CHAPTER Twenty Two
Alek
Erin stands beside the Castello Fountain, the place where Adriana said she might be. She’s close enough to the edge for the water to rain down on the short black dress she’s wearing. I watch her for a moment. With her head tilted back and her eyes closed, she appears to be smiling and crying at the same time. I want nothing more than to take her in my arms, to know all of her secrets, to make all of her pain go away.
“What are the water’s voices saying today?” I ask. Her head rips toward me because I caught her off guard.
I almost turn around; but the way she looks at me today is nothing compared to the pain I saw in her face five days ago.
“She set me up.” Erin scoffs a laugh and shakes her head. “I knew there had to be something more than a girl stopping by to sing her brotherly praises.”
“Adriana means well. Hear me out, Erin, please,” I begin. She crosses her arms, and stares at me.
Bangs fall in her face, hiding her eyes, protecting her from life. The water on her skin gives her a sexy, but sad appearance. The sight of the woman who has changed my life in ways I can’t explain rips through my chest, winding me. “I miss you.”
I slowly walk toward her. I’m almost inside the water sprouts too. Every so often, the people walking through the plaza stop and stare at us. I can only imagine what must be going through their minds.
“I told you it was over, Alek.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Figures. That’s kind of too bad.”
“Is it really? I disagree. After all we’ve been through, what we have cannot be gone just like that.”
She hasn’t yelled for help or turned to run in the opposite direction yet, so I keep going. “Forgive me. Please say that you do. This is killing me.”
“The way your father killed mine?” she snaps.
“Can’t you see what’s happening here? Your sister has brought us together, in a sense,” I explain. “I have to see the good in this f*cked up situation.”
“Why are you saying these things?” she cries out, her face crumpling.
“Because it’s true. Deep down inside, I think you know it is too.” I want her to understand that about us.
Erin hugs her shoulders. She glances away, and I’m fairly certain she’s crying. I’m getting to her. I won’t give up. I can’t let her get away again. Closing the distance between us, I hold my arms out to the sides. “I have nothing and everything to lose. Whichever way it goes for us from here, it all rests in your hands, baby.”
“I’m so mad at you,” she says and lets out a sigh. “But you know what? No matter how hard I try, no matter how many f*cking cigarettes I smoke...”
“You’ve been smoking? You’ll trigger your asthma,” I tell her. I’ve done this to her, and I hate myself for it. Still, I continue to close the distance between us.
“No. It—it’s a long story. You made me start to believe in things I’d given up on, Alek. And—and then you do this.” She covers her face for a short moment, and then glances back up at me. “It’s just that everyone leaves me. I guess I just wanted a reason to hate you first, before you left me too.”
There’s no more distance between us. Only a few inches. No place for either one of us to run away and hide. The water rolling past my eyes doesn’t even bother me.
“Don’t you know by now, that I’d die without you?” I ask, staring down in her face.
All the tears she has held inside rush forth. I throw restraint away. F*ck control. The woman I’d kill or die for hurts and she needs me even more than she probably realizes. We crush our bodies against each other and embrace, holding on to each other as the fountain’s waters wash away her tears and my fears.
Erin
Perfect. He’s not only smooth on stage, but he’s also a maestro of words too. My resolve melts. The anger dies down. And I can’t help but to wonder how long he thought about the things he said before he came here to find me.
My face crumples, and I choke out several sobs. Alek has made me see something in a way I’ve never imagined I could ever do again. Jada has brought us together, in a sense. Now I understand the nightmare I had all those weeks ago, the one where Alek rescues me from whatever dark thing hides in the woods. Jada was trying to tell me she likes him. She would know what kind of person Alek is because they’ve met before. On the day she died.
“Come here, baby.” He moves toward me and crushes my body against his chest, embracing me. The tears flowing down my face contain years of pent up negativity: loss, heartache, anger, confusion…and yes, even that little four-letter word I can’t seem to shake to save my life.
Alek moves his lips across my ear, his breath makes me shudder as we stand underneath the fountain’s waterfalls. Our lips find each other’s, his crushing against mine first. Now, I’ve not only heard the power in his words, I can feel what he means as well.
I’ve been a lost jaybird singing a sad song. But in this man who kisses me so passionately, and frees my body when I lose myself in pleasure, I’m finally able to hear my own voice, a happier one. It’s a gorgeous melody, a tune I’ve held back for way too long.
Applause explodes around us. I forgot we were standing underneath a water fountain, no wait. We’re standing just inside the outer edge of the structure as though no one else exists besides us.
I move back and catch my breath. Even though the cold water is falling down over me, I feel heat flushing in my cheeks. Alek turns toward them and takes a bow. He’s always prepared to play up the spotlight.
I turn back to him as the chatter dies down. “Before we decide to jump back into all of this again, I really need to tell you something about me, and my mother,” I say, studying Alek’s face. I’ve missed seeing that perfect smile of his.
“You don’t have to tell me anything right now,” he says, although I can tell he’s actually curious.
“No. You opened up to me about your past. Maybe if I would’ve been straight up about mine, then things would’ve—” He places two fingers on my lips, a slight frown on his gorgeous forehead.
“Don’t blame yourself for this. I should’ve told you what I was thinking as soon as I saw the necklace.” He’s held on to me ever since we started embracing. “Let’s get out of here. I know the perfect place for us to talk.”
