by Sam Mariano
“Man, you’re a hard woman to track down these days.”
Her gaze moves to me, her eyes briefly scanning my body, but then she looks away, not a single shred of warmth on her face. She doesn’t even respond. She just fidgets with the strap of her bag, her gaze shifting around, everywhere but at me.
My steps slow. The flash of happiness I felt at the sight of her ebbs. Dread grows in the anxious pit of my stomach.
I hit the last step and we’re on even footing. This is awkward now. She’s still avoiding looking at me, and I’m standing right in front of her.
“How’s school?” I ask, since I have to ask something.
“Fine,” she clips.
This is where she could ask the same question back, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t ask because she doesn’t care.
I realize I should’ve expected this. I’m sure she knows I’m with Mateo now.
Suddenly I’m ashamed again. I remembered Cherie being nice to me before, when Mateo had taken me from Vince and I expected her to be mean, but she wrapped an arm around me and asked if I was okay.
Of course, that was when I was innocent. That was when I didn’t know better. When I was a hapless moth, mistakenly caught up in Mateo’s web.
It isn’t like that now. Now I’ve made a choice to be there.
I desperately want to get out of this interaction, but I haven’t seen her since Vince died, so I have to say something. I have to give her my condolences, even if she might not want them.
“I’m really sorry I haven’t reached out since…” I trail off, my gaze dropping to the floor. “I know I should’ve. It’s no excuse, but I just … I got lost in my own grief, and—”
Cherie laughs—a harsh, unkind sound, nothing like I’ve heard from her before. Finally she looks at me, her dark eyes hard with contempt. “Lost in your grief? Over Vince?”
“Of course,” I say, a bit tentatively.
“Huh,” she says, nodding with a frown. “Okay. So, fucking his murderer—which stage of grief does that fall under, do you think? Are you fucking kidding me, Mia?”
I could die, I am so humiliated. My stomach sinks and my body temperature shoots up instantaneously, but I know I deserve that contempt. “I know how it seems,” I attempt.
“Don’t. Don’t bother. You are the reason Vince is dead. No one else. You. You and your fucking games.”
“I wasn’t playing games—”
“Yes, you were,” she interrupts. “You were, and you played with Mateo. You know how he plays. You know he’s a monster. And you toyed with him and made him want you, and guess what happened to the person who actually loved you, the person in his way? He fucking died. For you. So you could start fucking the monster who killed him. Fuck off, Mia. You never loved my brother; you just used him and wasted his time. Vince was too good for you. You deserve Mateo. You’re a manipulative bitch and I hope he kills you, too. Now, get out of my face.”
I don’t want to further humiliate myself by bursting into tears in front of Cherie so I have to get away from her, but there are so few safe places in this house. When I need to cry now, I always go in my bathroom; it’s the only place Mateo can’t see me.
I don’t really make it this time. Normally I only have to make it from the bed to the bathroom, but coming from the foyer downstairs, and with a trigger like that, I can’t. I’m sobbing by the time I get to the bathroom, Cherie’s words washing over me, lacerating my broken heart.
It kills me that she thinks I didn’t love Vince. It shatters me. Maybe she was only saying it to be mean, but it’s not true. Maybe I was a horrible girlfriend, maybe she’s right that I didn’t feel it by the bitter end, but it’s not true that I never did. That’s so untrue. I dig my phone out of my pocket. I convinced Mateo to let me keep my old phone, so I still have my pictures. I scroll back through, going to the one of Vince in the booth beside me, the one with the goofy face. I blink so this new rush of tears will spill over and I can actually see, then I run my thumb over the picture, wishing I could touch his face again. Wishing I could apologize to him. Wishing I could protect him. I could’ve done more that night. I stayed out of the line of fire, but Mateo wouldn’t have hit me. Why didn’t I throw myself over Vince’s body? Why didn’t I do more to save him? Why did I think it would be enough to plead with Mateo?
