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Because that is the one thing that’s driving us both insane right now.
What is it that we’re so afraid to say out loud?
What is so dangerous about this one thing we’re not supposed to feel for each other?
The clock in the corner tolls out midnight.
She tears away from my grip and marches off toward her room upstairs, and I let her.
Marcello
Heading to my room, I strip down and take a shower under a frigid blast of water. I’m hoping it’ll clear my head or at least quiet it.
But it doesn’t do a damn thing.
When I step out, skin prickled from the cold, I’m just as confused as before.
Sleep won’t be easy tonight. I’m too consumed by thinking of Harper under this very same roof. But I don’t know if it’s because I want to be inside her all the time, or because my heart feels something for her that it refuses to acknowledge.
And maybe, just maybe, she feels the same thing for me. Which is why she keeps pushing me away.
Sighing, I emerge from the bathroom and get dressed quickly. Then before I can second-guess myself, I’m slipping out of my room and down the hall.
My feet carry me to a locked steel door.
When my head is heavy and filled with emotions, I find myself here.
I unlock it and drift inside. It shuts behind me, and the locks whir back into place.
I pause a few steps inside the room and listen for a moment. Medical machines beep and hum. The nurse on night duty glances up at me from her perch in the corner. Without a word, she scurries out through the side entrance.
When the room is empty again, I sigh deeply, then walk forward.
There’s a seat for visitors beside my mother’s bed. I sink into it.
She’s a wraith under the sheets. So skinny. So very nearly motionless. I wait until I’m sure her chest is rising and falling again. I do the same ritual every time.
It never gets easier.
“Mamma,” I rasp. “I’m sorry I haven’t been visiting very often.”
No answer, of course. I’m starting to forget what her voice ever sounded like.
“Things are… bad. Not just outside the house. I wish it was just outside the house.” I laugh bitterly. “That stuff, I understand. I know how to fight. I know how to conquer. I know how to run my empire. It’s the shit in here that is unraveling me.”
Beep.
Beep.
Nothing about her face changes. Nothing about her face ever changes.
I smooth back a wayward lock of hair. She was beautiful once. I have the pictures to prove it.
But now, the endless years on life support have sapped her of that beauty. She’s just too thin and gaunt and pale.
The door opens. I look up with a frown, assuming it’s the night nurse returning for some kind of check.
To my surprise, Mario shuffles through the door.
He looked spry earlier in the night. Now, he looks old again. Almost as frail as Mamma.
He finds a spare chair in the corner and brings it over to set next to me. Then he sinks into it with an old man groan.
“I’m waiting for the joke about how your knees don’t work the same as they used to,” I drawl.
Mario chuckles. “I’ll still outrun you any day, boy,” he says with a wink.
In spite of everything, I laugh. He’s always had a way of slicing through the darkness I gather around myself.
“You look troubled,” he comments. His eyes search my face.
“Nothing I can’t handle.”
He laughs again. “I thought things were—what was the word you used?—unraveling you.”
My fists tighten on Mamma’s bedsheets. “Always nice to know I’m being spied on in my own house,” I snarl.
He claps a friendly hand on my shoulder and grins. “Wasn’t spying, my boy. I just came to visit, but you beat me here by a few seconds.”
I breathe and lean back in my seat. The strain of the day is catching up to me. All of a sudden, I am exhausted.
“So I’ll say it again. You look troubled.”
I look over at Mario. “Molly is alive.”
Mario nods solemnly. “It would appear so. Apparently, the Irish don’t like to stay dead.”
I can’t help laughing at that. “Apparently.”
But when the laughter fades, concern stitches itself back together on Mario’s face. “She’ll come for her daughter again, you know.”
I nod. “I know.” The thought has crossed my mind already. Molly won’t let Harper go so easily. Not only because of who Harper is but because of what Harper means to me. What she represents about me—a source of weakness.
The Irishwoman isn’t stupid. She saw the lengths I went to tonight to retrieve Harper from her clutches. You don’t do that for things you don’t care about.
“She needs protecting, Mario,” I say quietly.
“That she does, son,” he murmurs. “We need allies to help with that.”