Glancing around at the people walking by and smiling, I lean toward Alek and grasp the back of his neck. Moving his head down to my lips, I say, “They’re making me paranoid by staring at us that way.”
With a smile he turns to me and says, “Me too.”
* * *
We take Alek’s car down the autostrada, Italy’s version of a motorway-highway since his Aston Martin spins dust around my Fiat when it comes to speed. There’s a restaurant that he took me to a couple weeks ago, a gorgeous place that’s situated at the meeting point of the Ticino and Po rivers.
Sailing down the canal was one of the most fascinating dates Alek and I ever had. As we sit at a table on a balcony overlooking the river, I wonder how I’ve been so lucky to have found someone like the man sitting here with me tonight.
This place gives me peace in a world filled with dark corners that hold shadows of the past, waiting to pull you in and never let you go. I inhale and begin the part of my story I left off from before. “Shortly after my sister died, I took the keys to my mother’s car, locked myself in our garage, cranked it up. And then, I just kinda sat back and waited for Jada to come get me.” I keep my gaze focused on the tea light candles floating inside vases filled with water and tiny red roses sitting along the bottom. A slight breeze blows, stirring the flames.
“Oh, Jaybird,” Alek says, moving my hair away from my face, and taking my hands in his large ones. I’m fighting to hold on to the small bit of courage I’ve found so that I can finish telling him this story.
“That’s not all. I was doing a good job of it too. Trying to…you know, find Jada I guess you can say. My mom comes into the garage and sees me sitting in the car. I don’t know many minutes had passed; but it was enough time to affect me, and keep me from being able to move. I had the doors locked and the windows cracked just enough so that the carbon monoxide could get in but a human hand could not. Mom starts screaming and panicking when she can’t open the doors or get her hand through the window.”
I stop talking and exhale, trying my best to calm the anxiety fluttering inside my chest. I can still see Mom’s tortured expression from that day as if she were standing here in front of our table.
“Go on. Remember that you can tell me anything,” Alek says and takes my left hand between his.
“Mom takes out her cell phone and calls for help, our next door neighbor. She was screaming the whole time, and I was thinking, ‘wow, I’m not sure if this was such a good idea’. She begged me to open the door. I couldn’t move, you know. So, it was hard to breathe. Mom turned around looking all over the garage for something. And then…”
Pausing, I reach out, tap the glass with the candle inside it, and wait for the tightening in my chest to ease up a bit before I continue. I inhale deeply and continue.
“She fell. I heard a thud; and I just didn’t see her anymore. I tried to call out for her, but it was kinda like my lips were frozen shut. And then I see a big, bright ass light before I pass out. Later on, I woke up in the hospital. Boy, my chest was on fire. I suffered more lung damage than anything else.”
“Which is why you have the asthma now?” Alek says.
I nod and massage his hands. The deep color of his skin makes mine look so pale. I really like his hands. “They told me that Mom fell and hit her head on a f*cking tire jack, crushing the back of her skull. She suffered a stroke and a mini heart attack. Because of me, my mom sits in a psycho ward. A vegetable. A shadow of the beautiful person she used to be. She doesn’t know who I am, or her sister, or even my grandmother.”
I cover my face with my palms. Sobs wrack my body. The spasms jerking through my body actually hurt. Alek stands, moves over to the chair beside me, and takes me in his arms. “Oh, Alek, can’t you see? I don’t deserve to be happy.”
“Don’t say that, Erin. I think we both know that’s not true. We were meant to find each other. I’m not one of those crazy men who always go around talking about destiny and shit. I think we were meant to find one another.” He mutters something in Russian as he releases me.
“You and Adriana have got to stop doing that to me,” I tease. “What did you say?”
“Later. I promise, I’ll tell you.”
“My quarterly visits to see my mom is coming up in two weeks,” I explain. “I’m more terrified about this visit than I’ve ever been before.”
“Why are you afraid?” Aleks asks, frowning.
“Because I’m different now. Something inside me has changed. I can no longer keep my emotions all bottled up like face cream. Seeing my mom after everything you and I have been through lately won’t do anything but make matters worse.”
“How is that? If anything, you’re stronger because of all that’s happened. You can feel confident in knowing you have me here waiting for you, ” Alek says, passion storming in his eyes. I wish things were that easy. That I could go back to the way we were before Katerina stormed through my doorway last week. But I’m not sure I can move past this setback.
“I’ll go with you, if you want me to,” he offers. I give him an incredulous look.
“What? Why are you looking at me that way?”
“Because you’re unreal,” I answer truthfully.
“As in, you think I’m a god type of unreal, yes?”
I burst out laughing. “Let me add cocky to the mix.”
He holds a hand over his heart, but still gives me a gorgeously wide grin, one that lights up his entire face.
Alek doesn’t run, or look on me with pity in his eyes. Instead, he takes my hand and kisses it, killing me with the vibrations shooting through me, and healing my pain as he glances on me with desire in his eyes.
“I don’t want to lose you, Erin,” he says, his smoldering gaze locked on mine. “I think I’ve fallen for you.” I open my mouth. Silence. I want him to know I feel the same way. But the words don’t come out. I do believe I want them to, but I just can’t say the same thing back.
Did you hear what he said?
Why aren’t you responding?
Both my Reckless and Righteous sides give me a wide-eyed look that says: “they can’t believe I’m being so hard.”