by K. J. Dahlen
“Don’t think about that.”
“What should I think about instead?”
He knocks my knees apart with a foot between my legs, and from the first circle of my clit with the pads of his fingers, I’m gone.
Freshly fucked, I stand in line with him at the courthouse. I sign my name next to his on the paperwork to register our marriage with the state. Even humming from the way he made me come in the shower, I still can’t shake it off.
“What’s wrong?” Gio sits down across from me at a little restaurant near the courthouse. “Have you seen the fries?”
I stare at the little stand for them. It’s cute as fuck. On any other day, I’d love them, wrapped in their little paper cone. “They look amazing.” They are amazing, honestly. These are what fries should be—fresh and hot, a little crispy on the outside, fluffy potato on the inside. I chew the first one and swallow. I try another, dipped in ketchup, but the small joy of eating a good fry is covered over with guilt.
Gio notices.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know if I can live with myself.”
“For what?” He’s eaten only a few himself, and his dark eyes are focused on me. It’s overwhelming, a little, how those eyes can make me feel like the only person who exists in the world. Even at a time like this.
“For running away from my uncle like that.” There’s a waver in my voice that I hate. I made a decision. I knew it was the right thing at the time, but now...
Gio lets out a terse breath through rounded lips. “I know why I ran.”
“Why?”
He looks down at his hands on the tablecloth and presses his lips into a thin line. He’s wrestling with something, clearly, and his face is all pity when he looks up at me again. I’m not a fucking fan of that, but my heart beats faster just from his glance. “The look in his eyes. That wasn’t a panicked man coming for his niece. That was—” He shakes his head, taking his lip between his teeth.
“But what else could it have been? How did he even find us?”
“That bothers me, too.”
“Are you sure Father Lawrence—”
“Yes. I told him everything. He wouldn’t have reported me.”
I eat a few more fries in silence. There’s a strange pressure in my chest and it’s almost unbearable to sit still, to sit here, without having any more information. “What do you think he was doing, then?”
“Sia, I don’t want to—”
“Tell me. What’s the point of being married, of being together, if we’re not going to be honest with each other? If there’s something I need to know, then tell me.” I shove another two fries into my mouth. “God, these are good. I wish I could enjoy them.”
A smile flickers across Gio’s face. “Aren’t they?”
“Yes, but—” There aren’t words for the anxious storm rampaging through my chest. Why was it so wrong to see my own uncle? Why? Why?
“He looked like he was there to do a job,” Gio says solemnly, answering the question I have perched on the tip of my tongue. “He looked like he was there to do the kind of job—” He motions at himself.
I could throw up.
That’s not who my uncle was. That’s not who he is. There’s no way that Gio’s right. It was dark out. It was a moment of panic. It was—
I take a deep breath, like they teach in yoga class, and let it out slowly. “It’s too much,” I admit.
“We don’t have to talk about it anymore. Not now.”
Gio’s words are comforting enough that the sound from the restaurant cuts back in. The tink of silverware against glasses. The rustle of paper cones wrapped around fresh batches of fries. The waitress comes back to our table, her big smile so achingly normal I want to sit in this restaurant forever.
“Refills?”
My reply sticks in my throat.
“Sure,” says Gio, and she whisks our glasses away to the back.
I look at him, my husband, my anchor, and feel a million years old instead of nineteen.
“What do we do now?”
“Leave,” he says, simply, quickly, no hesitation, as if that’s been the plan all along.
“To where?” The thought of fleeing again, the thought of running like this, forever, makes me want to put my head down on the table and give up.
Gio takes my hand in his. “We just got married, Sia. Don’t you think we should go on a little honeymoon?”
37
Gio
The car is the first thing to go.
Sia’s face lit up with joy when I said the word honeymoon, and even though I have no fucking clue how we’re going to pull this off long-term, that joy is enough of a path for me to follow.
Not like I have another choice. Being this divided from my family is like being dumped into the middle of the ocean without a life preserver. We have to find some solid ground before we can make any other decisions.
But first—the car.
I choose a random lot on the outskirts of the city and trade it for a blue Ford Focus that Sia, for whatever reason, loves. “Oh, my god,” she says, stroking the roof. “Such a pretty blue!”
“It’s like the dress you wore at the wedding.” It comes to me while we’re packing the new car with our things. Her face was so dark and despairing until we made this plan that I am desperate for more happiness. Honestly, if we’re going to be followed, if they’re going to find us anyway, we might as well not spend what’s left of our lives dreading it.
Not that I intend to die. No fucking way.
We drive away from the city as the sun wheels toward the horizon, the light orange and expansive.
“Follow the lake?” Sia asks, and I don’ t know whether it’s a question or a command. It doesn’t matter. The lake—that’s permanent enough. I follow it.
We drive and drive, all the way around the bottom curve of the lake and into Michigan.
It’s fucking farmland.
Farmland, broken up by cities. Something about the cities makes me want to keep driving do. Six hours in, Sia decides to hold my hand and stroke her fingers through mine. I tell her to stop. She doesn’t. I tell her she’s in for it if she doesn’t stop. She keeps going. In the end, I fuck her against the back wall of a rest area, my hand over her mouth, her pussy hot and tight on my cock.
