Whatever this is, it’s dangerous.
Dario isn’t hurting another person today. None. Zero.
I swallow whatever I’d bitten off and run between them, taking the paper away from Dario.
“It’s a recipe.” I hold it up, but he can’t see or hear me through his focus on Junior.
“You.” Over my shoulder, Dario jabs a finger at the quaking younger man. “Don’t talk to her.”
“I’m sorry, I—”
“Hey, hey!” Tommy comes out from the back. “Cosa c'è?”
Dario seems to wake up with a subtle relaxing of his posture and an exhale.
“Nothing.” He focuses on me, taking the paper. He reads it and looks past me at Junior. “Thank you. We’ll pack it up to go.”
I count this as a victory, but I don’t know what I’ve won.
CHAPTER 8
SARAH
The pizza box is in the back. My hands are in my lap, thumbs tapping. I wait for Dario to explain what just happened, but he doesn’t make a sound. This is my silence to break.
“What did those cops say?”
He shoots me a look before turning back to the road. I give him a look right back. He might not be used to life after rule one, but I’m starting to like it.
“The sheriff’s department let the Colonia in. They figured out they had the right place from something you left in the greenhouse. A garter.”
“I didn’t leave that. You did.”
“Touché.” He turns the corner, knowing exactly where he’s going, which must be nice. “The sheriff’s department left and let the Colonia file in like a bunch of fucking ghouls. They’re probably trashing the place while the NYSD sits outside—hiding like cowards as if I can’t see them—watching for us. Fuckers think we’re going back.”
“Aren’t we?”
“No.” His clipped denial hurts me more than it should. That building was the only home we ever had together.
“What about when the sheriff leaves?”
“We go back when I say it’s safe.”
Nothing will ever be safe to him, and I’ll never be able to judge for myself.
Dario turns. The pizza box slides from one side of the back seat to the other. I check to make sure it’s still upright. It’s fine. I’m not.
“If you didn’t want me to make you pizza,” I say, “you could have just told me instead of threatening Junior.”
“It’s not about the pizza,” he grumbles in profile.
“I know I’m sheltered and I don’t know a lot of things, but I’m not stupid.” I get more and more angry with every second that passes without his response. “You’re an experienced person who knows me pretty well. So, whatever this is… you being angry… it obviously couldn’t be about me talking to a man about pesto, so I’m going to assume it’s about the garter.”
“No.” He holds his hand up like a crossing guard in an intersection. “Until you know how to live—how to work and pay a bill—you don’t talk to anyone. Anyone. Especially not a man. What if he decided he wanted you? You couldn’t even read a map to find your way home. You can’t call me. You can’t use a phone unless it’s connected to a wall.”
“That has nothing to do with you acting like that.”
“It has everything to do with it.”
We pass a red brick church with a sign that says FIND PEACE! He puts his blinker on and makes a left—functioning just fine when we’re fighting, which makes me want to push his buttons just a little more.
“It was just a recipe.”
He pulls into a gas station, slaps the car into park, and leans into me. “It’s never just a recipe. Never.”
I can’t even look at him, but I can hear him, feel him near me, smell him every time I breathe. When he gets out, I’m thankful and disappointed at the same time. He’ll pump his car with gas, pay with his money, and drive his marital property to another piece of his real estate.
But I’m not even marital property. The interior of the car clatters thickly when he puts the pump into the tank. The numbers on the pump flip.
How am I letting this happen?
I’m not. I get out of the car. We lock eyes over the roof.
“Get in the car, Sarah.”
I slam the door closed and walk around to him, leaving the black gas line between us. He waits for me to speak, but he’s bursting at the seams to answer.
“If you want me to be independent, I need to be able to talk to people.”
“A man I do not know—who I haven’t vetted—does not need to talk to my wife.”
“I’m not your wife.”
“I told you…” He holds up his hand so I can see his scars.
“You told me nothing.” I growl for the first time in my life, and it feels good. Now I know why he does it. “You used me. And I knew you were using me because you told me what you were using me for… but after things changed, you could have told me you were married, and you didn’t. So you’re still using me. The only thing that changed is what you’re using me for.”
The gas pump clacks, and the rubber tube jolts.
“I can’t fucking sleep at night worrying about you.” He takes out the nozzle. “I think of what they’d do to you if they found you.” He slaps it into the cradle and pulls his card from the slot. A receipt comes out like a paper tongue. “And I can’t decide if I should hide you in the basement or cast you in steel. But you’re obsessed with things I had to do before my life revolved around you. So if I’m using you, can you tell me… for what? I’m using you to worship? To take care of? To panic about? Did I need my entire world to drop from under me just so I could stop caring what was keeping my feet on the ground in the first place?” He snaps the receipt away and slips it and his card into his wallet. “All that happened with you. I’ve been ripped out of my life and thrown into space. All I care about is reaching one star—this single point of light—and that’s you. Everything, everything has changed except my marriage to Willa, because it didn’t exist. It was necessary in the moment, and that moment passed a long time ago. Now it’s you. You. All you. I don’t know where I’m going next, but every future I see either has you in it or has me dead.”
“Stop,” I say through my teeth. “Just stop. I want to be mad. I deserve to be mad.”
“You deserve so much more than that.” He holds out his hand. “Come.”
The debate in my mind is between continuing this fight until one of us is beaten into submission or accepting the inevitable outcome.
I want to be mad, and I deserve to hold on to it, but I know I’ll forgive him, so I take his hand.
He leads me into the gas station convenience store and paces the aisles while holding my hand as if it’s the only connection that will keep me from drowning, then he stops in front of a bank of plastic-cased phones.
He puts me directly in front of him, hands on my shoulders. “Pick one.”
“I don’t know anything about these. What’s the difference?”