by Mia Madison
When we go to bed, the mood is new. There’s no less heat between us, but there’s more of everything else. More feeling, more tenderness, more depth. Even when we were fucking like animals, it was never only sex; but tonight, we’re making love.
When we come, we come together, a long, shimmering climax that brings tears to my eyes. I hold Brando close, stroking his hair, before we move into our usual spooned position. I snuggle back against him, feeling safe and warm and loved.
“Good night, Sasha.”
“Good night, Brando.”
Within seconds, sleep wraps around us like a velvet blanket.
His voice wakes me. Low, guttural, speaking words I can’t understand. He gets louder, until he’s doing a sort of strangled yelling, but I still don’t know what he’s saying.
It finally registers on my sleep-addled brain that he must be dreaming. I start to turn his way, and the next instant I’m flat on my back under him.
It’s pitch dark in the bedroom, so I can’t see his face. But this time, I understand him perfectly. “I’ll fuckin’ kill you.”
His voice is ugly, vicious. When his hands slide up my torso toward my throat, I panic, batting at him, screaming his name, trying desperately to wake him. “Brando! Brando!”
He goes still, and then his weight abruptly leaves me. The lamp comes on, but he keeps moving, rolling off the bed and slamming into the bathroom.
I wait, trembling, the covers drawn up to my chin. He’s back in under thirty seconds, his expression terrible. “Brando—”
“Get out.”
I stare at him. “What?”
“You speak fuckin’ English? I said get out.”
I’m too stunned to move. I don’t recognize this man.
When I don’t obey, he stalks around the foot of the bed and gathers up my clothing, opens the bedroom door, and hurls my garments over the railing to land in the living room below. “You’re not out of here in five seconds, I’ll toss you over too.”
I don’t understand what’s going on, but I have to try. “Brando—”
“GET OUT!”
I scramble from the bed, taking the comforter with me to shield my nakedness, feeling suddenly cold and exposed. He moves aside to let me pass and I actually back from the room, frightened of the hard-eyed stranger he’s become.
I go sideways down the stairs, glancing up to make sure he’s not following. At the bottom I drop the comforter and drag my clothes on as fast as I can with shaking hands.
My purse lands with a thud in front of me, followed by his car keys. “Take the SUV. I’ll send someone to pick it up.”
The bedroom door slams shut behind him, so hard that the walls shake. I stare at the keys, but don’t pick them up. Grabbing my purse, I go to the front door.
The heavy crossbar he put over it my first night here is up, held in place by some mechanism I can’t decipher. He hasn’t bothered with it since.
It strikes me as some terrible metaphor for what’s happened, but I can’t make my brain work to figure it out. Slipping out onto the front porch, I leave the door ajar a crack while I check my cell phone to see if it has a signal. I’d rather take a cab, no matter how much it costs.
But there’s no cell service out here in the woods. And even if there were, I realize I don’t know his address. He said I could text it to my friends, that first night, but I never did. Never asked. By the time we got here, I was too caught up in him to even think of it.
Creeping inside, I get the keys, closing the door as quietly as I can when I’m back on the porch. I retrace the route to the restaurant, and once I’m there I check my cell again and find a signal.
I want to call Emily, but I can’t. I’m too ashamed.
The cab arrives fifteen minutes later. I leave the SUV’s keys under the mat.
16
Let Her
It’s the kind of bar bikers hang out at. Mainly because they own it. I’ve been coming here every night after the restaurant closes and drinking myself blind.
So far none of the bikers have bothered me. For my part, I haven’t been stupid enough, even drunk, to pick a fight.
Two weeks have passed since I threw Sasha out. Fourteen miserable days, each one worse than the last.
I have no idea how I’m going to get through the rest of my life. Maybe the booze will solve that problem for me.
Not that I’m driving drunk; the SUV still sits where she left it. I sleep in the restaurant at night because I can’t stand to go home.
Every part of the cabin reminds me of her. I can’t bring myself to change the sheets on the bed, because then she’ll be totally gone.
If not for the fact that it would leave my employees in the lurch, I’d close the restaurant too. Maybe sign up as a mercenary overseas.
Plenty of ways to die without eating your gun.
“The usual,” I tell the bartender as I settle onto a stool at the bar. One of the reasons I like this place is that nobody tries to talk to me. They just serve me and leave me alone.
But tonight, the guy doesn’t reach for the bottle of scotch. He looks over my shoulder, then back at me, and says, “Sorry, man.”
The wall behind him isn’t mirrored. I have to turn my head and look over my shoulder to see Wolf Calhoun standing there. He’s the president of Firestorm, the MC that owns this bar and another like it down the mountain. He’s also engaged to my cousin Dani.
“Problem?” I growl at him.
“We gotta talk.”
I turn back to the bar, shaking my head. “Not a good time, Wolf.”
“I ain’t askin’.”
“Fuck off.”
He grips my shoulder, and I lose my tenuous hold on sanity. Knocking his hand away, I come off the stool and whirl to face him. In the half second it takes me to do that, every man in the bar is on his feet.