I almost believe it’s a honeymoon.
It’s dark when we cruise into a town called Torch Lake. A tourist place. Small, and absolutely nothing is slick like it is in downtown Chicago. It’s the kind of place I’d never go. It’s the kind of place Sia would never go. Sia grins at the sign welcoming us to the town. We get a room that costs way too much, and I sleep all night, never waking once.
The next morning we wander into the local grocery. Sia takes a deep breath and looks around.
It’s small-town as shit. I can’t picture anyone I know from the city here. Not even for vacation.
“Stay or keep going?”
I take her hand in mine and kiss her knuckles. “Let’s see what happens.”
At the checkout, an old woman ahead of us in line eyes our wedding rings. “Oh, congratulations,” she says, sounding like she really means it. “Are you in town long?”
“If we can find a place to stay,” Sia says with a wide smile. Anybody could trust that smile.
The woman’s mouth breaks into sheer surprise. “Are you looking for a rental?”
“Yes. I just love the lake,” Sia adds.
I don’t know how the hell she does it, but by the time we help this woman—Hannah Johnson—load her bags into her car, she’s agreed to rent us her place. “I need someone who can keep it up,” she frets. “My last renter—I had to hire a company. He couldn’t keep it up.”
“It won’t be a problem,” I reassure her, and she blushes. That sounds fucking wonderful. Tending to some old woman’s beach house could be the perfect summer activity. I’ve already given up on the class I was taking. I don’t want to call and withdraw, not yet, becuase that’ll t
ip off everybody back home.
Wait. What am I thinking? They already know. Luca.
Sia can hardly contain her excitement. First on our new agenda: pick up the keys to the new and ridiculously cheap rental. After what the night in the hotel cost, I’m shocked at how low this woman’s going. But Sia has that smile.
Less than an hour later, we’re standing on the rental property, looking across the street. The lakefront lot there has two houses, one on either side of a wide lawn. While we watch, a toddler tumbles out the back door of the one on the left.
“January!” A woman sprints out after her, hair the color of sand, and scoops her up. “You can’t go in the water without Mama. Let’s get Daddy, too. Day!” She calls toward the house. “Day, come on, this girl’s dying to swim!” The little girl giggles, her laugh high and pure.
There’s the rumble of a male voice from inside the cabin and then a man, tall and broad and strong, walks out.
“Oh, wow,” Sia says.
“Wow, what?” I feel a strange, hot flash of jealousy, like a fever.
“He’s got a prosthetic foot.”
I hadn’t noticed it before, but now I do. The three of them walk toward the shore together, the man swinging the little girl up into his arms. It’s almost a hallucination, imagining Sia with a little baby cradled in her arms, and it makes me even hotter to think about it. Too hot.
I put my arm around Sia and she leans in, then pulls back. “Are you feeling okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
It’s a lie.
She knows it.
Sia presses a hand to the back of mu neck and it makes an echo of my mother when I was very, very small. “You’re burning up,” she says, concern echoing in her voice. “Come on, come on, let’s go in.”
I’m sicker than I’ve ever been.
The fever burns, starting at the top of my head and working its way down, and it’s like I’m caught under a magnifying glass, bearing the brunt of all the sun’s energy.
And my throat.
Jesus, my throat. It hurts like knives, it hurts like a jagged blade centered in the back of my throat. My cheeks smart with the effort of not swallowing. God, I don’t want to do it. I don’t.
I can’t swallow. It hurts so fucking terribly. And I can’t go to the doctor. There’s no hospital in town, for one thing. I don’t know where the nearest hospital is. Sia watches me, her eyes clouded with worry. She forces me into bed, and the moment the covers touch my skin, I’m shivering. What the fuck is this?
She crawls in next to me when the sun sets and I throw off the blanket. I can’t get comfortable. My forehead burns. Then—cool. Sia presses a damp cloth against my forehead.
“Husband,” she says, and I open my eyes. “I’ve got Tylenol.” I press the washcloth to my forehead and crane my neck. She has a glass of water in one hand, a pill pinched between the fingers of the other.
“No,” I whisper. “No.” Not water. Not swallowing.
In the morning, I can’t whisper.
“Your throat must be killing you,” she says, stroking my hair.
I shake my head.
“I can see the pain in your eyes when you swallow.”
I must look like shit, but I try anyway. I work up the courage and the effort and force it, trying to keep a straight face. I want to be the strong one. I have always been the strong one.
Sia’s forehead wrinkles, and she shakes her head. “This is crazy.” She tips the covers off her knees and stands up, scrabbling in a dresser drawer for a sports bra. She whips off the t-shirt she’s wearing and tugs on the bra, then a tank. A pair of shorts. She shoves her blonde hair into a messy bun. “Get up. We’re going.”
I gather all my strength. “I’m not—”
She whirls on me, and the next instant the bed dips with her weight. “Get up, Gio.”
I can’t speak anymore.
And fighting her, I know, is a fool’s errand.
“Do you want a shower before we go?”
I nod.
She’s already dressed but she starts the shower for me. I must look pathetic as fuck because as soon as I’m standing under the water she strips off her own clothes.
