It’s loud outside, but peacefully so. Somebody is playing a guitar, and the sweet smell of weed wafts around as people laugh and talk.
We’re both tired. Avery disappears into the bathroom, water runs, and then I take my turn while she crawls into bed. When I get there she’s staring up at the ceiling. Glass. Open to the sky, but safe from the elements–and more importantly, the bugs. Those fuckers get pretty big out here.
“Is that your first sister?” Avery asks, lacing her fingers through mine after I’ve collapsed beside her on the soft bed.
I nod. “First sister. I’d say they kept going until they got a girl, but I’m pretty sure they’re just going to keep having babies regardless.”
“I had no idea your father was out here. Remarried. With a ton of kids. Whenever I imagined him, it was with your mom.”
Me too, I think to myself.
“He brought my mom down here after the fire,” I explain, my eyes firmly fixed on the sky above us. There is something incredible about watching the stars out here, far away from city lights. Just like last night, the sun slipped away slowly, then all at once, as if in the blink of an eye. Out here, the stars aren’t just pops of color against a midnight sky–no, the sky itself is made of stars, a luminous blanket that drapes itself across the night.
“She’s not here anymore?” Avery asks gently.
Pain stabs into my chest as I think of my mother. She was beautiful, once. Smart and tenacious, she was the glue that held our family together.
Until she came unstuck herself.
Until the fire.
“She’s in a psychiatric hospital. She was never the same after my brother died in the fire,” I say, my throat tightening. “The doctors called it a psychotic break, but it was really just a broken heart. She couldn’t face reality. I don’t blame her. Dad tried to take care of her here after they were forced out of the city. Tried to find natural medicines for her, but nothing worked. He built this place for the both of them. Made a deal with the local Native American tribe to lease some of their land in exchange for the last of his money the feds were chasing.”
My father’s financial and professional ruin is still a sore subject for me. How one man could go from being as rich as a God–as rich as a Capulet, for that matter–to destitute in a single move is as much of a mindfuck now as it was when I was a kid and went from having a silver spoon in my mouth to sleeping on a paper-thin mattress on the floor of my foster family’s cramped house in the fucking projects. I still smelled like smoke and ash when the social worker dropped me off with my new family and told me my parents had fled San Francisco without me.
I didn’t even know my baby brother had perished in the fire until my foster mother took me to his funeral.
My new sister, born healthy just hours ago, might be a miracle, but she’s not the only baby on my mind.
Something lights, sparks, at the corner of my vision, and all at once I’m hauled back there. Back to the fire.
There’s too much fire, too much flame. It chews at the hem of my pajamas, licks at the Thomas the Tank Engine socks on my feet. The roar of it is louder than I can yell, which is loud, fucking frantic. Hands around my wrists, voices in my ears. Two men dragging me back from the burning house. One of them stomps down hard on one of my feet and I howl in pain but keep trying to break free. “I’m sorry,” he shouts, heat blooming over my face. “Your socks were on fire. Get him out of here. We have to get him out of here.” My argument is a wordless scream. They have to get my baby brother, or they have to let me go in for him, and they don’t do either of those things. Outside, my mother screams, restrained by more men whose faces I don’t remember, as the house burns, as my brother turns to ash, as everything I’ve ever known is wiped away in one cruel, savage blaze.
I shake myself back into the present. That’s not happening here. The house is fine. My dad’s new baby daughter is fine. We’re all fine.
Is Avery fine?
I turn on my side to look at her. She’s still looking up through the window, starlight on her face. I can tell she’s thinking about him.
“You want to talk about your brother?” I don’t want to talk about mine, but I do. It only seems fair. She listens to the story and reaches up to brush away another tear.
She laughs through another wave of tears, then blinks them away. “I don’t know why I’m laughing. He—” A deep breath. “He was like a doll. But they wouldn’t let me hold him. My aunt said it would be worse if I did. I just held his hand instead. His arm was so heavy … there was no life in it, you know? It felt nothing like I’d imagined a baby’s hand would feel. I didn’t realize that it was until today, when I held...that baby. That baby who was alive. She was so full of life.” Avery swallows hard, and I can’t stand being this far away from her.
I gather her up in my arms. The commune might be fucked up, but they have clean sheets. And I have Avery. What more could I ask for?
“It’s a mindfuck, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” She’s silent for a few minutes and I get caught up in how alive she is. How warm and breathing and not tortured. “Rome.”
“Yeah?”
“I can’t believe we got out of there. Out of that place. I thought we’d die down there. When I close my eyes, for a moment, I’m still always there.”
My mind tries to force me into another flashback, and fuck that. I fight off the echo of her screams and the stains of blood and that mattress. We aren’t there.
Here, there are sheets. We have pillows. This isn’t a dank basement. We can see the sky instead of just trying to imagine it. Better to focus on the future, even if that looks dicey as fuck, too.
“What do you think’s going to happen?” My mouth has gone dry and I swallow a few times to get myself back to a semblance of normal. “When your family figures out where you are.”
