Page 7 of The Square

Her body moves seductively and it reminds me that she’s a killer. She prowls through life like a lioness. Stalking, and hunting, and completely at ease with her natural instincts.

I want to twirl her around, lead her back to the yacht, and fuck her brains out on the deck under the light of a half moon and a million stars.

We haven’t done that yet. Not since Alec disappeared. We’ve been too focused on fixing things.

But it’s gonna happen tonight.

“Alec,” I say, replying to her question.

She pouts her lips — which drives me mad with lust — and sighs.

“I just…” I start to say. “I just hope he’s OK.”

She presses her lips together and nods. “He is. I know he is.”

She says this all the time but I can’t make out if it’s wishful thinking, or actual knowledge, or a mantra she recites to keep going.

And I don’t want to ask too many questions right now because I’m not ready for too many answers.

Tomorrow, I decide. When we leave tomorrow I’ll be ready for answers. I just need this one night to draw a line. Some kind of clear boundary between then, and now, and what’s yet to be.

“You look handsome tonight,” she says, taking my hand in hers and swinging it a little. “We should get a picture.”

“Yeah,” I say, pulling out my phone. “We should.”

“Hey!” she calls to a marina staff member. “Excuse me! Do you mind taking a picture?”

The teenager stops and looks at us. Then smiles, takes the phone and the picture.

But what she hands back is more than a phone and much more than a picture. It’s documentation that we really happened. Something that can’t be erased by bullets or forgotten by separation.

This picture might be the only one in existence of just Christine and me.

“We look damn good,” Christine says.

“Yeah, we do,” I mumble, studying the perfect couple we make.

Her, leggy and tan in her short loose dress.

Me, all broad shoulders and big biceps the perfectly-tailored, light gray jacket can’t hide.

I look massive and strong next to her wraith-like frame. And she looks fragile.

How easy it is to believe this lie.

We always counted on that, of course. Our marks never saw Christine coming back then. Just a gum-cracking teenage girl. Sometimes she even had pigtails.

But there was always a gun tucked into the waistband of her jeans. Always.

“Oh, I love it,” Christine whispers. “Send it to me.”

I grin down at the screen, fingers tapping keys and buttons until that little whoosh sound happens. Her phone chimes the incoming photo and just like that, we’re connected again.

Not that we’ve ever been untethered, because there is no way to break that link. But we’ve been apart and tonight feels like the night we’re bonded again. This picture feels like the beginning of us.

Not we. Not three.

But just us.