Chapter 31
THIRTY-ONE
AMELIA
The funeral commenced in the sweltering heat of late afternoon.
Beside Gio’s grave, the men baked in black suits, and the women fanned themselves with the memorial leaflet.
Amelia slipped into the shadow of a holly oak and leaned against a pockmarked headstone.
Lace-like lichen filled its inscribed letters—a poem perhaps—but she couldn’t decipher it.
The priest didn’t break a sweat. He had that frozen dispassion required of all Catholic clergymen.
Amelia remembered it well. When she was eight, her mother dressed her like a little bride and sent her down the aisle to receive the Eucharist from icy hands.
In his golden robes, the priest had stooped to hear the sins of a child.
“I’m not sure God is real,” she’d tearfully confessed with communion wine still sour on her lips.
That priest had had no comfort for a sinner like her. He’d frowned and sent Amelia back to the pew, hollowed in her shame.
Across the burial plot, Emory watched her from behind aviators that couldn’t temper his stare.
A pair of oversized sunglasses sat on Amelia’s dresser at home, so she didn’t have the luxury of feeling unseen.
She had nowhere to hide, not even from the sun that competed with the heat between her legs and excused her blush.
A smile crept across Emory’s lips as if he divined her thoughts, and Amelia’s stomach flipped with a woozy rush.
That morning, they’d had foreplay in the shower and sex in the bed. While the water rushed down her back, Emory had dropped to his knees and dove between her legs. Dizzy from an orgasm, Amelia pleaded to feel him inside, so he hauled her off to bed and tossed her to the mattress.
With his chest against her back, Emory had muttered in her ear, “I want you like this,” and gripped her thighs hard enough that Amelia knew to obey him.
A soft sigh had escaped her as he pushed inside from behind.
She’d never get over how he filled her up and already craved how he felt, how he moved inside of her, how he called her a good girl. His good girl.
With hot kisses, Emory had savored her shoulder, neck, and cheek as he thrust slow and deep.
It’d left her head swimming as their bodies melded together.
Emory had been all over her, existing in every part simultaneously as his consuming weight settled on top.
His hands had been in her hair, roaming her curves, palming her breasts.
Closer than they had been before, that was how he liked it, she’d realized.
He’d been in control, and she’d submitted to his will, awash in pleasure at his ragged exhales that left her wetter and wanting more.
Emory had even slid one hand beneath her to swipe between her legs as he fucked her hard into the mattress.
Amelia had bucked against his movements until they’d fallen into a delicious rhythm.
As the pressure rose between her legs, she’d gripped the sheets and buried her face in a pillow while Emory’s breaths rustled in her ear as he panted her name.
He might have said something else, but it’d been lost in the haze, just a rumble against her back.
Amelia’s toes had curled and head fell back against his shoulder as she relished her release.
Emory had come quickly after, his orgasms just as intense as everything else about him.
And though he was ravenous in his lovemaking, his aftercare was just as sweet.
Burrowed against him, Amelia had traced the tattoos on his forearms, more iconography of light and dark, death and the divine.
Let us stay this way, she’d thought but mined for hope as the earth caved in.
On the nightstand beside a loaded gun, the texts had poured in as soon as the sun was reasonably seated in the sky.
With strong arms coiled around her waist, Emory had held on a little longer, as if letting go meant facing a cruel reality.
When the priest completed his sermon, the mourners filed past Gio’s grave and placed a white lily on his casket. As Amelia waited her turn, Liam Moriarty approached in a pristine black suit hardly wilted from the heat.
“There’s been a change of plans, my dear,” he said and offered his arm in a polite gesture. “Emory will ride back with Jack. You’ll be with me.”
Amelia knew better than to put up a fuss, so she accepted his arm. As they strolled between the graves, Liam reached into his breast pocket and handed her a prayer card. On it, the Virgin Mary stood amongst thornless roses with her hands lifted in prayer.
“From one former Catholic to another,” he said.
“How did you know?”
Liam grinned and patted Amelia’s elbow linked in his. “Guilt. All good Catholics are consumed by it.”
“And the bad ones?”
“They end up a fair-weather believer like me. Only in crisis do I rediscover my faith.”
“And you’ve rediscovered it now?”
Liam glanced back at the priest, who signed a cross over Gio’s casket heaped with lilies.