Avery turns so her back is pressed against my chest and lets out a deep sigh. She traces my wrist with her finger, then locks her fingers into mine. “They have a plan. It’ll only take them a minute to force me to marry my cousin, or somebody else they choose. The Capulet agenda will rule, as always.” She laughs, the sound turning bitter. “And now, since I’ve destroyed those embryos, they’ll make me actually get pregnant with whoever they choose. I’m trapped. It’s just a matter of time.”
Tension moves through all her muscles, one by one, and I start at her shoulders and rub it out until it’s gone. There is a solution to this. It’s an obvious one.
“You know, Aves, they can’t force you to get married if you’re already married.”
She twists around to look me in the eyes, but she can’t stop herself from touching me. My hair. My cheekbone. My lips. “Don’t joke, Rome.”
“I’m not joking. I’ve wanted to marry you since we were kids, notwithstanding that decade I fucking hated you.”
Avery smiles. “You could sign up for a lifetime of hating me.”
“I could hate you at my leisure.” I kiss her forehead and pull back. “I could hate you as my wife, and you know how marriage works—there’s no way out of it.”
“No way out,” she echoes, and her expression shifts.
We’re not joking anymore.
I’m not fucking joking.
I scramble out of the bed, looking for...looking for anything. There—a flower in a vase.
Avery sits up, her hair already a mess. I fucking love it. “What are you doing?” She watches me tear up the flower. “He’s lost it,” she says, almost to herself. “I’m going to have to get him some magic mushrooms.”
I make a ring out of the stem, remembering back to kindergarten when the girls would weave crowns and bracelets out of daisy stems. It’s hasty as fuck, but it’s a ring. Then I go back around and kneel at the side of the bed.
“Rome,” Avery whispers. “What are you doing?”
“Marry me.” I offer her the ring like it’s made of diamonds and platinum, like it’s worthy of her. My heart is one broad ache in my chest. It f
eels like hope. “Marry me, Avery. Be my wife. Let’s make our own fate instead of waiting for your family to steal it from us.”
For a single, solitary moment, a solemn magic fills the room. For a moment it erases everything that happened before. There’s only us.
“Yeah,” she says breathlessly. “I mean, yes.”
I swear, there’s a fireworks show when I put the ring on her finger. She’s mine now. The world explodes in color and light. She’s mine.
“When?” she says.
“When do we get married?” I clarify. She nods, her eyes dreamy.
“Tomorrow,” I say. “My dad’s ordained. He marries people here all the time. It’s legal.”
Her eyes light up. “We can get married here?” she asks. “For real? We don’t have to go to city hall or a church or anything?”
I know what she’s thinking. That as soon as we step foot off this property, her family will descend like vultures, scoop her up and take her away before we can so much as utter, “With this ring, I thee take.”
“Nope,” I smile, rubbing her knee. “We have everything we need right here.”
That seems to reassure her. The worry drops from her face, her shoulders lower, and my heart does a nervous flip at the thought of being lucky enough to marry this girl when the sun rises.
“Come back to bed,” Avery coaxes, and I do. I crawl back into bed next to my fiancée, and she presses her body against mine. The old Avery Capulet would have wanted a party. A celebration. This one falls asleep. She must feel safe here. And for the first time in a long time, with her breathing evenly in my arms, so do I.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
ROME
You can’t sleep in on the commune.
Maybe you could if you lived in a yurt made from thick fabric, but not in this glass house. That’s fine, because the second the sun crests the horizon it floods the room and gives me time to look at Avery.
She’s still exhausted, clearly, because at first she doesn’t stir. She’s spent the rest of the night with that ring on her finger. I have to get her another one. A real one. Someday—someday when it matters more than staying by her side in the rising day.
Avery Capulet, my new fiancée, is fucking gorgeous. It breaks my heart to see her this way, peacefully sleeping. The shitshow is coming. It just hasn’t started yet. That’s what’s so stupidly sad about all of this. So maddening. Driving to the commune was a dream, but soon it’s going to become a nightmare.
There’s no getting around reality: Her family will come for her.
It’s only a matter of time.
Avery turns her head into the pillow and mumbles something.
“What did you say?” I rub her back in small circles. Everything hurts, and not because I’ve been shot and tortured. It’s because I’m not sure how long this will last. Which is bullshit. Live in the moment, and all that.
She faces me, cheeks pink from sleep. “It’s bright in here.”
“Sad to say, there are no curtains either.”
“It’s fine.” Avery flips over on her back and stretches her arms above her head. “I feel good, anyway. Like I actually slept.”
I do, too. All the lingering tension has dissipated for now. As far as I know the new baby’s fine, we’re fine. Nobody knows where we are except the people who already live here, and I very much doubt any of them even know the name Capulet, let alone have the desire to share our location. For now, we’re safely cocooned in the fragile peace my father’s property affords us.
I’m the first one to get up. “You want some tea?”
Avery nods with her eyes still closed. “Yes, but no magic mushrooms.”
“Too late. I already added magic mushrooms. But I can hold the whip.”
“Nobody puts whip on tea.” She laughs, and that’s how the morning really starts. With tea and the soft sound of Avery’s laughter.
