46. Deirdre #2
“Yeah, well. Maybe I deserve it after letting this happen to you. Merda , Deirdre, when everything was burning, when everything was falling the fuck apart and I realized that your hand wasn’t in mine anymore…”
He bites off the end of his sentence, staring at the floor, jaw working.
“But you came for me,” I remind him in a weak voice. “You found me.”
And you killed my father.
“Yeah. But if I had been five fucking minutes later.” His eyes slice to mine, and the rage is back. I can tell that it’s burning a hole inside him.
Hounding him. Haunting him.
No infinite number of bullets can soothe a fury like that. He could shoot his way through this whole fucking world and still be angry enough to want to go back and kill the corpses.
I’m saved from thinking of something else to say by a sharp rap on the door.
“That’s Morelli,” Elio says. After he gingerly wipes my face and mouth with a clean wet cloth, he picks me up and carries me back to our bedroom, wrapping the fluffy robe around me and cinching the belt tight before opening the door.
Doctor Morelli’s examination of me is quick, thorough, and surprisingly gentle. He gives me an encouraging smile, and then I remember that he’s the father of two daughters around my age.
“Lots of rest,” he tells me. “Lots of water. A little slow tomorrow – like a hangover. After that, OK.”
“What about Elio?” I ask, barely listening to what he says about my condition. He examines Elio, shining a pen light into his eyes and checking the wound at Elio’s temple. He straightens, and when he doesn’t look too worried I breathe out heavily.
“Eh. He got a thick skull,” Doctor Morelli says. “Mild concussion. Rest for him too.”
He turns and says something to Elio in Italian.
“What is it?”
“He says we both need to just stay inside for the next two weeks,” Elio mutters.
“That’s fine with me,” I sigh. I feel like I could sleep for two whole weeks.
In reality, though, I only sleep for about two days. Elio wakes me at intervals to drink some water and have some soup, but otherwise I’m dead to the world.
It’s better that way. Easier. I want to burrow down into a warm, dark place and simply stay there.
Elio won’t let me, though. On the morning of the third day being home, when I make no move to get out of bed, he picks me up and carries my boneless-feeling body into the shower.
He sits me down on the tiles, and it reminds me so much of when I helped him shower after his fight with Darragh.
Only, unlike me, he isn’t all shy and confused and timid the way I was that day.
He’s almost domineering the way he hoses me down, lifting arms and legs and even scrubbing behind my ears.
He even dries my hair with the blow dryer after a few minutes of swearing while he tries to figure out the settings. He doesn’t have a clue about brushes or styling products, so the result is that my hair looks like a fucking bonfire when he’s done.
I don’t care how it looks.
I can’t even care about how it feels. It should feel nice to have clean, warm, dry hair. Especially when I’m too weak and depressed to make it happen myself.
But it just feels like… nothing.
After that, Elio seems to think it’s his job to get me showered and dried and dressed for the day.
After four more days of it, I can’t handle it any longer, and I force myself to get out of bed and go shower myself.
Elio supervises me as I do it, and there’s a slight look of victory in his eyes, as if he’s pleased that he’s finally annoyed me into getting out of bed for myself.
His smugness doesn’t last, though. When I emerge from my shower two days later, he grabs me by the arm and forces me to stop walking past him like I was trying to.
“Talk to me.”
“About what?” I ask dully, attempting to tug myself out of his grip.
“About the fact that you haven’t looked me in the eye in days. About how you lie stiff as a board beside me in bed until you fall asleep.” His hold on my arm is firm, but his hand at my jaw is gentle as he turns my gaze up to his. When he sees the tears there, he swears softly.
“I miss you,” I say, trying not to cry. I need to have a day, just one fucking day, where I’m not crying.
“I’m right here,” he tells me, his eyes searching.
“But you aren’t! I can’t. I…” I wipe furiously at my eyes, trying to put into words the jumble of contradictory emotions that have been chasing each other through me ever since our wedding.
“It’s like… Every time I close my eyes, I see you killing my father,” I stammer. “And even though he doesn’t deserve it, I can’t stop myself from grieving him. And then I feel confused by that, because how fucking pathetic am I to be sad about the man who caused me so much pain?”
Elio listens silently as words spew out of me like tears. I take a ragged breath and keep going, because now that I’ve started I can’t fucking stop.