Did Vince think that? Did Vince think I never loved him? When he died, did he die thinking that? Did he die feeling that alone? I had just tried to leave him. I had just told him I’d been with Mateo. I had just crushed his heart—again.
Grief floods me now in every form—tears streaming down my face, breath that I can’t suck into my lungs, memories I can’t touch, noises coming out of me that I can’t even put a label to.
I feel so alone, and I deserve that. I deserve so much more than that, because I made Vince feel that way. Vince loved me, and I destroyed him. Cherie is right. I destroyed him and then I flirted with danger until danger wanted to possess me—and then he cleared the way so he could.
It’s all my fault.
I don’t deserve to draw breath when Vince doesn’t. I don’t even deserve to be alive.
Chapter Twenty Nine
Mia
“Mia, open the goddamn door.”
I’m curled up in a ball on the floor. I didn’t even realize I’d locked it, but I can’t move, and even if I could, I wouldn’t let Mateo inside. I wouldn’t let him see me like this.
I want to tell him to come back later, but I can’t speak. It requires too much energy. I’m dead empty. Depleted. I need him to just leave me alone with my grief tonight. He can go to Meg tonight, and come back for me tomorrow.
That way he can put the hands that killed Vince all over the body of the woman who was supposed to love him.
I close my eyes against the pain. There’s so much pain. So much shame. This is the worst feeling in the world, and I don’t know how to escape it.
“Mia, I swear to God, I will rip this fucking door off its hinges.”
I need a time machine. If I had a time machine, I’d go back and fix it. Why can’t I wake up and find out this was all a dream? I can wake up next to Vince, like I did so many times before, and it was only a dream. It’s always only a dream when I have Mateo, it’s never real. Maybe this is a dream. Maybe Vince is lying beside me in our bed, and I can wake up and roll over and hug him. I can be kind to him. I can do for him what I’ve been willing to do for his murderer—I can let go. I can be loving. I can do better. I just need this to be a dream. I need him to be alive again. I’ll never do anything to get him killed if he’s just alive. I’ll cut all contact with Mateo outside of Sunday night dinners, I’ll sit there with Vince by my side, and I’ll be faithful and good.
Anything to get out from under the crushing weight of this guilt. I can’t breathe. I don’t even want to breathe; I just need the pain to stop. I want the guilt to go away.
“Please just answer me,” he calls, more desperately this time. I’ve never heard Mateo desperate, but it doesn’t really register. I can’t answer. I just can’t. It’s too hard. I feel broken.
How can I love him? I do, but how? What kind of person could love him, after what he did? How can I want him so much? How can I want to give him what I wouldn’t give Vince? I owed it to him. I was in a relationship with him. And I yearned for Mateo. What Mateo did should’ve cured me of that. I shouldn’t still want him after that. I’m as much a monster as he is.
I’m dimly aware of the door doing a thing doors shouldn’t do—opening from the wrong side, and then being lifted off and moved aside.
Huh.
He actually had the door taken off the hinges.
He looks like he can breathe again when he sees me. He rushes forward, sinking to the floor with me and pulling me up into a sitting position, into his arms. Adrian hangs back by the door, looking in, watching Mateo.
It takes me a minute to realize why. To realize Mateo is inspecting me. He’s checking my wrists, his face paler than I’v
e ever seen it, and then his gaze jumps to my mouth.
“You didn’t take anything, did you?”
I don’t understand.
I still feel too empty to speak, but I frown, confused.
He grabs my shoulders and gives me a solid shake. It scares me, so I make myself speak. “No.”
A breath of relief rushes out of him and he pulls me against his chest, tucking me under his chin. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Mia.”
Wait, he’s sorry?
“I’m sorry,” I murmur, leaning against him, but not hugging him back. “I’m sorry, I’m trying, but it’s all my fault. I killed Vince and…and I feel so awful.”
“Sh, no,” he says, petting the back of my head, holding me tighter. “Nothing’s your fault, Mia. Everything’s okay. I’m so sorry.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“Stop apologizing. I pushed you too far. This is my fault. It’s going to be okay, I promise.”
