One Breath After Another (The After Another Trilogy Book 2)

by Bethany-Kris

  He knew better than to tell her to stay where she was—he was a grown man and was capable of fixing his own plate, but that wouldn’t matter to Katya. Guests that came for dinner at her home did very little but talk and eat.

  Still, he tried.

  “I can get it in a minute, Ma,” he told her.

  Katya raised a brow. “I will. You sit.”

  Right.

  As he expected.

  Katya left her chair and had to pass his to exit the dining room into the kitchen. On her way by, she patted the top of his head like one might do to a puppy. Except it didn’t bother him all that much. The fondness in his mother’s action was familiar and comforting in a way a lot of things weren’t for him. He might very well be a grown man, but he still adored his mom to the ends of the earth and back.

  Even if sometimes, she drove him crazy.

  Luca tried rejoining the conversation happening at the table. Or rather, get caught up on what Roz and Naz were chatting about with Penny and his father. Zeke, to his benefit, was only occasionally jumping in with something to say while Luca’s sister and Naz were doing the bulk of the work throughout the conversation with Penny.

  He hadn’t seen her in a month, but she didn’t look ... any different, he supposed. In her case, he wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing, all things considered. She was still wearing a sweater that was at least five sizes too big but hey, it wasn’t black. It also wasn’t any color that would make her stand out either. The flat gray sweater with a logo on the front was a step up from her usual black, though. He had to give her that. She was still using her hair as a curtain between herself and anyone else that she didn’t want to converse with.

  That just happened to be his father at the moment. Not that Zeke seemed very concerned with Penny’s attempt to distance herself from him.

  For a brief second, Penny’s gaze lifted to find Luca sitting across from her at the table. A welcoming smile stretched his mouth; it was the only way he could seem encouraging when it was obvious she was starting to get uncomfortable.

  The girl barely left the house. He was positive she hadn’t sat at his parents’ dinner table before now. Naz admitted to him the week before that trying to get Penny to do anything that involved other people was like pulling teeth.

  In some ways, he understood that—her. He didn’t always want to engage, either. That didn’t change the fact he still had to and so he did. They all had to do shit they didn’t want to. It was a part of life.

  But ...

  Her life hadn’t been like theirs, either. Maybe it wasn’t fair of him to assume that she should behave the same way the rest of them did just because it’s what everyone else did.

  Katya returned to the dining room with Luca’s plate in hand. She placed the ravioli casserole mess in front of him with a smile.

  “Thanks. Ma.”

  “Eat up,” she told him. “And there’s more if you want it.”

  Oh, he would.

  No doubt.

  There was nothing quite like his mother’s cooking after he spent a day running from one side of the city to the other. The saucy pasta goodness flooded his mouth as the conversation picked up with Katya rejoining the table.

  “Have we decided on something yet?” she asked once she was back in her chair. “I still think we should do the party thing. It’s only fair, Penny.”

  Luca glanced up, still not entirely caught up on the conversation that had been happening before he even arrived. He knew it had something to do with Penny simply because of the way the attention at the table continued going back to her, but everyone seemed to want to tiptoe around whatever topic they were trying to discuss.

  His mother didn’t have the couth for that. She was never one to beat around the bush. Not when she had something to say and the time to say it, anyway.

  “You didn’t even let Roz throw you a party for your seventeenth birthday months ago.” Despite Katya’s kind smile leveling on Penny from the other end of the table from the teenage girl, it wasn’t working to encourage anything. Penny settled on tipping her head down and using her fork to push around what remained on her plate while not even entertaining the idea of replying to Luca’s mother. Katya didn’t appear offended, instead saying, “Your graduation and eighteenth birthday are right around the same time—within a few weeks, anyway. Why not just let us throw you something for both? One party instead of two.”

  “We’re still trying to figure out the details,” Roz put in when Penny stayed silent. “Right, Penny?”

  The girl only shrugged.

  That did make Luca’s mom frown.

  Katya’s gaze darted down the table to where Zeke sat sipping on a glass of red wine as if she was trying to get him to engage Penny alongside her. His father continued to drink his wine like he had nothing better to do at the moment.

  How long had they been at this with Penny?

  Too long, apparently.

  “Excuse me,” Penny muttered, standing from the table without warning. She didn’t even bother to explain why she was leaving the table—a sign of disrespect at an Italian family’s table if there ever was one—before she headed out of the dining room without a look over her shoulder.

  Roz sighed at the exit. “Well, that’s that.”

  “Sorry,” Naz said to Katya. “Sometimes she’s just ... not in the mood. She was up for dinner today, but I don’t think she’s ready to talk parties and everything else.”

  “I get it,” his mother murmured.

  She seemed fine.

  Luca wondered if Katya really was.

  “The more you push, the easier it is for her to move away.”

  All eyes at the table turned on Luca at his seemingly random statement. But hell, if anyone had been paying attention, it wouldn’t be random. Nothing about Penny screamed approachable or willing ... yet, people seemed to think they could change that about her if only they tried harder.

  It wouldn’t happen.

