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We both stare at our hands, contrasting in so many ways – hers small, mine large, hers smooth, mine scarred, hers pale and freckled, mine gloved in dark leather – but now similar in at least one. We’ve both got the rings.
She and I have been connected for a long time now.
But now the entire city can fucking see it.
When we kiss, I can tell Deirdre’s going for something chaste in front of the crowd. She keeps her lips primly closed. I lock my hands on her waist and dip her backwards until she gasps. When her mouth opens, I deepen the kiss, and it’s like I’m fucking pouring myself into her. My bride.
My wife.
I don’t want to break the kiss. But there’s other shit to do. Signing the forms that make this ceremony one-hundred-percent official. I won’t have any corners cut. She will be my wife in every fucking way. So we sit and take our time, signing the pages that the officiant whisks away when we are finished.
Once that’s done, we stand together, her hand in mine, ready to walk forward into the future as man and wife. And it’s gonna be a good fucking future. I can tell just by the way it feels to hold her hand like this, and by how fucking good this moment smells. Like perfume and flowers and gasoline and –
A wall of heat scorches my back. I’m thrown forward at the same moment that glass shatters all around me. Reflexively my fingers clench, but they clench around nothing. Deirdre’s hand is gone.
The panic that rises instantly is blunted when my temple collides hard with the side of the wooden bench in the first row. Dazed, I raise a shaking hand to my temple, the leather of my glove sliding through hot blood. There’s screaming, footsteps, ringing in my head, and smoke, fucking smoke everywhere, so thick I can barely think let alone breathe.
I have to get to her.
Fighting a wave of nausea, I drag myself up onto my knees, my ribs screaming. Two strong arms go beneath my armpits, hauling me up. I grab at the back of the bench to keep from falling over as Curse swims into blurry view.
“Where is she?” It feels like my mouth is full of sand.
Curse says something to me, but it’s a meaningless wallop of noise. I push him away, stumbling past him back towards the place I’d been standing with Deirdre not one moment before.
She isn’t fucking there.
The flowers that had arched above us while we said our vows are ruined, singed and smoking, the white and blue petals now black with burning edges. They fall, drifting like ash, to the ground. The wall of glass has been blown to smithereens. The wood beams are burning.
This place is on fucking fire and I cannot fucking find her.
I turn around, feeling off-balance and slow as I do it. My eyes lurch drunkenly around the room. I see my uncle holding up Zizi and barking orders. I see Enzo snatching Annabelle out of the way of a massive falling piece of glass. Valentina is with Lucia and Giulia. Curse is with me.
Who the fuck is with my wife?
“Where is she?” I say again, choking on fumes. My scars blaze beneath my gloves. I stare down at my hands for a moment, wondering if I never woke up at all this morning. If I’m trapped in a nightmare.
It doesn’t even fucking matter. Not one iota.
Because whether in reality or in dreams, I will always fucking find her.
Chapter 40
Deirdre
There are moments in life that you can only experience in shattering pieces. The car accident that killed my mom was like that. I don’t remember any real linear progression of how that night unfolded. I just remember us driving at night in winter.
Then the flash of headlights through our windshield. My mom’s choked sound of fear. Then rolling and smashing and glass and light and dark.
This moment is just like that.
There’s an explosion that smashes through the room, and then everything flashes through me in clipped little still frames. Hands at my waist, hauling me out into cold air.
Not Elio’s hands.
I cry and flail, but now there are two sets of hands. I scream, but it’s only one of what sounds like ten thousand fucking screams. Beams glow with new flame, and the last thing I see is Elio, my husband, being dragged bodily from the ground, as if he can’t do it by himself. He’s hurt. He’s hurt and there’s fire and I’m not there to help him.
I scream again, and it is a sound of visceral mourning. I scream and I scream and maybe I scream all the oxygen right out of my body, because consciousness suddenly sputters, like a candle in the dark. Heat pricks at the side of my neck, like an insect biting, and I try to slap it but my hand doesn’t move at all.