I feel so safe in his arms. Maybe I can just stay in my bedroom and never leave again, not even for dinners. People will see me and know that I’m the horrible monster who loves her boyfriend’s murderer then, but in my bedroom, there’s no one to hate me for it. No one but me, I guess.
“Don’t make me leave,” I say, burrowing into his chest. “I don’t want to leave.”
“I’m not going to make you leave,” he assures me.
“I do love you. I just feel so horrible for it,” I tell him, new tears springing to my eyes.
Sighing heavily, he wraps his arms all the way around me, blocking out everything else. There’s only his chest, his arms, his scent, and even though I know he’s the danger, I still manage to feel protected from the world.
---
When I finally recover from my nervous breakdown, Mateo is still there in the floor of my bathroom, holding me tightly in his strong, comforting arms.
Adrian disappeared and came back with one of those little white pills, but I did not hesitate to take it this time. My brain was ripping me apart and I wanted to claw my way out of it, so if the little white pill would calm me down, this time I would let it.
It did.
I’m not sure what kind of attack or mental break that was, exactly, but it was fucking scary. I felt completely unhinged, drowning in a sea of guilt, unable to pull myself out.
Mateo has stopped apologizing to me, but he did, a lot. Frantically. It didn’t make sense to me at the time, I couldn’t piece it together, but now that the pill has sedated me and I don’t feel like I’m losing my goddamn mind, I remember something else Vince told me—about how Mateo was the one who found his mother after she committed suicide. He was only a little boy. Mateo’s never told me the story himself, but he has mentioned that women have killed themselves to escape the torment of the Morelli men before—he even promised that while he would push my limits, he would always stop before it got that far.
It didn’t occur to me he might jump to that conclusion. Nothing occurred to me—it wasn’t a plan, I just needed somewhere to hide, and only the bathrooms don’t have cameras. I just didn’t want him to see me breaking in half.
“I’m so tired,” I murmur against his chest. My arms are around him now, locked in an embrace that he seems completely disinterested in breaking.
“You scared the living fuck out of me,” he replies. He sounds tired, too. Remorseful. It scares me a little, and I hold him tighter.
“I didn’t mean to scare you. I didn’t think you’d even know I was in here. I just didn’t want you to see me.”
“Mia…” He sighs, and I can feel his grip on me tighten. “You can’t do that. If I’m pushing you too hard, you have to tell me.”
“I didn’t want you to make me leave.”
Tipping my chin up, he meets my gaze. “I will never make you leave. I don’t want you to leave.”
“But you said…”
“I’m a fucking liar, Mia,” he states, sounding aggravated with himself instead of me this time. “I’m so sorry. Please, just… don’t ever let me push you this far again. I’ll never make you leave. Never. Not for anything. You don’t have to be afraid of that. You’ll be in this house long after I’m gone.”
I squeeze him tighter. “Don’t say that. I don’t ever want you to be gone.”
“Please don’t let me break you.”
“I’m not that breakable,” I assure him. “I just… I’ve never felt this much guilt before. It’s so horrible.”
“Stop thinking about that. Come on, let’s stand up.”
I don’t want to let go of him, but he doesn’t give me much choice. Once he’s standing, he takes my hand to help me up. He pulls me into his arms to hug me again, like he just can’t express enough how glad he is that I’m alive.
Finally he pulls back, but he still holds onto my hand. He laces our fingers together and walks me out.
I follow, docile as can be, until I realize he’s taking me to his study. Then I slow to a stop.
“I don’t want to go in there,” I tell him. “I can’t be sad anymore today.”
“You’re not going to be sad anymore today,” he promises me. “Mad, probably. Not sad.”
I frown, confused. He’s still holding my hand and he drags me into the study, whether I want to go or not. I try to focus on his desk, because I cannot look at Vince’s empty chair.
