"Where are you?" he says. "Do you have any idea what time it is? Do you have any idea what has happened? How could you just disappear in the middle of the night without a word to anyone, you ungrateful?—"
"What happened?" I ask. My voice comes out rough and slow, still dragging itself up from wherever the drug left it.
"What happened?" He repeats it like he cannot believe the question is being asked.
"Your cousin and James were found on the side of the road in the early hours of this morning. In their underwear. Your fiancé is in the ICU with two broken legs and your cousin is in the hospital and there are photographs, Nathalie, photographs all over the internet of them tied together on the pavement like animals and the press has them and I have spent the last three hours trying to contain the damage and you dare to ask me what happened?!"
I sit with the phone to my ear and I listen to him and I look at the unfamiliar ceiling.
"Do you know anything about this?" he demands. "Answer me."
I end the call and I sit there for a moment. Then I open my phone and I go online and I find the photographs in seconds because they are everywhere. Alana and James are on a pavement, ambulance lights behind them, both in their underwear, James's face a documented testament to a very bad evening, Alana with her mascara destroyed and her hair in what I can only describeas the aftermath of a significant ordeal. The headline on the first article reads:
Senator Hartley's Son and Mystery Woman Found Injured Outside Manhattan Hotel.
I look at the photographs again then I close my phone and I look around the room properly for the first time.
It is not a hotel room. The ceiling is high, the furniture is dark and the window shows a brownstone across the street. It's a private building rather than a commercial one.
Where am I? How did I get here?
I remember falling through a door and arms catching me and looking up and?—
Was it real?
Was it actually him or was that the drug, was that my brain producing the thing it most wanted to see in the moment before everything went dark?
The door opens and Luca comes in wearing a dark suit waistcoat with his sleeves rolled to the elbow, the tattoos running the length of his forearms, and he is carrying a tray with a bowl on it and he looks at me and he says,
"You're awake."
My heart leaps.
He sits down in the chair beside the bed and he picks up the bowl. He stirs it and he holds it out toward me saying, "Porridge."
I take it from him before he can feed me because I have some dignity left, a small amount, and I intend to protect it.
"Thank you," I say. I am doing everything to look as unaffected by him as I can.
I blow on a spoonful and eat it. I can feel his eyes on the side of my face. I stare at the bowl and I say, without looking up, "Thank you for saving me." I pause. "I don't know how you came or why you were there but thank you."
He says nothing.
I eat another spoonful, I have no appetite at all, the porridge tastes like warm nothing and my head is still aching. I need to stop fighting with the urge to look at me, he just helped me because I was in a bad situation and maybe he happened to be close enough to hear the commotion.
My father is furious, I need to get up and go back to face whatever is waiting for me there because it is mine to face, and sitting here is not going to make it smaller.
I set the bowl on the nightstand and I stand up.
The legs are unsteady but I grip the nightstand and breathe through it. Then I stand up fully, I pick up my phone and my purse then I look for my shoes. I find one under the bed and I cannot find the other one.
"Where are you going?" He is standing now too.
"Home," I say. "My father is angry and I need to?—"
"You're still weak."
"I'll call a taxi." I look around for the second shoe.
