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Thewindisas cruel as it is cold, carrying my most painful memories from the coastline, over the Pacific, and slapping me in the face with them.
The nastiest memories are always the ones that are the most visceral. The ones you don’t just see, but feel, too. The crashof whiskey bottles smashing and the noxious stench of liquor rising up from the grubby kitchen tiles. My mother’s blood, crimson and searing hot, coating the backs of my thighs. My father’s cries, so fucking guttural, as he called out to a God that turned a blind eye. The hiss of a gun chamber spinning, steel against my temple, and the absence of the third bang that never came.
When I left the sky lounge, panic chased me down the side deck and my walk morphed into a run. I ran until the deck tapered off to water. Now, with nowhere else to go, I’m gripping the handrail of the swim platform, wondering if the current is as dangerous as it looks. My lungs tighten with every breath I can’t catch, and the black spots in my vision dance underneath the gray clouds like low-soaring birds.
Warmth brushes my back, and hands land on either side of mine, caging me in.
“Breathe.”
My stare falls from the sky to the hands. I look from left to right, right to left, wondering which one of them pulled the trigger.
“I—”
Soft lips on the nape of my neck cut me off. “That’s talking, not breathing.”
I inhale ice-cold air through my nose, wincing as it burns against the walls of my lungs. When I release it, it smears the gloomy sky like a shaky stroke of a paintbrush.
“Good girl,” Raphael says gently. “Again.”
The calmness in his voice is unnerving. A stark contrast to the heat of his chest, and to the act of violence he committed less than three minutes ago. A body lies deadon the deck above, and all he can do is tell me to breathe?
As I choke on my next breath, his hand slips off the railing and lies flat against my stomach. It’s warm and stupidly reassuring, and when he swipes his thumb up and down, caressing the same inch of fabric over and over, I breathe in and out to the same rhythm.
“You told me your gun was fake,” I rasp bitterly.
“I lied.”
“I thought you were a gentleman. Lie about that, too?”
He moves closer, taking my body with his, until my bottom rib presses against the railing. Without a word, he scoops up all of my hair flailing about in the wind, and winds it into a bun at the base of my neck. He uses it like a joystick, gently tugging on it until my head rests against his chest.
“Just because I’m a gentleman, Penelope, doesn’t always mean I’m a gentle man.”
My grip tightens on the railing, my heart stuttering to an off-kilter beat. “Was that the first time you’ve…”
His stomach flexes against my spine. “No.”
“And will you…”
“I’d assume so, yes.”
I can’t keep a strangled gasp from escaping. “You’re a psychopath; you know that?”
His humorless laugh touches the pulse in my throat. “What makes you think that?”
I close my eyes, honing in on the sound of his heartbeat. “Your heart isn’t even beating fast.”
“I’m a made man, Penelope. We’re just built this way.” His hand comes off the railing and wraps around me, drawing me deeper into his warmth. I must reallybe traumatized to not push him away. “It’s always horrible the first time you hear a gunshot.”
My sardonic breath is bitter and tinged with disbelief. “Yeah, but it’s not the first time. Not even the second.”
“Paintballing in your teens doesn’t count.”
I know he’s trying to distract me from the ringing in my ears, but his patronizing tone stokes a spark of annoyance. Maybe that’s why I let him into my memories, or maybe the panic blurring my vision also blurs my judgment, too.
I glare at my knuckles on the railing, blue from the cold and white from the strength of my grip. I take a deep breath and let the wind carry my story.
“I was there when my parents were killed.” I say it in a rushed, mumbled voice. “Two men in balaclavas. They could have been anyone. My parents were alcoholics and alcoholics have a tendency of pissing people off. They slid through the open window in the living room and shot both of them dead. Mom got off lightly. She was already asleep, passed out on the kitchen table after a long night of sobbing to Whitney Houston power ballads, so I doubt she felt a thing. But my father; he met a nasty end. Woke up from his whiskey-induced coma just long enough to see the barrel of a gun and make a run for it out the garden door.”