“I miss you because you’re right in front of me and I feel like I can’t get back to you! I feel like we’ll never get back to how it was before.”
Elio’s eyes are so dark, so focused on my face. His expression draws tight when I whisper, “I don’t know if we can get past this.”
He exhales tightly and then lets go of my arm very slowly, like it takes a monumental effort.
“You can go back to hating me if you want to, Songbird. As long as you feel fucking something for me. I can work with that.”
“I don’t hate you, Elio.” I hug myself, wishing he’d hug me and already knowing that I won’t know what to do with the touch. “Sometimes I wish that I could hate you. Hating you was always so much easier.”
“Good things are never easy, Songbird. Thought you would have learned that by now.”
“Is loving you good?” I look up at him, and I’m not just being bitchy saying that.
I’m sincerely asking him. Because loving him is the fiercest fucking thing I’ve ever felt, but I don’t think I could ever call it truly good.
It’s poignant and profound and sometimes even poisonous.
It defies morality, defies ethics and boundaries and everything I thought I knew.
It’s ugly and messy, this love I have for him. It’s hard and heavy and broken.
I think we might be broken too.
When Elio doesn’t answer me, I feel a suffocating need to get away. Away from him, from this room, from everything. I hurl myself out into the hallway, running down the stairs, moving quickly and blindly through the house.
I know that he’s behind me. He’s always there, always watching, waiting to hurt me or love me or save me or drown me.
I don’t even know where I’m going until I’m forced to stop because one more step will send me into the deep end of the indoor pool.
I stand at the edge of the softly gleaming water, breathing hard, and before I even know what I’m doing I’m peeling off my clothing.
I hear Elio enter behind me and swear when he sees what I’m doing.
I turn around to see him fiddling with his phone, probably turning off the security feed to this room so none of his men will see me stripping down to nothing.
When I’m fully naked, I jump.
The water closes over me like the most familiar sort of comfort.
As soon as my head’s below the surface, I exhale, sending gurgling bubbles upward so that my body is heavy enough to sink to the bottom.
I used to love doing this is a kid. Sitting at the bottom of a pool, just to see how long I could stand to stay there.
It’s morning outside, and sun filters down through the water. Even at the bottom, it’s not too dark. I keep my eyes open as my body burns with the lack of oxygen. I’ll have to push off from the bottom and go back up soon.
I will. I know he’s waiting for me.
But I guess Elio isn’t content to wait, I’ve only counted to eighteen before the dark shape of him comes at me like a torpedo.
He swims powerfully downward, grabbing my arms before he reorients himself in the water, getting his feet beneath him.
Gripping me hard, he shoves off the bottom of the pool, and together we careen upwards until we break the surface.
He doesn’t stop there. Swimming like a lifeguard, he hauls me to the shallow end. Once we’ve both got our feet underneath us, he backs me up against the side of the pool, caging me in with his body.
“Is loving me good?” he pants. “I don’t fucking know. Probably not. But I do know that what we have is fucking real, Deirdre. And maybe real things don’t have to be just good or just bad. They just have to be strong.”
He holds up the sopping, gloved shape of his left hand. He’s still fully clothed. His wedding band catches the light, a ring of bright purity contrasting with the darkness of the leather.
“You and me, Songbird? We are fucking platinum.” He grabs my left hand, forcing his fingers between mine and then lifting it so that I’m confronted with my own rings.
“We are diamond. We are bound . By blood and vows and your fucking soul fused to whatever’s left of mine.
So don’t tell me we can’t get past something.
If I have to, I’ll get past it for the both of us, and then I will fucking drag you right along with me. ”
The arrogance in that statement is almost laughable. Telling me that he will simply make me get over the way my father died in such confusing, traumatic circumstances.
And yet…
That brutal, unerring confidence makes me feel, for the first time in days, like maybe, just maybe, there could be a tiny little light at the end of this bleak tunnel.
We’re not there yet. We probably aren’t even close.
But Elio will fucking drag me there if he has to. He promised me he would.
And Elio never breaks his promises. Not the ones he makes to me.
With a cry, I throw my arms around his neck and plaster my wet mouth to his. He responds instantly, desperately, drawing my tongue into his mouth and groaning deeply. A hot, powerful shiver builds along my groin, and I suddenly feel more sensitive than I ever have in my life.
