I snapped the papers back. The flight was arriving in two hours. Impossible for them to get to Italy then back. Physically impossible. Was this some sort of trick he’d set up to misguide me? Or was every assumption I had made incorrect?
I was about to have Kylie set up a car to go to LAX after the press conference, but I decided against it. I was telling this story hour by hour, and I didn’t need anyone sending it off the rails. I’d get there myself.
one.
FIRST NIGHT IN TIJUANA[→1]
antonio
he slept on her side with her hand resting on my arm and her toes pivoting against my calf. The bed flattened the side of her against it, so the curves above were accentuated in the moonlight. Her left hand was turned palm up, the burn ointment doing its work.
I didn’t want to wake her, so I ran my hand along her neck, shoulder-to-ear-to-lips parted in innocent peace.
Paulie was dead because of me. He had been a confused, violent man I used and loved like a brother. And where was my grief? I rooted around my deep corners for it, but I was empty. I only had love for the woman who had killed him. That hand on my arm was murderous and capable. I should have been repelled by its touch, but I wasn’t. I was connected to the soul who wielded it.
When she’d pulled the trigger[→2], I saw the intent in her eyes. It terrified me in a way that was coiled tightly with exhilaration. This woman was no more than a stranger and no less than a kindred animal.
Everything happened too quickly after that. The practical matter that I couldn’t leave her took a backseat to something bigger. I couldn’t put a name on it. Not yet. I couldn’t call it something I didn’t understand. But she belonged to me. Her eyes, fluttering in sleep, were mine because they saw what I saw.
And still, that didn’t begin to define it. It wasn’t something I felt. It wasn’t lodged in my heart. This possession wasn’t the stuff of operas and art. It was made of bone marrow and earth. Roots and reality. I could almost touch it, but still, I couldn’t find the words in any language to describe it.
I touched her bottom lip, as if words would be released. She sighed and rolled onto her stomach, her elbows making a V on either side to keep her burned hands to the cracked ceiling.
The whole way to Tijuana, I’d wanted to fuck her, to see what was different, to touch this definition at the center and unearth its meaning. To dig through our separateness and feel what it meant to own someone. Until then, I would be at this same loss for understanding. I’d had half a hard-on the whole way south, and it wasn’t the curve of her breast under her shirt, though that was as arousing as always. She was beautiful, and I knew she always would be to me. The source of my arousal was deeper. I wanted to fuck her to find this shared core.
But there had been matters. Things. First thing, get past the line in the sand. Then get a place to hole up for the night. As we’d waited in the bar for the hotel to clean the room, we found out about her brother.
Jonathan, who I’d met once, was as sick as a man could be. I couldn’t take her from her family just yet. I couldn’t do that to her. As if he were my own family, I had to go back, for her, for our shared fate, for that connection in the marrow. I didn’t even want to return to LA for myself, but knew I was going as surely as my balls ached.
So on the beach, I’d spoken to her about plans. None of it meant anything, because plans changed in the doing, but we agreed on a goal and a first step, which had to be undertaken immediately.
I called my father, who cursed me for breaking his heart with my death on the one hand and being alive with the other. He’d arranged the marriage I’d run from.
“Do you understand what this means? Do you understand the level of betrayal?”
He was almost too enraged to speak, but he gave me the number for a man who knew a guy who could forge two passports.
I thanked him, but he’d hung up before I finished. My father’s reaction hurt me, but it hadn’t surprised me. I didn’t know if I could ever repair things with him. Which was too bad. I loved him.