“The thing is, I need to go get clean clothes,” she muses a while later. “I want a shower. A long shower. If there’s, you know, water on the commune.”
“There’s water, you ass. I’ll walk with you to the car for your stuff. I need to talk to my dad anyway.”
We go across to their trailer after the tea and Avery pulls her stuff out of the back of the G-wagon while I knock on the door. She gives me a little wave and marches back across the open space toward our place. Our place. Unbelievable.
My dad answers the door with bags under his eyes and a radiant smile on his face. “Hey. Wait here a second.” He goes back in and returns with two coffee mugs. “Let’s go out. The baby’s asleep with Indigo, so—” He motions down. Keep it quiet.
There’s a trail out behind the houses, and we take it. We’re the first ones up, I guess, and it doesn’t take long to settle into a quiet companionship. “You seem better now,” I say eventually. “You were pretty pissed in the city.”
He picks his way around a boulder sitting in the middle of the path. “Yeah. With the baby due—it was stressful to be so far away. But you’re my kid, too. You needed me. I’m glad I could help in some way.”
“Thanks for that.” I slow my pace to drink my coffee and after a minute my dad catches up with me. “I asked Avery to marry me last night.”
My dad stops dead in the middle of the path. We have a near miss with the hot coffee before he can collect himself. I watch a full recap of our history in his eyes, ending with the utter astonishment of this moment. “Jesus, Rome. What’d she say?”
“She said yes.” I can’t keep the huge, stupid smile off my face. “You’re going to tell me I’m fucking crazy.”
He takes a deep breath, and in that breath I hear all the reasons not to do this. The longstanding feud between our families. The killers lurking in the city, waiting to finish us off. And the old, aching wound from when Avery took the stand and lied. My dad’s face softens. He takes another long drink of coffee.
“You’ve got to follow your heart.” Then he extends his hand. What’s he doing? “Congratulations, son.”
We shake hands, and at the last minute my dad pulls me into a hug. For all his hippie ways, he’s not a touchy-feely guy. It’s brief, but genuine, and when we break apart he nods like he’s making a plan. My heart can’t help but answer the question begged by follow your heart. My heart says that I fucking love Avery, and I don’t want to lose her. I only just found her again after all these years.
“You think you’ll get married in the city?” My dad gives me a pat on the shoulder and we keep walking.
“No.” I hadn’t thought about it again until now, but the city is a hive of danger and sin. “No, it’ll have to be quicker than that. I don’t want to wait.”
“Perfect.” He says it so happily that it’s my turn to stare at him. “We can do it here, if you want. We have the old church on the far edge of the property. When are you thinking?”
“Now,” I say, without hesitation. “Today. This morning. Before her family finds her and takes her away from me forever.”
My father’s smile fades, replaced by a steely determination. “This morning,” he echoes, tipping the last bit of his coffee onto a shrub as he nods. A knowing smile spreads across his tanned face. “I think we can manage that.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
AVERY
The world won’t leave me the fuck alone—not even for a day.
I step out of the shower in this strange, glassed-in house that has somehow managed to imprint itself on my heart and rummage around in my suitcase. It was packed hastily, in less than five minutes, and I’m missing half the stuff I normally use to beautify myself each morning. Lotions and creams and foundation primer. In the bottom of the mess, I see my burner phone–the one nobody except Nathan and Elliot have the number for–and find the screen crowded with notifications.
“Shit.” Texts. Missed calls. Voicemail after voicemail. Nathan, Enzo, and Jennifer have all tried to contact me, not just last night but in the twenty minutes I spent in the shower. Fuck. I don’t know which of
them divulged my private number. I put my money on Nathan. He’s so eager to keep himself in Enzo’s good graces, I can see him crumbling under the pressure.
I dial Nathan’s number before I can think about it. The longer I wait, the less I’ll want to call, and the more they’ll push until I finally snap.
“Avery, thank god.” He’s breathing hard, like he’s been running. “Where are you?”
“I’m taking a couple days off.”
“What does that mean?”
I go to stand by the windows. First the windows in the north, then the east, then the south, then the west. There’s no sign of any of my family. They’re not here yet. Do they already know where I am? Fear and fury pull the hairs on the back of my neck straight up.
“It means I got out of town for a couple days.”
“You’re being awfully cagey, Aves.”
“I’m not telling you where I am,” I say flatly.
“Look.” In the background of Nathan’s call is a sudden burst of wind and a clattering sound. “I’m just looking out for you. My dad—” He drops his voice. “My dad is tracking the GPS on your phone right now. You should smash it the second we end this call and stop him from finding you.”
Ice washes through my veins. “He’s tracking my phone?”
“Yeah. It’s out of some misguided urge to keep you safe, I guess.” He lets out a dry laugh. “He thinks if he can keep tabs on you, then you won’t get stolen away again.”
“Nathan, this is fucked up.”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry. I swear, I didn’t give him the number. My mother stole my fucking phone while I slept and went through every text to find which number was you.”
Fuck. That does sound like something Eliza would do. Either in a misguided attempt to keep me safe, or out of a need to appease her increasingly unhinged husband.
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