by A. M. Arthur
Jaime glanced at Alessandro, who seemed to be remembering their last attempt at eating here. At least Tony wouldn’t be aiming to make him do a spit take tonight.
During dinner, they talked about everything except the drama of the last few days. The topic was hard to avoid, but they managed. Jaime didn’t want to think about it, much less discuss it during the pleasant meal. Eunice was brilliant at directing conversations, though, and she and Shannon kept up the chatter, occasionally involving everyone else. Jaime relaxed more and more throughout the meal, and even Alessandro seemed calm. They’d both needed this.
And after dinner, Jaime wanted Alessandro to take him somewhere and fuck his brains out. They hadn’t been together in days, and the need to touch him, to hold him, was driving Jaime crazy. His sense of the outside world had shifted, but his sense of Alessandro hadn’t. Jaime wanted him.
He whispered as much into Alessandro’s ear while Shannon was cutting the coconut cake. The look Alessandro gave him promised everything he couldn’t say in front of mixed company, and it sent a shiver of anticipation down Jaime’s spine.
The cake was delicious, as usual, because Shannon was a fabulous baker. Jaime attacked his slice, barely noticing that Alessandro was checking his phone. And frowning. His entire posture had changed, gone rigid, and he’d stopped smiling.
“What’s up?” he asked.
Alessandro looked up like he’d been caught doing something wrong. “Nothing, sorry.”
“Is it Brittney?” He knew about the paternity-test order, but there had been no news on whether or not Justin had submitted to the test.
“No, not Brittney. Um, can you excuse us for a minute?”
Without waiting for a response from the table, Alessandro snagged his wrist and pulled him out of the dining room. All the way down the hall to the foyer.
“Listen, I need to go out for about thirty minutes,” Alessandro said.
“Why?”
“Claire wants to talk.”
“About?”
“She didn’t say, just asked to meet me. If it’s about Justin, I need to go.”
Jaime actively hated the idea, and not only because it interrupted a perfectly good dinner. “Can I go with you?”
“It’s probably better if you don’t.”
“Are you sure about this?”
“It’s Claire. Yes, I’m sure. I’ll text you every ten minutes, okay?”
“Okay.”
He kissed Alessandro goodbye, then watched him climb into his car and drive away. Alessandro had told him about his suspicions that Justin hit Claire, and if she was going to ask Alessandro for help, he needed to be there for her. Jaime could wait ten minutes to find out what was happening.
He turned to head back to the dining room, and his foot hit something small and solid. His insides ached a little when he picked up Alessandro’s cell phone. He thumbed the display awake without thinking. The text was still on the screen, from a number not in Alessandro’s memory—which made sense, considering he and Claire weren’t exactly friends.
The message was simple: Need 2 talk, plz. Urgent. Scared. Meet me now, freight line cul-de-sac. Claire.
Alessandro had texted back that he was on his way.
The cul-de-sac was definitely an out of the way place to meet, with no neighbors and only one access road. He and Alessandro had been very alone the night they parked out there, and while he trusted Alessandro to handle Claire without any drama, he couldn’t stop a slight pang of fear over the fact that he was holding Alessandro’s phone.
He dialed the number that had sent the text. The call went straight to an electronic voice telling him that the following customer, “Justin Maddox,” was not available.
Jaime dropped the phone.
* * *
Halfway to his destination, Alessandro realized he’d lost his cell. Jaime would be pissed when he realized, but it would be easier to ask for forgiveness later than to keep Claire waiting now. He wanted to help her so badly, to get her away from Justin, especially with the paternity suit looming. Someone wound as tightly as Justin was bound to lash out.
He had fond memories of this particular cul-de-sac. A blue Mazda with tinted windows was idling near the back of the pavement circle, and he parked behind it. The sun was setting, casting a lot of shadows on the area. He got out slowly. A sense of wrongness hit him as he walked toward the driver’s side door, and it increased when he realized the car was empty.
“Claire?”