“Come here,” he says, pulling me over to the chair behind the desk—his chair, though he’s usually not sitting in it. He has before. It’s where he was sitting the day he gave me all the graphic novels, and I sat here in the floor and told him all about them. The day he let Adrian say shit in front of me and he set me up. Right before it all went to hell.
Good times.
I’m so tired. I need a nap. Couldn’t we have just napped instead of doing this? I could’ve curled up in his arms, or better yet coaxed him to fuck me, to pull me under his current and distract me from the wreckage for a little while.
Mateo bends over me, opening a drawer on the right side of his desk, pulling out a manila envelope and dropping it on top of the desk. He pulls out a little black cell phone, too—not a normal cell phone, but a little flip-phone type that I didn’t think they made anymore.
I frown in confusion, looking up at him. “What is this?”
He sighs, looking at me like it might be the last time. It fills me with trepidation, because he just swore he wouldn’t make me leave, and if he was lying, I’m going to go batshit crazy on his ass. He can’t do all this to me and then send me away. I won’t let him.
Leaning forward, he flips open the folder.
I lean forward on the desk to look at it, and then pain squeezes my heart when I see a picture of Vince. Why would he do this? I just had a mental breakdown in the bathroom upstairs, and now he’s going to show me pictures of the trigger? Is he trying to break my brain?
Mateo squats down beside me, which is a weird feeling, because he usually uses his height to intimidate. He never gives up the advantage and brings himself down to the level of mere mortals—he especially never brings himself lower.
“Why are you showing me this?” I ask, displeased and confused.
Mateo takes my hand in his, looking up at me with something… vulnerable in the depths of his brown eyes. And then he says, “I didn’t kill Vince.”
Chapter Thirty
Mia
My eyes feel swollen and crusty. I stare at Mateo, eyes burning from exhaustion and excessive crying. I am too fucking tired for this shit. What the fuck kind of fucked up bullshit is he spouting right now?
“I let him out.” Since I’m still not speaking, he watches warily, but continues. “I heard you. I heard you when you asked me not to… I just didn’t want you to know. I wanted him to be dead to you. I wanted you to mourn him and move on. He’s not coming back. But I didn’t realize… I didn’t know you would carry this much guilt. I didn’t think of that.”
“What are you talking about? I saw you…”
“Y
ou saw me beat him up. Then I kicked you out and shut the door.”
Shaking my head, falling back against the chair, I say, “What kind of game is this, Mateo? Don’t do this. Please don’t make it worse. Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not lying,” he says, rising again. He turns toward the desk, spreading out the pictures in the folder. He grabs one at random, holding it up for me to see.
I grab it, frowning at it. It’s a picture of Vince inside a McDonald’s. He’s sitting at a table, presumably by himself, but it’s cropped up close, so I can’t tell. He’s wearing a ball cap backwards, which looks really cute on him. He’s sipping from a straw in a beverage cup, his attention on something on the table. A paper, maybe.
Mateo reaches behind him and grabs another one, showing it to me. This one shows Vince walking up the stairs of an apartment complex. Only his profile is visible, but I recognize that profile.
“You’re not the reason Vince lost his life, Mia. You’re the reason he got one.”
I look up at Mateo, terrified to believe what he’s saying. I want to believe it, but I’ve been manipulated by him too many times before. If he realized I couldn’t handle Vince’s death, I honestly wouldn’t put it past him to manufacture a trail like this to show me, to put my mind at ease.
“I don’t believe you,” I finally say.
His eyes widen and he indicates the folder. “I have proof. Look at all this proof. I didn’t think you’d believe my words, that’s why I’m showing you this.”
“This isn’t proof of anything. These are pictures of Vince I’ve never seen before—so what? They could’ve been taken anywhere. Like Vince has never been to McDonald’s?”
He scowls at me, grabbing a packet of papers with a staple in the corner, holding it up for me to see. “This is his lease. This is his address. This is…” He trails off. “This is all proof. Look at all of it.”
“This is paper. You can print old pictures, you can show me anyone’s lease and say it’s his. This isn’t proof of anything.”