Wolf’s men are loyal, but that’s not why I’m frozen in place. He’s brought backup with him. Adamo backup.
Tonio. Kosta. Carlo. Victor. Rico. Dante.
A whole posse of my badass cousins stands there, arms folded, eyes glinting. They don’t have to say a word for me to know that they’ll do whatever they think is necessary to deal with me.
“You wanna do this here or elsewhere?” Wolf says, when it’s clear I’m not suicidal enough to take them all on.
I don’t want to do it at all, but I’m not about to air my dirty laundry in front of the MC. Especially when I’m sober. They may be brothers, but they’re not mine.
“Fuck,” I snarl, and stalk toward the door. They follow me out and we load up into a couple of SUVs and ride over to the restaurant. I unlock the door and let them in, still toying with the idea of taking a swing at a couple of them and starting a melee.
If they put me in the hospital, I won’t have to talk to them.
We reach the dining room and everyone grabs a chair, sitting in a rough circle. I snort. “What is this, a fuckin’ intervention?”
“Damn straight it is.” It’s Rico who answers. “We ain’t gonna stand by and watch you throw your life away.”
“You seem to have missed the part where it’s my fuckin’ life. I can throw it away if I want.”
“No,” Tonio says quietly. “You can’t.”
My fury erupts like hot lava. I charge him, but I’ve barely taken a step before two massive arms lock around me from behind. “That ain’t the way,” Dante says in my ear.
I struggle, and he tightens his hold until I can barely breathe. “You want us to beat the shit out of you so you won’t have to deal with this. Problem is, you’ll still have to deal with it. You’ll just be doin’ it with a lot of bruises.”
“Let. Me. Go.”
He does, slowly, but he’s standing by, ready to wrap me up again if need be. It takes me a long moment before I have enough control to return to my seat.
“It’s not just your life,” Carlo says, picking up the thread. “You’re hurting everyone who cares about you. Including Sasha.”
&n
bsp; My hands clench into fists. “She’s better off without me.”
“No,” Vic says. “She’s not.”
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“You think you’re the only one here with demons?” Kosta says. “Mine aren’t the same as yours, but I’ve got them. So does Rico. All of us have been through pain of one kind or another. And all of us know that meeting the right woman is what saved us.”
“Right,” I say with heavy sarcasm. “Any of you assholes try to kill the woman you love?”
“I tried my damnedest to send Mickey away,” Rico answers. “If I’d managed it, it woulda killed us both. Slow, but certain.”
That hits way too close to home. “Mickey’s known you for years,” I counter. “Sasha was barely with me forty-eight hours.”
He shakes his head. “My girl fell for me the day we met. If I’d pushed her away, she would have spent her life alone, dying inside. Just like me.”
There’s a sharp pain in my chest at the thought of that happening to Sasha. But — “It’s not that simple.”
“It is.” Tonio again. “You don’t have to live this way. A lot of vets come home with demons riding them. There’s help.”
I shake my head. Not for me.
“They got service dogs,” Rico adds. “Other vets you can talk to. All kinds of shit.”
“You’re not listening. I tried to kill her. She’s scared of me now, and she should be. A fuckin’ service dog won’t change that.”
“You’re missing the most important part,” Wolf says. “She loves you.”
“She does not!” I can’t let myself believe that. If she’s just a girl, then I’m just an asshole. She’ll get over me and move on.
If she’s the love of my life, then what I did to her is infinitely worse. Unforgivable.
Kosta says, “You forget, cugino. We’ve all been there. We know what love looks like, and we saw you together, that night at the restaurant. What you’ve got, it’s new, but it’s real.”
“I can’t—” I stop, horrified, when my voice breaks. It takes several seconds of clearing my throat before I can continue. “I can’t live my life wondering if some night I’m going to snap and destroy everything that matters.”
“Then don’t,” Carlo says. “Get the help you need.”
“I can’t ask her to accept that. To accept me. It’s not fair to her.”
“That’s her call,” Vic says. “Not yours.”
Dante puts a hand on my shoulder, and this time I don’t knock it away. “Adamo women — whether they’re born to the name, or marry into it — they’re not weak. They can’t be, they’re gonna put up with the likes of us for a lifetime.
“If she’s yours, then she’s strong enough to stand at your side and help you battle your demons. Only question is if you’ll let her.”
17
Hope
There’s an old song called “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” After this summer, I have a new appreciation for it.
I never heard from Brando again. But my time with him is seared on my soul, and I can’t seem to get past it. Any of it, the bad or the good.
Sometimes I wake up crying in the night. Other times, I dream that we’re making love, and it’s so beautiful, but then it ends and I remember what happened and the tears come again.
I’ve spent the summer volunteering for three different charities. They keep my mind off my troubles, keep me grounded in how very fortunate I am in most respects. During the day, they’re my sanity.
But when night comes, there’s nothing to stop my thoughts from going straight back to Brando.
I’ve told a few friends part of the story: I met a guy, it got really intense, and then we had a fight and broke up. I don’t tell anyone what happened that night. It feels wrong somehow, like a betrayal. As if my foolish, foolish heart can’t believe that man was really Brando.