Leaves rustled. Two figures emerged from the woods on the edge of the lot. Alessandro didn’t wait to see who they were or what they wanted. He turned back toward his car and found himself face-to-face with a sneering Justin. He was too stunned to avoid the fist that slammed into his mouth. The blow snapped his head back. Alessandro stumbled, tripped, and hit the pavement hard. His lips stung and the tang of blood filled his mouth.
“Claire couldn’t make it,” Justin said.
The other two figures, one of whom was a sleepy-eyed Terry, spread out to create a triangle around him. Boxing him in. Alessandro twisted so he was on his knees, ready to run if necessary. He could fight, but three to one were terrible odds, even on his best day.
“What the fuck do you want, Justin?” he asked.
“You should have left town like I told you to, hombre,” Justin replied. His face was twisted into the hateful glare of a man not firing on all cylinders. “Now you’re fucking up my life, and you’re going to pay for that.”
“All I did was tell the truth, hombre. You fucked up your own life when you decided to rape Brittney.”
“I was a kid, goddammit.”
“You made a choice. Live with it.”
“Because of you I’ll be paying for a kid I don’t want for the rest of my life.”
Alessandro surged to his feet, fury releasing adrenaline into his bloodstream. “Don’t blame me, Justin. Take some responsibility for once in your life.”
The roar of a car engine hit the cul-de-sac an instant before headlights flashed over them, and bile splashed the back of Alessandro’s throat when he recognized Shannon’s car.
* * *
Jaime didn’t know what he expected to find when he reached the cul-de-sac. He’d grabbed the car keys off the table where Shannon had left them alongside her wallet—she hadn’t carried an actual purse in, well, ever—and left the house without telling anyone why. In hindsight, that might not have been the best move, but he couldn’t think of anything except getting to Alessandro. Warning him that this was a trap.
A trap that had already sprung. He slammed on the brakes ten feet from a nightmarish scene. Alessandro was surrounded by three men, including Justin, and he was bleeding. Jaime didn’t see any weapons, but that didn’t mean they had none. Alessandro was giving him a look that told him to get out of there. Jaime couldn’t do that. He had to protect what was his.
He turned off the engine and threaded the keys through his knuckles in the best makeshift weapon he could think of before he got out. His heart was slamming into his ribs, his pulse throbbing in his ears.
“This doesn’t concern you, Winters,” Justin shouted at him. “Go away.”
“Fuck you, Justin. If it concerns Alessandro, it concerns me.”
“Touching. Fine.”
Terry lunged at him. Jaime twisted away. Alessandro shouted. Jaime wasn’t fast enough, and he wasn’t a fighter. Terry tackled him to the pavement in a rough, painful heap that woke up old bruises, knocked the wind from his lungs and made his eyes water. Jaime dropped the keys. He thrashed as he fought for oxygen, only to find himself yanked up into a kneeling position with Terry behind him, one arm over his throat. Jaime’s right arm was twisted up behind his back, locking him into place. Trapped.
Jaime blinked the world back into ugly focus. Alessandro had been cornered against a blue Mazda, and the other guy who wasn’t Justin was holding a switchblade against Alessandro’s throat. Jaime’s stomach bottomed out, and he resisted the strong urge to vo
mit.
“Let him go,” Alessandro said, venom in his voice and hate in his eyes.
“Says the guy with a knife to his throat,” Justin sneered.
“This is between us, Maddox. Jaime isn’t involved.”
“You’re right. Doesn’t mean he can’t watch.”
Jaime shouted a helpless warning as Justin drove his knee into Alessandro’s stomach.
* * *
Alessandro couldn’t block the blow, and air exploded out of his lungs. Fortunately, they let him go before he sliced his own throat open on the knife, and he crumbled to the pavement, gasping for air. He wanted to kill Terry for touching Jaime, for hitting him so hard, and for the way he was holding him now. Jaime was terrified but nowhere near as terrified as Alessandro was for his safety.
The other guy backed off, leaving him in proximity only to Justin, who seemed to want a semifair fight between the two of them. Justin’s foot sailed toward Alessandro’s head, and Alessandro rolled. Justin yelled when his foot thudded against the car. Alessandro curled up onto his feet, then drove his shoulder into Justin’s gut, knocking them both over and onto the ground.