  Not unless she wanted it to.

  He also knew why his family kept trying to get Penny to open up. They cared enough to do anything at all. He doubted it came across that way to her, though. When all someone wanted to do was disappear, being seen wasn’t exactly a good thing.

  Then, Luca pointed at the food on his plate and grinned at his mother, saying, “But this is delicious, Ma. Really.”

  Katya beamed again. “Thank you.”

  At least, one thing was okay.

  Luca could handle that.

  Later, when his mother was distracted with clearing the table and the topic of Roz’s pregnancy, Luca slipped away from the table knowing he wouldn’t be missed. At least, not for a few minutes. It was all he needed.

  He found Penny in the entry hall sitting on the stairs. With her back to the white railing, she wasn’t even pretending to be busy while she picked at her fingernails and avoided his stare as he leaned against the wall. That was fine—he didn’t mind that she wanted to ignore him. It wouldn’t stop him from saying what he was there to say.

  “They care, you know?” Luca shrugged when Penny dared to glance upward at him. “That’s why my mom tries to start a conversation with you or why my dad forces himself to talk even though he’s not the type. They’ve already let you in—in the family sense. You wouldn’t be here otherwise. But now they’re trying to get you in, too.”

  Penny didn’t reply.

  Luca continued, anyway. “I think you’ve been around long enough now to know that we’re not the type of people who allow outsiders in. We just ... can’t afford to, Penny. But they do with you because again, they care.”

  “Well, they shouldn’t.”

  Finally, a response.

  Not that it was one he liked.

  Beggars can’t be choosers.

  “I’m not worth that,” Penny muttered after a moment. “I’m not worth very much at all.”

  Shit.

  Luca knew that feeling all too well. He was still trying to deal with it, but that
didn’t change the fact that feeling worthless wasn’t the same as actually being worthless to the people who loved him. Maybe that was the biggest difference between him and Penny. His self-doubt was created in his own mind while hers had been taught. He didn’t think they could unlearn it in the same ways, either.

  “Not that you need me to say it, because I’m sure everybody else points it out more than enough,” Luca said, folding his arms over his chest while he eyed the family portrait hanging opposite to the stairwell, “but you know that isn’t true.”

  “Feels like it.”

  “Rough week?”

  Penny scoffed.

  Hard.

  “Rough life,” she mumbled.

  Yeah, he bet.

  Penny went back to fidgeting with her fingernails and then the sleeves of her sweater. She made a great effort to keep every inch of her skin covered, but she tugged at the wrist band of the sleeve just enough for him to notice the patchwork of scars that started there and seemed to keep going beneath the gray fabric where he couldn’t see.

  Luca should look away.

  He didn’t.

  Naz mentioned she was a cutter but hadn’t gone into details. The respect of the matter, really, and Luca understood. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder how far those scars went ... how many did she have? Had she stopped cutting yet?

  Eventually, she noticed his staring.

  “Stop it,” Penny told him.

  Luca raised a brow. “Why? I’m just looking.”

  Penny quickly fixed the sleeve of her sweater, hiding the scars in a flash. “Don’t pity me.”

  “I don’t.” Then just as fast, he corrected himself with, “I don’t anymore. I did at first. And it’s not that I think you don’t deserve my pity, but more that I don’t think you want it. Why pity someone who doesn’t want it when that won’t help, right?”

  She met his stare.

  Luca only smiled back.

  What else could he do?

  What could any of them do for her other than smile and keep saying shit would get better? It was easier said than done, but it also wasn’t a lie.

  “And stop that, too,” she whispered.

  Luca arched a brow. “What?”

  “The staring.”

  “I—”

  “You don’t look at me the same way everyone else does. Like they’re scared of me—or the idea of me. I like that.”

  Luca blinked, unsure of what she was saying. “You like that people are scared of you or that I don’t see you the same way they do?”

  Penny stood up from the stairs quick enough that he had to move when she passed him at the bottom of the stairs. It wasn’t fast enough that he hadn’t been able to see the pink tint coloring her cheeks even though she wouldn’t meet his gaze on the way by.

  He still managed to hear her say, “You. I like you. And I don’t know what to do about that.”

  Then, she was gone around the corner.

  Luca was left confused.

  He heard what she said.

  Perfectly clear.

  And he could still see the blush staining her cheeks even though she was long gone from his presence.

  You.

  I like you.

  Did she mean ...

  It didn’t matter.

  Luca couldn’t entertain that thought.

  He wouldn’t.

  “EVEN IF YOU WERE LATE,” Luca’s mother told him after she walked him to the front door when he was leaving, “I’m still happy you showed up.”

  Luca grinned.

  It was the first time she even mentioned the fact he was late for dinner. As was Katya’s usual way.

  “I’ll try to be on time for the next one,” he replied, kissing the apple of her cheek. “How’s that?”

  “Better. And.”

  “Hmm?”

  Luca reached for the coat he’d left hanging on a hook in the hallway. Shrugging the item on while his mother glanced behind herself down the entry hall as though she were looking for someone who might be listening, he waited for whatever she had to tell him. He also wasn’t known for his patience.