My friends all say the same thing: start dating again. A new man is what I need to get past the one who hurt me. But I can’t bring myself to do that, either.
I left my heart in a cabin in the mountains, and I don’t know how to get it back again.
School starts next week. I’ve registered for classes, even though I can’t bring myself to care overmuch about the studies that used to excite me. But today, I made a vow.
Enough is enough. I’ll use being back on campus as the catalyst to finally get over Brando. I’ll get involved; I’ll start dating again.
By the time the school year is over, I’ll be back to being me.
Which is why I’m climbing into my car, about to meet Emily at the movie theater. She’s been a good friend, but I haven’t seen that much of her this summer because I spent all my time volunteering. I had to stay busy for my own sake, but now part of me wonders if I wasn’t also doing penance.
For what, I’m not sure.
There’s a long driveway that winds from my parents’ house to the street. As I near the end of it, I see a man wearing sunglasses, with a dog at his side, standing by the edge of the road. For a second, I think it’s Brando; he looks so much like him, with the same height, build, and hair.
My heart wrenches painfully in my chest. I can’t breathe. Then I remember: Brando doesn’t have a dog. I’m just imagining him here because I wish I could see him. Because I’m pathetic.
The man and his dog walk across the driveway and stop right in front of my car, making me slam on the brakes. Maybe it’s a blind man and his guide dog, but shouldn’t he be able to hear me? And shouldn’t the dog be urging him forward, out of my way?
He’s facing me now. He takes off his dark glasses — and it is Brando.
For a moment, I’m stunned, immobile, and then I move without thinking. I put the car in park and get out, moving toward him … but I stop several feet away.
“What are you doing here?” Even as I speak, my eyes are cataloging his appearance. He looks the same, and yet not. Older, somehow, and sadder … but more at peace.
Or maybe that’s wishful thinking on my part.
“I wanted — I needed — to see you.”
He sounds different, too. The easy confidence that seemed so much a part of him is not gone, exactly, but muted.
I wrap my arms around my torso. “And you needed to risk being run over to see me?”
“Yes.” There’s no hint of humor anywhere in his demeanor. “Sasha, what I did to you was hideous and there’s no excuse for it.”
I swallow hard. “Why did you do it?”
“Because I was terrified.” His voice is raw.
“Of what?”
“Hurting you.”
Tears fill my eyes as he continues. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and I was a ticking time bomb. I had to send you away to keep you safe. The only way to make you leave was to make you hate me.”
I manage a quavery smile. “You didn’t make me hate you.”
“That …” He draws a deep breath. “Is better than I deserve.”
The dog, a yellow lab, has been sitting quietly at his feet all this time. Brando gestures to him and says, “This is Kiko. He’s a service dog.”
A service dog. For the first time in months, things start to make sense. “What kind?”
“For PTSD.” I nod, and he goes on. “I lost friends over there, in terrible ways. IEDs. I dealt with it by not dealing with it, pouring myself into the restaurant. But I’d have flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety attacks.”
“And Kiko helps with that?”
“Yeah. He can recognize an anxiety attack when it’s just getting started, help me change my focus, stop it in its tracks. And he’ll wake me up if I’m having a nightmare.”
It’s not lost on me that this is a big deal, this conversation we’re having. Brando has sought me out to confess. To bare his soul. To make amends.
The least I can do is be equally honest.
I take a step toward him. “I haven’t been myself since I left. I thought I was ne
ver going to be myself again.”
He looks stricken; I shake my head quickly. “Not because of — what happened. Because of you.” My voice cracks. “I missed you, Brando. I couldn’t stop missing you.”
“Sasha.” He closes his eyes for a long moment, and when he opens them again there’s a glimmer of his old self showing through. “I’ve been working with Kiko for weeks. I had to be sure I was safe before I contacted you. That I could promise you what happened would never happen again.”
The last of my reserve melts away, and I rush toward him. He meets me halfway; his arms come around me, gently, so gently. As if I might break any moment.
Laying a hand on his cheek, I tell him, “I need you to know I’m not fragile.”
His mouth quirks up. “That’s what Dante said.”
“Dante?” I don’t understand. He’s one of the cousins I met that night at the restaurant, but I don’t think I talked to him much longer than to say hello.
“I have a lot to tell you. I know you were going somewhere, but maybe we could meet up later.”
I smile at him. “I just need to send a quick text, and then maybe we can go get coffee?”
Right before my eyes he gets younger, as some of the strain and care that’s lined his face eases. He smiles back. “Yeah.”
A breeze ruffles our hair, and I imagine it sweeping away the debris of our mutual pain, making room for healing. For the first time in months, life seems full of hope.
Epilogue
My mother is in a state. “I’m going to kill the caterer. They promised me individual appetizers, and now they’re saying they can only do a serve-yourself platter of hors d’oeuvres.”
“Mom.” I cross to where she’s pacing back and forth, wearing a track in the carpet, and take her by the arms. “It’ll be fine.”
“For what we’re paying them, they can damn well deliver what they said they would.”
“And I respect your negotiating skills. But Mom, so long as all the guests show up, everything will be all right.”