He landed a solid punch to Justin’s face, the blow echoing up his arm. He ignored the pain and swung again. Justin blocked it, and his elbow smacked Alessandro in the cheekbone hard enough to make his eyes sting. Alessandro drove his head forward. Cartilage broke and Justin howled. If he wanted messy street fighting, Alessandro could give him messy street fighting.
Alessandro reared up to hit Justin in the throat, hoping to stun him and end this. Someone grabbed him by the jacket and shoved him headfirst into the side of the Mazda.
Pressure, more than pain, swamped him as he lost all sense of balance. He was vaguely aware of Jaime screaming his name as he crumpled to the ground, head spinning. Sounds were muffled. He blinked hard, unsure if his eyes were even open. Something wet hit his face—spit or blood, he wasn’t sure.
“Bastard,” Justin said. “You turned my girlfriend against me.” A foot slammed into Alessandro’s ribs and pain exploded at the site. “You turned Brittney against me.” Another blow sent the pain radiating right up through his head. “You’ve got the cops sniffing around my entire life, you spic piece of shit.”
He tried to block the third blow, and fire shot through his left forearm.
“I don’t know what you see in this trash, Winters. I really don’t.”
“Don’t you have enough charges pending against you, Justin?” The volume of anger in Jaime’s voice was startling. “You really need to add more assault charges? Leave him alone!”
“We’ve gone this far already. What’s a little farther now?”
Agony flared in Alessandro’s lower back three times before he rolled out of the way of the blows. His entire body ached, and he wasn’t entirely sure which way was up. The only certainty was pain, the pressure in his head, and the sound of Jaime yelling, begging, screaming for help.
“Shut him up,” Justin said.
Jaime yelped, and the pained sound sent a surge of adrenaline through Alessandro’s body. He focused through blood-blurry eyes on the hazy figures across the pavement. Jaime was face down on the ground, one of Terry’s knees digging into the small of his back. The nameless guy was stalking toward Jaime with that switchblade.
Alessandro growled and launched himself up and forward, driven by instinct. He hit the guy’s legs, and they tumbled to the ground. The knife clattered away. Alessandro pulled up and slammed his fist firmly into the center of the guy’s chin. The back of his head clipped off the hard ground, and the body beneath him went limp.
Still buzzing with adrenaline and the need to fight and protect, Alessandro lurched to his feet. He sensed the body behind him and turned. He stopped short when Justin punched him in the chest. White-hot agony exploded from that spot, and it must have been a hell of a punch, because his body went cold all over. His legs trembled.
Justin stared, wide-eyed, blood pouring from his broken nose, down over his lips.
Alessandro wanted to hit him again but couldn’t manage to move his arms to do it. His knees gave out, and he stumbled backward as he fell. Pavement scraped his arms. The pain in his chest changed to a burn, only to turn to icy shock when he saw the bloody switchblade clutched in Justin’s hand.
He lost track of what was happening around him, cataloguing only shouting, footsteps, and then a car engine revving.
“Alè? Alè!”
Jaime was there, shaking, saying his name over and over. Jaime pressed one hand down on the cold spot on his chest, while he tried to dial a phone with the other. Alessandro wanted to tell him to calm down, to take his time, but he couldn’t seem to manage the words. His chest hurt too much. Jaime talked into the phone way too fast, giving their location and begging for an ambulance.
An ambulance sounded good. Maybe they’d make his chest stop hurting so much.
“You’re going to be fine, you hear me?” Jaime said. His face was scraped, his skin pale, and he pressed both hands harder against Alessandro’s sore spot. No, not a sore spot.
He’d been stabbed. Did that mean he was dying?
“Sorry,” he rasped.
“It’s okay. It’ll all be fine. I promise.”
Exhaustion tugged at his eyelids. His head hurt too much to stay awake. “Tired, babe.”
“Stay with me, Alè, please, just a little longer.”
“Can’t.”
“Don’t you dare die on me. You still owe me a second date to Pot O Gold.”