Elio’s kisses are like those of a dying man.
Like I’m his only oxygen. He bites and sucks along my lips, my cheek, my jaw, all the while tearing ferally at the zipper of his sodden pants.
He shudders and I gasp, clutching at him when I feel his thick head press against my exposed flesh.
He grips my ass and lifts me. The water makes me float, and I lock my legs around his back as he enters me with one terrible, perfect thrust.
He moves relentlessly within me, and I’m already there, already breathless with the urge to come. Everything is water and power and Elio and the hardness of him holding me up, holding me together. I’ve needed this, needed him, so fucking badly.
I think I’ll always need him.
Elio’s gaze pours into mine. Neither of us look away as white hot need builds inside the place our bodies meet.
Neither of us speak, either.
Because what is there left to say?
I love him. And maybe it’s not easy.
Maybe it will never truly be alright.
But it is real. And it is so fucking strong.
I caress both sides of his face – the smooth and the scarred – and watch with tender, loving agony as his face buckles under the force of his need for me.
He pumps harder and I sense that we’re both close.
Close to too many things at once. Pain and pleasure and a past we can’t escape.
This connection between us eviscerates. It burns me up and tears me down, building me into something shaped by him and only him.
A guttural sound flies from my throat. Elio’s eyes and cheeks darken at the same time. His frame goes rock hard against mine, and one strained breath later he explodes at the same fraction of an instant that I let go into pulsing oblivion.
We grind frantically against each other, riding each other through our climaxes. I don’t think either of us want this moment to end. It’s a tiny slice of salvation for us both.
But it can’t last forever.
“You’re shivering,” Elio murmurs against my wet throat. “Come on.”
He carries me from the pool and sets me down on my feet near a shelf of towels, wrapping one around my shoulders and then placing another on top of my head like a hood.
Once I’m thoroughly covered, he shucks out of his wet stuff, wrapping a towel around his hips and grabbing his phone from the tiles of the floor.
“Want a cup of tea?”
Who ever thought that a question like that would make me want to sob?
Overcome with emotion, I nod, and together we head into the kitchen.
When we get there, we both stop short when we see a large cardboard box on the granite island. After what happened at our wedding, seeing a strange package in an unexpected place is alarming, if not downright terrifying.
“It’s OK,” Elio says quickly, “All the mail goes to the gatehouse and it doesn’t make it in here if it’s not something safe.” But even so, he approaches it slowly, narrowing his eyes at the writing on the label. His expression instantly relaxes.
“Well, that’s good timing for the tea, I guess.”
“What is it?” I ask as he grabs a knife and starts cutting the box open.
“This was supposed to be your wedding gift from me,” he says, slicing tape and pulling tabs of cardboard. “But I had to send it to a master artisan in Japan. And it took longer than I thought to get it back.”
He reaches into the box and pulls out something wrapped in a ton of bubble wrap. I watch, clutching my towels, entranced as the bubble wrap falls away layer by layer, revealing something that feels deeply familiar though I can’t quite say why.
Not until the last layer is peeled away.
“It can’t be,” I whisper.
“It is,” Elio says softly, watching me. “It’s your mamma’s teapot.”
And it is. It really fucking is. Unbelievably, it’s all in one piece again.
The shape is exactly how I remember it – high and elegant with the most beautiful tapered spout.
Even the painted flowers are just how they looked before, so tiny and beautiful that it almost hurts to look at them even though I can’t make myself stop staring.
The only difference?
Veins of gold run through the entire piece, like living blood vessels. Every jagged piece of the teapot has been painstakingly fitted back against all the others, and they’ve all been sealed with shimmering metal.
And now I’m crying again, because it’s so meaningful that it’s shattering my heart and putting it back together again all at the same time. It’s a sign that beautiful things can come from broken ones. And that sometimes the cracks are the things that make us what we are.
Nothing’s ever perfect
But maybe everything can be mended.
Even us.
There will be scar tissue.
But sometimes it’s the scars that truly shape the soul of a thing. Sometimes it’s our scars that prove that we’re alive.
“Don’t cry,” Elio says, setting the kettle to boil. “You just sit down like my good little Songbird. And I’ll make you some tea.”