It’s too small, this shower, but I want her close.
I don’t say a word—it would be a waste of voice—but it’s killer to wash my hair. Everything is killer.
I rinse the shampoo out of my hair and brace a hand against the shower wall to steady myself.
Sia brushes her fingertips down my back, and even in her silence, I can feel her caring for me. Maybe it’s the fever, but my heart is ready to splinter in two at this gentle touch, expecting nothing, taking nothing. When the washcloth meets my back I drop my head. She doesn’t say a word, only presses her hand to the back of my neck and her lips to my shoulder.
There are no words for this pain, for the stab in my throat and the ache in my chest. I’ve wanted this forever. That’s what it feels like. I’ve wanted someone to touch me like this for ages, for eons, and I never knew there was anything missing. How did I not know?
I force another swallow so I can breathe. That’s not true, is it? I did know it was missing. I always knew she was missing. I felt her absense as keenly as I can feel Sia’s presence next to me in the shower right now. And no, no, I do not want Sia to be my mother. Jesus Christ. That’s the last thing I want. But I imagine that in those murky childhood days before she died, I didn’t question her presence. It must have been like the sun. Always there. Now Sia is the sun, and moon, and the universe. I’ve come home.
I only wish it didn’t hurt so badly.
She rubs the washcloth over my skin, careful to get every inch, and when she dips it down to my cock I can’t help getting hard.
“You’re sick,” she reprimands me, but the blood rushing between my legs gives me a second wind. I grab her hand and press it against my cock. She gasps a little, because fuck, it’s hard, and squeezes it tentatively.
“Make me feel better.” The whisper takes everything I have left.
But it’s worth it, because Sia sinks down to her knees.
She makes me feel more than better.
38
Sia
Gio doesn’t like the sight of the tourist-town urgent care, with its peeling blue paint and nineties era sign. He looks at me with raised eyebrows. It’s not in a fancy medical park, like some of the offices in the city. No. This urgent care is nestled between a pizza place with a play area out front and a party store with a blinking neon sign.
“We’re going,” I tell him firmly, and I keep the strict look on my face all through the check-in process at the reception desk.
They hand him a clipboard and pen and we take our seats next to a fake potted plant. I look over Gio’s shoulder while he fills out his information. At Emergency Contact, he hesitates. Then he prints my name, as neat as I’ve ever seen it. Then he hands the pen over to me, a little smile on his face.
“What?” I ask him. I have to dig my phone out of my pocket to get the number. It’s too new. I don’t have it memorized yet.
“That,” Gio whispers, tapping the phone.
Right. A phone for my new life. Joy sizzles down my shoulders to my fingertips while I write the number next to his strong handwriting.
It takes all of ten minutes in the exam room, including the wait, for the doctor to tell Gio that he has tonsillitis.
“I don’t think surgery is necessary at this point,” he says, blinking through his glasses, eyes mainly focused on the screen of the laptop he brought in with him. His fingers never stop moving over the keys, and he said his name so quickly I can’t remember what it is. “I recommend a course of antibiotics, and some painkillers. Any questions?”
Gio shakes his head, and the doctor is gone.
As soon as the door shuts behind him, I go to where Gio sits on the exam table and nuzzle my nose into the side of his neck. I’m practically high on this feeling, of being in a private room like this with him. I can do t
his now. I’m his wife. He leans against me, and I do the only appropriate thing in this moment. I kiss his cheek and whisper “I told you so” into his ear.
He swallows, giving me a brave smile as he does. “That sounds a lot like I love you, Gio.”
“I do love you. Now stop talking. It’s breaking my heart.”
I pay the bill and we go back out to the car. Gio’s shoulders look relaxed for the first time since yesterday, and he leans his head against the seat. We’re two blocks away from the urgent care by the time I glance over again.
His eyes are closed.
God, how much he must trust me. It’s a flicker in the back of my mind, this thought—that now is the time I could make my escape. Now is the time I could open the car door, step outside, and never look back. He’s sick. He’s in no condition to follow me, and I know as well as the next person that you can go a long way on a pretty smile and the hint of a flirt. I could go home, if I wanted. Now. Right now.
But even that tiny seed of a thought makes my stomach churn. How would I live, apart from Gio? How would I feel the wedding ring against my finger and still turn away. No, my soul screams. No.
So I don’t run.
Of course I don’t run.
The Sia who would have run is dead.
Instead, I slip my hand into his and steer the car with the other. We go through the pharmacy drive-through. My heart leaps when I say his name, and leaps again when I say yes, I’m his wife.
At the cottage, I turn the key in the ignition and the Focus settles into the driveway. Gio stretches in the seat beside me, the paper bag in his lap crinkling. “Much better now,” he croaks.
“Ha.”
He won’t let me help him out of the car, but he does let me put my arm around his waist on the way into the cottage.
He takes the first of the pills, the first of the painkillers, and I lead him by the hand to the bed.
Gio pauses at the side. He shakes his head.
“Don’t argue with me,” I tell him, hand on my hip. “Bed.”
He climbs in and stretches out with a sigh that sounds like it holds the weight of all the world.