Chapter 90

All day, I’m off-kilter, emotionally. Frankie notices it immediately in the car when I fail to laugh at his jokes, which usually have me smiling and cackling along with him. But the whole ride I’m a moment behind, silent when I should be laughing, staring off into space when I should be paying attention to him.

“You okay, Iris?” he asks, his voice soft when we pull into our usual parking spot at Lupa.

Honestly, it’s his use of my real name that really gets my attention.

“Hmm?” I ask, blinking my eyes back into focus as I look at him, my hand on the handle to my door.

“You’re…not yourself,” he says with a frown. He reaches a hand out slowly, but it doesn’t get far. He drops it down between us when he realizes what he’s doing.

“Should I be myself, Frank?” I say with a little sigh, letting him see a little of my discontent. “A man is dead. I’m carrying a lot of secrets.” I don’t mention the true thing that’s weighing on me – Nico’s idea that I run.

“It’s going to be all right, Iris,” he murmurs, holding my gaze with his pretty brown eyes. “You have to trust us. Trust me. We’ve been through worse – we’ll come through this too.”

“Keep coming through it,” I sigh, turning my head away and opening the door, “until the one time you don’t. And then you’re dead.”

Frankie doesn’t say anything – but his lack of words is just confirmation. Because he knows it’s true too. Luck and faith only take you so far in this world – everyone’s number comes up sometime.

Andre notices the difference in me too, but he’s less gentle than Frank.

“What?” he demands, crossing his arms and glaring at me as I duck under the bar. “What’s all this? Why are you…in a mood?”

I just flick my eyes at him and ignore his words, honestly not wanting to deal with it right now. “Just tell me what you want me to do, Andre.”

“Right answer,” he mutters, tossing me a towel and nodding towards a bunch of glasses that need drying. I get immediately to work, letting the busy atmosphere of the restaurant settle me, distract me from the things that I’m worried about.

Of course, nothing can completely distract me, and the routines of Lupa mostly just keep my hands busy. Even when the busy lunch shift comes and I’m taking orders, serving drinks, chatting with customers and giving them all my prettiest fake smile, in the back of my head, the same questions are churning.

Should I stay?

Is it safe?

Safe for me, safe for them?

Frankie or Christian – even if I had a choice…would I choose?

If Nico helped me run…what would my life look like?

After a couple of hours of this, my head is pounding. A slow, deep ache forms in the back of my head, and no matter how much I kneed it with my fingers and thumbs, it just won’t go away. When the shift runs down, the customers becoming scarce in the time between lunch and dinner shifts, Andre comes and claps a hand on my shoulder.

I look up at him in surprise. “You’re holding up better than I thought you would, Bambi,” he says, his voice not unkind. “Better than most, if I’m being frank. I appreciate the work ethic.”

“Thanks, Andre,” I say, giving him a genuine smile now, appreciating it. Because he could be harder on me – I haven’t been in my top form today. But still – I think he really does see me, does understand that I’m going through it a bit right now.

“Why don’t you take a break?” he says, lifting his chin towards the back door, towards the parking lot out back. “Have one of those…cigarettes you’re apparently so fond of.”

My face breaks into a genuine grin because Andre knows that I don’t smoke. But clearly, he’s on to Frankie, and knows that his little brother stole two cigarettes from him so we could have our little smoke outside.

“Why,” I say, still grinning, my eyes crinkling at the pleasure of having him tease me, because I know he cares. “You got one that I can bum?”

“Oddly enough,” Andre says, his voice dry, smirking at me. “I seem to be all out – don’t know how that could have happened.” I laugh and Andre tightens his hand on my shoulder, fond. “Go on, Bambs, get a little fresh air,” he says. “It will do you good.”

He gives me a little push towards the service entrance and the back door, and then turns to Frankie, intending to summon him. But I reach up to touch his hand, still on my shoulder, a little grimace on my lips.

“Can I…go alone?” I say, very quiet. “Just to get my head in order.”

Andre sighs, glancing between me and his little brother – who actually does look lost in his phone for once – and then nods. “Don’t let him get under your skin,” Andre says, nodding to me and letting me go alone to the back door. “You’ll get a damn infection.”

I laugh again and this weird metaphor and am still smiling as I step through the little back room and then out the back door, nodding to Gary, the bouncer, as I go. He gives me a fond nod in return, and then I’m outside, in the blissfully clean cool air.

I lean back against the building, closing my eyes and tilting my head up in the afternoon sunlight, realizing that Andre was right. I really did need some fresh air – some sun on my face. Just to remind me that I’m alive, and that things will be okay.

I smile a little as I bask in the sun and let it soak into my skin, because I’ve never really been a sun worshiper. Being as fair and blonde as I am, I burn like a lobster, so it’s never really been in the cards for me. Still, today, it feels really good, so I just keep my eyes shut, admiring the bright orange light that colors the back of my eyelids.

As I do, my mind drifts back to day trips to the beach we used to take when we were kids. Mom had been so anxious with Damon and me, slathering us with sunscreen what felt like every fifteen minutes. But Christian, who always went with us, always got away without it because his skin never burned – just lightly browned in the summer sun.

So while Damon and I – no matter what mom’s efforts were – always left with pink noses and shoulders, moaning and wanting aloe to sooth the burns, Christian got away scott free.

I remember one summer, when we were a little older, when he had spread the aloe out over my burned shoulders for me – the way I had flinched away from his hand with a gasp not only because the coolness of the aloe gel was so deliciously sharp on my burn…

But because it was Christian, touching me. Skin to skin.

I smile a little, at the memory, at the innocence of it. I’d just been a girl with a crush.

And what am I now?

I sigh, but don’t turn my head away from the sun, kind of wanting – now – a little color on my nose. A couple of the freckles that appear after the burn fades away.

Christian always said he liked those.

Honestly, could I do it? Even if it was better for him, could I leave, run, never come back, live a life without him in it? I did it for years – lived without him.

But now that I know what it’s like to have him back…could I give him up?

“That’s the one,” a gruff voice says.

I gasp, surprised, my eyes flying open. But before I can see anything more than two men’s chests dangerously close to me, suddenly something is thrown over my head. I scream bloody murder, my hands flailing out to defend myself – but my arms are grabbed, twisted behind my back, and my scream turns feral, half pain, half terror.

It turns to a moan when someone cuffs me over the head, dragging me away – I don’t know where. As I go, I vaguely feel someone slap a pair of handcuffs on me, pinning my arms behind my back.

“Get her in the trunk!” the man’s voice shouts.

I’m lifted suddenly off my feet, still screaming, but the scream ends when suddenly I’m flying through the air and then pain lances through me, through the shoulder on which I land, and then the air gushes out of my lungs.

There’s a clang of metal and the pounding of footsteps as I pant and draw in a deep breath, screaming again.

But it’s no good.

The car peels away, taking me with it.