  “And what, Ma?”

  Katya’s attention came back to him in an instant. “Penny. Thank you for ... talking to her. Everyone else seems fine to let her shrink away in the corner if that’s what she wants. You make an effort to actually talk. It does make a difference.”

  He stiffened. “Did you follow me—”

  “I went to check on her, actually. I thought I might have made her uncomfortable, and I don’t want her to feel that way around any of us. She’s important to your sister, you know?”

  He did.

  Too well.

  “I don’t think she means to be rude,” Luca said about Penny, and stuffing his hands into his pockets. “But I don’t think she knows how to deal with ... people, either.”

  For a brief while, his mother only stared at him, saying nothing. Her palm came up to find his cheek with a soft pat that had him smiling.

  “She’s not rude. She’s hurting.”

  “That, too,” he murmured. “But I don’t know ... she said something to me earlier, and it made me think.”

  “About?”

  “If I should be talking to her at all.”

  Katya frowned. “Did she tell you to leave her alone or—”

  “Not quite.”

  His mother said nothing.

  Luca sighed, admitting, “I think she might have a crush on me. Silly, right? I just ... she’s only seventeen, and I don’t want her to think I’m encouraging any—”

  “Imagine,” Katya interjected, “what it must feel like to be the girl everyone knows was raped. Every person who looks at you knows that about you first. The one fact they do know is that you’re a victim. It creates a complex in your head almost ... every time you walk into a room, and people look at you, even if you don’t know them, you wonder if that’s the first thing on their mind. Your rape. Your constant victimhood.”

  He swallowed hard, taking in his mother’s words. If anyone could relate to Penny at her current stage, it would be his mom. Before she came to be his father’s wife, she had been the property of a man who used her and her body as he saw fit. He allowed others to do the same to Katya without regret or regard for her.

  Yet, she survived.

  She was amazing.

  Katya didn’t relent, adding, “It’s going to take time for Penny to be Penny without feeling like that is also a part of her identity. Maybe it’ll take months. It could be years. It might be something that never really goes away, either. She will, however, learn how to deal with it. The rest of us shouldn’t treat her differently while she does it. That won’t help. She doesn’t want to be different, Luca.”

  Fair.

  But ... “How does that have anything to do with me or what I said?”

  Katya smiled. “Because she is still a woman.”

  “No, she’s a girl.”

  “No, she’s a young woman, Luca. And just because she’s also a victim and a survivor doesn’t change that while she’s dealing with her recovery, she’s also going through the same things every seventeen-year-old woman does. She feels the same things. Does the same things. Even if she’s doing them in her own way. That includes ... you.”

  “What?”

  “Boys. Men. Noticing they exist. It’s just a little more complicated for her ... it has to be considering the circumstances. She talks to you, though,” Katya said, shrugging. “Which at the very least, means she thinks you’re safe to do that with. Talk. Like you. You don’t have to do anything other than that, and I don’t expect you to. You know how to behave.”

  “Huh.”

  “There are men in the world that teach women monsters do exist, but then there are other men who help us learn that not every man is one. If you’re already safe to her, don’t be someone who proves her wrong. I’m sure she’s had enough that have.”

  Yeah.

  He bet.

  6.

>   Penny

  WHY did things always have to get worse before they got better? Penny didn’t have the answer, and nothing was looking up for her lately, so the better part of her equation wasn’t coming anytime soon. That was never more apparent to her than while she sat in the principal’s office at her private school while the woman currently sitting on the other side of the large desk went over every infraction against Penny since she starting attending the institution.

  Before, skipping a day—or several in the same week—hadn’t been a problem. Neither was her leaving classes early or her lack of interest in participating with the rest of the students. But then things started to get worse, her teachers started speaking up more, and the principal stopped overlooking what she called the obvious.

  Or rather, Penny’s issues.

  “Need I return to the topic of her delinquency again?” Mrs. Tippens asked. “Do you know how many days she’s missed this semester alone? And that’s before we even get into the half days, or the showing up late ... random missed classes in the middle of the day! Her attendance is the worst for any student on record at this school.”

  “She has good and bad days,” Naz returned, unbothered by the principal’s show of irritation. “Given the circumstances around Penny before she came here, I thought we both understood that there were times she wouldn’t—or couldn’t—attend simply because ... well, we’re not going into all that again. You were agreeable.”

  “Before I knew she was going to miss over half the year!” Mrs. Tippens fell back in the chair behind the desk and massaged her forehead with the pads of her fingers. “I was willing to work with the needs of my student—as I would for any student, Mr. Donati. I did not realize, however, the extent of Penny’s ...”

  Needs?

  Issues?

  Total fucking mess?

  She had a million descriptions to give the principal to help the woman out in her argument with Naz. Every single one of them would be valid, too, but she opted to not say anything at all. Surprise. The school was just another place starting to understand that things with Penny were not as easy as they seemed on the surface. Everyone saw her and what they knew on paper, and thought ... troubled. Anyone could deal with a troubled teen.