He took the gun off the table and checked the ammunition. He pivoted on his ass then stood above me with it, naked, shoulders at an angle that balanced the pedestal of his neck. His waist, his hips, his tight stomach with a line of hair leading to the perfection of his half-erect cock, all were meant for me.
He snapped the gun closed, reminding me of everything hard and hot and dangerous. All the reasons we were going to hell. I felt two jolts. One between my legs. The other in my heart.
“I did it,” I said. “With Paulie. I shot him. I held the gun, and I pulled the trigger. That’s on me.”
“Because he was coming at me.”
I sat up. Paulie had been coming at Antonio, and if I was ever unsure whether or not I’d kill for him, I wasn’t anymore. But in the haze of thinking Antonio was dead, to needing to stay completely and utterly calm for the trip to TJ, to finding out about my brother and planning for our return, I hadn’t had a moment’s peace to think about what killing for him meant.
I looked away from Antonio at the foot of the bed. Past the wrought-iron footboard, the mirror stared back at me. I was naked, hair hanging over my shoulders in a post-coital nest. I looked as I always had, and him above me, dark hair contrasting with the whiteish walls, body lithe and tight and perfect, dark eyes with lashes longer than should be legal. The mirror couldn’t see Antonio’s taste in my mouth, his cum dripping from me, my aching *. It couldn’t see the change in my brain caused by the sex and the safety, the dam of avoidance dropping and the torrent of truth.
I held up my right hand to block my face in the mirror, and I saw something I shouldn’t. The little black stain was probably caused by the dirty mirror, because when I turned my palm around to look at it directly, it was red from a burn, not black with sin. Downstairs, a child’s scream turned to laughter. I pressed my lips between my teeth.
Antonio looked down at me. “Theresa?”
“I didn’t…” I pressed my finger to his lips. “I can’t accept that you forgive me.”
He sat down, twisting to face me. “You didn’t mean it.”
Mean it? What did that even mean? No one means to shoot anyone, except psychopaths and nihilists.
“I did mean it.”
He pulled my fingers away from his lips, but I shook my head violently and put both hands over my face. I couldn’t look at him, or anyone. Especially not myself. That mirror, it bothered me. It flattened everything into truth.
Antonio straightened like a shot, straddling me. He took my hands from my face and filled my vision. The eye of the storm: a place of peace and calm, and the most dangerous space to be in. The eye made you complacent and comfortable, and the next minute, while you were enjoying the cloudless sky, you’d be swept into a violent wind.
“Theresa,” he said, his accent like music, the concern on his face as real as his taste on my tongue. “Contessa. Amore mio. Ascolta. We are animals. You. Me. The kids playing outside. We wash ourselves. We cook our food. We speak in big words and have ideas. But we are animals. We fuck and we shit, and when we have to survive, we kill.”
We kill. Did that mean everyone, or just me? Just us? Just the family I’d forced my way into for reasons that even I couldn’t articulate?
“No. I don’t believe that,” I said, knowing he was right no matter how I let the light hit it.
He cupped my chin and held my head fast, as if keeping me still would ensure I heard him. “Your life will be easier if you accept it.”
What about me deserved an easy time of it? I’d never earned the ease I’d been given, and now that I’d done what I’d done, my worthiness was even more questionable. His eyes met mine, and I saw nothing but the depth of his troubles. Decades’ worth of weight. Would I add mine to his? Would I harp on my sin until he took responsibility for my corruption? I could break him. I knew that. If he thought I was destroyed beyond recognition, he’d take it all on himself.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Just adjusting.”
“Don’t adjust too much. If something has to be done again, it’s for me to do.”