“As our friend would say, for everything there is a season. A time to kill and a time to heal. A time for war and a time for peace.”
Amelia parsed the truth from the gospel. Burying Gio was like closing a book; not just on his life, but the false normalcy they’d all enjoyed. Wine-soaked nights and grief forgotten between the sheets would soon end.
“I take it the time for peace and healing is done,” she said.
On a pea gravel path, they passed a marble angel in mourning, its face buried in the crook of its elbow. In its hand were flowers covered in verdigris. Liam veered toward a black sedan third in line behind the hearse.
“Most of the men back there are soldiers trained in peacetime,” he said. “They haven’t known war. They will soon.”
Amelia hummed as if she knew. Maybe she did. Big death wasn’t such a distant notion anymore. The concept made contact. These days, she viewed it through the lens of a man whose arms she’d fallen asleep in, his tender touches clipped from her fantasies.
What would dad say if he saw me now?
Nothing.
He’d turn to ice in the stifling heat, the silence of a shattered heart. Still, missing him was a fog that never fully lifted. Amelia roamed in the haze until light broke through with glimpses of her past; the person she was, the people she missed.
“You know why I’m telling you this?” Liam asked.
Not a clue. If he wanted to scare her, he might’ve said worse. Amelia shrugged and offered the only thing that came to mind.
“So I know my place?”
Liam laughed as if tickled by the honesty and touched by the humility. She hadn’t intended either.
“No. You’ve found your place.” He gestured to Emory standing with Jack beside Gio’s grave and with the weight of the world on his shoulders.
“You need to understand what’s coming, though.
War is hell, and you’re his queen. Emory will look to you for peace and comfort.
If you can’t give him that, then it’s best to stop this before it truly begins. ”
Liam opened the passenger door for Amelia, and she settled in stiffly with the age-old tale. In it, a wild woman wavers like the open ocean and lures a good man to his grave. What could be done? Silence the siren, and save that good man from himself.
She watched warily as Liam shed his jacket and circled the car with a purposeful gait. It wasn’t a chance arrangement, but a decisive strategy to get her alone. He climbed in and fired up the engine, but Amelia stopped him as he reached for the gearshift.
“After the war, what happens then?”
“Life moves on,” Liam said. “Emory has always wanted his equal, and he’s found it in you. You two will carve out your empire together. With him, you’ll have whatever you want.”
Amelia smiled but not for her future foretold. Love like that was a limerence, as liable to drive her and Emory mad as it was to bring them happiness and peace.
“That’s a romantic take. I’m not sure the world works that way.”
“Ours does. You chose Emory. You must choose his world too.”
“You mean pick a side.”
Amelia knew damn well the ever-widening divide she straddled. One day, she’d face a grievous decision—swear an allegiance or be torn apart. Liam nodded, his stare exacting. It unbuttoned her attempt at neutrality and left her doubts exposed.
“Why?” she asked. “So many of the women here live in both worlds. They weren’t made to choose.”
“That’s an illusion, Amelia. They work their jobs and raise their children, but they don’t truly exist in both worlds. Push comes to shove, they know where their loyalty lies.”
Liam paused and surveyed Emory and Jack making their way from Gio’s grave.
“The road ahead is treacherous,” he said and shifted the car into drive. “Think hard and clear if this is what you want.”
The funeral procession lurched forward, and the ride home proceeded in silence because Liam Moriarty didn’t know her, not really, and it smacked of a not-so-distant past where her father had raged.
“What the hell do you want, Amelia? Do you even know?”
Irony of ironies, she did know. With every beat of her heart, Amelia knew and spoke strong and clear, but her ambitions didn’t dazzle, and what was worse than a good man gone astray?
A lost soul like her swinging from whim to whim.
Amelia could barely stomach that inquiry from her own father, let alone Liam Moriarty, so she kept quiet but fumed in the hypocrisy until they reached the mansion.
Liam parked in the circle drive and turned to Amelia as if already aware she had more to say.
“You ask me what I want,” she said, “but have you ever asked Emory that question?”
Liam drew a deep breath and fixed his eyes to middle distance beyond the windshield.
“You haven’t, have you? Or maybe you don’t need to because you already know Emory deserves so much more than this.”
Liam laughed. It made her anxious. She knew so little of how to read the man.
“On that, we agree,” he said and killed the engine but lightly grasped her forearm before she opened the door.