony, the only ones she had downstairs in Messina’s house.
“Change into these in the backseat,” I say, handing her the bag.
“Can’t change. I’ll just have to put these clothes on overtop,” she replies, snaking one foot out of its shoe and plunging it into a pant leg. “I can’t undo the fasteners at the back of all this to take it off.”
By “all this” she means the goddamn wet dream of an outfit she’s got on beneath my leather jacket. My cock is still throbbing like a bruise from when I was up against her in the bathroom.
How the hell did I not see this coming?
How the hell did I not see her coming?
She’s not the scrawny six-year-old anymore. She’s not the wide-eyed sixteen-year-old, either. She’s fucking luscious, with soft tits, slender hips, and creamy long legs that I cannot fucking stop imagining wrapped tightly around my thrusting hips.
I’ve always thought that Aurora Bianchi is beautiful. But beautiful in the way that a sunrise is, or the soaring architecture of a cathedral. She practically entered the realm of the celestial in my mind. Something sacred. Never sexual.
I’ve dreamed of her so many times. But it’s always her face, her voice – never her body. When I wake, I sometimes feel a slight ache in my chest.
But now the ache is between my legs.
I can count on one hand the number of women I’ve fucked.
Actually, I can count it on two tattooed fingers, because that’s how many times it’s happened.
Once when I was nineteen, once when I was twenty-one.
Both times cold, detached, transactional.
The quick scratch of an itch I almost never experience, let alone bother to give into.
When I vowed to take Aurora from Messina after her engagement was announced two years ago, it wasn’t because I wanted to have her for myself.
At least, not physically. The idea of fucking her would have been as unnatural to me then as the thought of letting someone like Marco Messina fuck her instead.
I guess I thought I would be some kind of neutered guard dog for her.
The loyal, dickless monster she brought to heel with nothing but the blink of her blue eyes and a wave of her shimmering hand.
“No hood.” She hands me my jacket. She’s got the sweater on now. Her pale fingers brush the neckline. “Last time, there was a hood.”
Last time. In Montreal.
I wonder what she ever did with that hoodie.
Probably chucked it right in the trash after she locked the door against me.
“There’s a hood on the parka,” I tell her. “Get in. Front seat,” I clarify when she goes towards the back.
“But I thought you said-”
“Backseat was for getting changed,” I reply. “Up front with me while we drive.”
“Why?” she asks. “You need me beside you to keep an eye on me or something? Are you worried I’m going to try to escape? Open the door on some random highway and jump out into live traffic?”
She grasps the front passenger door handle and shakes her head, bitterness curving her mouth.
“I’m with you now because I have no other choice, Curse.
I literally have nowhere else to go. Papà died three months ago.
Mia’s already remarried. The only friends I once had are in Buffalo, and…
” She swallows, her delicate throat bobbing.
Her hair is still in its wedding style, a low twist at the back of her head that reveals the long line of her neck.
“And my husband is dead. I called you,” she says quietly, “because I have nobody else.”
I’m not sure if I should feel satisfied that she’s already been backed into the dark corner of relying on me, or disappointed that this is what her life has come to.
That I’m the only goddamn lifeline she’s got.
I never wanted this for her. I told her that twelve years ago. That I could never be what she needed.
Maybe I was wrong back then. Because she needed a killer tonight. And that’s what she got.
At least now I can rest easy while I’m driving, knowing she isn’t going to dive out of the car head-first the first fucking chance that she gets.
She’s still standing there, unmoving. Admitting that I’m all she’s got left in this world seems to have stolen the last bits of her remaining strength.
Her face is stark white beneath her tear-smudged wedding makeup.
She stares down at her fingers on the car door handle, but makes no move to pull it open.
“We have to go,” I tell her, shrugging back into my jacket. I don’t know when Messina’s body and missing bride will be discovered, but I sure as shit plan to be out of this city long before then.
“I know.” She still doesn’t move.
A muscle ticks in my jaw like the merciless hand of a clock, reminding me just how much time is passing.
In the end, I grasp her wrist and pull her hand out of the way, opening the passenger side door for her myself.
She collapses into the seat and stares glassily out the windshield.
I do up her seatbelt for her when it becomes obvious she doesn’t plan to fasten it herself.
Then, I toss the light pink parka over her like a blanket, close her door, and then get in on the other side.
I start the engine and peel away from the curb immediately.
It’ll be about six hours to Montreal – longer if the weather gets dicey the further north we go.
It’s already well past midnight, so I’ll likely be driving until after dawn.
We’ll stop to sleep eventually, but not until we’re across the Canadian border.
Aurora doesn’t wait until then to sleep.
After less than five minutes in the car, she’s practically out cold, curled up beneath the puffy insulation of the parka.
I don’t let myself look at her for more than a few seconds at a time, because she’s fucking distracting even sound asleep, and I need all my attention on the roads right now.
I drive in silence, city lights bleeding out around me.
A part of me can’t help but feel like this is all a dream.
Which makes sense, I guess, since most of the time I’ve spent with Aurora has been inside of my own head.
I focus on small details and physical sensations to convince myself this is real.
The digital glow of the clock on the dashboard, the numbers not blurred or backwards like they always are for me in dreams. The hum of the vehicle’s engine.
The smooth luxury of my brother’s leather gloves encasing my hands as I grip the steering wheel.
Aurora’s perfume.
Little slices of her keep catching my eye as she shifts in her sleep. A loose bit of hair uncoiling from the rest, like a slippery strand of moonlight. The petal-soft curve of a cheek. The restless flutter of her eyelashes as her eyelids quiver with rapid movement beneath.
I wonder what she’s dreaming about.
I wonder if she’s ever dreamed of me.
Nightmares, maybe.
Minutes metastasize into hours. Kilometres grind away beneath the wheels of my vehicle.
If Aurora wakes, she keeps her eyes closed and doesn’t let me know it.
I pull off main roads into a rural stretch of darkness to swap out the car’s plates – fakes – with another set I have hidden in the trunk.
When that’s done, I stop at a tiny gas station.
Standing at the car’s side, I fill the tank, my gaze alternating between scanning the immediate vicinity and staring at Aurora through the window. I pay with cash and then we leave.
The weather worsens as we keep going north. Heavy snow is falling by the time we approach the border. The sun is rising, but it’s only a dim grey glow behind the swirling white. Aurora finally stirs, pulling herself out of her slumped position beneath the parka.
“Where are we?” she asks groggily, squinting as she peers out the window. “Whoa. That’s a lot of snow.”
“We’re almost at the border.” We’re in one of the feeder lanes now, heading towards the Champlain/Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle crossing.
Aurora snaps to attention, like my words are electric.
“Crap. I don’t…What do I do? Do I need ID? I don’t even have my wallet.”
And it’s a good thing, too. Because if the police eventually get involved with the Aurora Bianchi missing person investigation, we don’t need a record of her legitimate ID being used at the border tonight.
“Glovebox,” I say.
She finds the envelope I’ve stored there. She pulls out the fake Canadian passport and opens it.
“Angela LeBlanc?”
“Yup. Twenty-eight years old, born in Montreal.”
“Born in Montreal? But I don’t speak a word of French,” she frets as we pull closer.
“I do,” I say. “Just leave the talking to me.”