“Better live, then.”
“Yeah, you better.” He heard, but couldn’t see Jaime’s tears.
“Didn’t get my cake.”
Jaime’s choked laughter turned to a broken sob, and that heartbreaking sound followed Alessandro into unconsciousness.
Chapter Twenty-One
For the first time ever, Jaime found a positive side to having had a heart transplant. Enough of the on-call hospital staff knew him from his frequent visits over the years that he never felt disconnected from what was happening with Alessandro, especially the nurses, who all seemed to remember him fondly and took a personal interest in his handling. His own minor wounds were cleaned while he waited in the ER, and then he was hand-delivered to the surgical waiting room with a promise to let him know as soon as there was news. He thanked everyone with a familiar face, but couldn’t seem to muster up any names.
“Good breath sounds on both sides.”
“Head trauma.”
Those were the only two things said by the paramedics that had penetrated the fog of fear wrapped around his brain. He’d assumed wrongly that the knife wound was the most serious of Alessandro’s injuries. Apparently the human brain took issue with its container being slammed into the side of a car—that part of the fight was forever burned into Jaime’s brain, along with the look on Justin’s face right after he’d stabbed Alessandro. The expression had been a bizarre mix of glee and panic, of someone satisfied with causing hurt even while he realized that life as he knew it was truly over.
Jaime hoped that Justin rotted in prison.
“Bug!”
He couldn’t pull his exhausted, aching body out of his chair to hug his sister, so he let Shannon kneel down and wrap her arms around him. She hugged like a grizzly bear—big and warm and not very often. He sagged against her, glad she was there finally. He hadn’t navigated this side of the surgical ward since their mother was dying, and he was lost here. He needed her.
She’d called while they were still in the ambulance, and he hadn’t been able to say more than “Alessandro’s been stabbed” and the name of the hospital. She promised to hurry. She didn’t promise that everything would be okay. They both knew better than to promise something neither of them could deliver.
“What’s happening with my boy?” Eunice asked.
Jaime looked up and over Shannon’s shoulder. Eunice, Molly and Tony were all there, the kids huddled so close to her they were practically one large person. E
unice looked absolutely frantic, and he’d never seen her anything other than in control and smiling. It was heartbreaking.
“He’s in surgery,” Jaime said. He wasn’t sure how much to say with the kids there. “He has Dr. Spreck. He’s good.”
Shannon shifted from the floor to the chair next to him, careful to keep physical contact at all times. “What happened? You guys disappeared from dinner.”
“Alè got a text. He thought it was from Claire, so he went to meet her. Said he’d be back in thirty minutes, and I made him promise to text me every ten. But he dropped his phone, so I called the number to tell Claire, only it was from Justin’s phone. So I followed him. It was a setup. There was a fight. One of them held me down, and Alè tried but it was two against one.”
He didn’t miss the flash of pride in Eunice’s eyes. He wanted to tell her exactly how hard Alessandro had fought and how much damage he’d done to Justin and the other guy, but he didn’t want to give Tony and Molly nightmares. They’d survived their own violence in the past.
“On the phone you said he’d been stabbed,” Shannon said.
Jaime nodded. “Yeah, they had a switchblade. But that was after Justin pushed him headfirst into a car, and I think that’s what the doctors are worried about.”
“A concussion?”
“Yeah, I think so. The nurse mentioned cerebral edema.”
Shannon squeezed his wrist. She understood the dangers of edema better than anyone because she’d lived through it with him. He’d battled pulmonary edema twice in the eighteen months before he received his heart.
“I should find a nurse,” Eunice said. “I need to know if there’s any news.”
“He’s only been in surgery for a little while,” Jaime said.
“I need to do something.”
Shannon gave his arm another squeeze, then stood up. “Hey, Molly, Tony, why don’t we go downstairs and find the cafeteria. I could use a soda. Do you want to come with me?”
Molly deferred the question to Tony, who looked like he wanted to say no. Then he glanced up at Eunice with eyes older than his ten years. “Sure, okay,” he said. “Come on, Molly.”