“You’re my favorite person,” I tell her, and she beams, pleased to be useful.
The gym’s a riot of everything December. Paper snowflakes hang in chains from the basketball hoop to the stage lights. Someone’s wrapped the pillars in tinsel so thick they look like trees a kid drew. The stable scene’s propped against the back curtain, newlypainted a proper brown. Coach Ramirez made sure it didn’t look like mud. Folding chairs run in neat rows, then break into chaos every time a kid cuts through and knocks a leg off track. In the kitchen, Mrs. Penfield fights a coffee urn and wins. Steam curls up like a small train.
Marco peels off his coat and makes a beeline for the costume rack. He finds the shepherd's crook first, tests it like a sword, then remembers the rules and sets it back with two fingers, careful as a curator. He unzips his backpack and checks his inventory—truck, sandwich still square, cocoa still hot. He looks at me and gives a nod that could pass for a salute. I nod back. We share an understanding.
I claim scissors, a tomato pincushion, and a stack of fabric that wants to be robes. We work in a line that makes sense to no one but us. Mrs. Nolan measures. I cut. Miss Carpenter pins. Mrs. Doyle arrives in a cloud of gossip and lavender this time. She glues sequins with the focus of a jeweler. “If the Magi can’t sparkle, what’s the point?” she says, tongue tucked in the corner of her mouth as she centers a star on a foam crown.
“Watch your fingers,” I warn a little angel with hair the color of a wheat field. “Hot glue’s sneaky.”
“I’m brave,” she informs me. Then she yelps when a drop kisses her skin and shakes her hand until the tear retreats. “Still brave,” she mutters, and she deserves a sticker.
Tinsel finds my hair on principle. Maria arrives with the wagon and gets mobbed by volunteers who pretend they aren’t starving. She swats hands like a goalie and makes a plate for the crew that’ll never come out from under the stage unless bribed. The sound table guy gets the first. He thanks her without lookingup. If he ever left the booth, the lights would probably quit in protest.
The laughter’s the kind that lifts the whole room. Mrs. Brewster tells the toddlers to use walking feet. Someone’s baby squeals, then sleeps in a carrier like a marsupial. Gus tries and fails to tie a sash on a shepherd who won’t stand still. Mr. Farrell offers strong opinions about whether gold spray paint counts as real gold. Mrs. Kelleher brings a bag of grapes and forces everyone to eat a handful as if that’ll save us from December.
A sharp, hollow ping hits my chest. I look at them, laughing, pinching cheeks, joking, making fools of themselves, folding paper stars, draping tinsel, all of it bright and loud and terrible in its innocence. For a beat, I see the worst, that I'm the one about to draw a gang war into this very room, right where they're arranging something beautiful.
My gaze roves the hall. Kids so small they shouldn't know the word danger, Marco trading a joke for a crumb with the other boys, Mrs. Nolan testing the iron like it's a temperamental child. My heart almost stops.
A shadow pulls across the far wall. I don’t need to look to know who cast it. I look anyway. He stands near the back doors, exactly where I’d stand if I needed to see everything and be unseen by anyone. A dark coat that opens just enough to move. Hands visible, empty as if he carries nothing but himself. All a lie. He watches the room without staring at any single person too long. When Mrs. Nolan glances up, he gives her a polite nod. She nods back and goes right on threading elastic. That’s the charm of this town. It’ll clock you and then make you earn the rest.
His eyes slide over me once, then return because he’s not a liar. They move on to a man who lingers too close to the stage door,then to the side exit near the kitchen, and then to the balcony, where the teens think they can hide. He’s counting and building the room as he does with every room. When his gaze finds me again, heat rises in my cheeks, and I hate that it does.
I cross the gym in a straight line. He watches me cover the last twenty feet. He doesn’t move. His mouth tightens a fraction, then lets go. I stop with one chair between us, not because I need furniture, but because it’s good to set a line.
“You can’t shadow me everywhere,” I say. I keep my voice soft enough not to spook the room. My hands are steady. I’m proud of that.
“I can, and I must,” he answers. No contraction, no excuse. “I’m where I belong.”
“This isn’t belonging,” I say, angry that he can choose to be abrupt. I gave him that permission. “This is a cage.” I flare. “You turned my days into bars and called it caution.”
“You think I built the cage?” he replies, voice level, gaze steady. “I don’t like them either.”
“I get to choose my risks.” My chest tightens. I make it a point not to rub the spot. “I’m not another piece on your board, Matteo.”
His eyes do a small thing I wish I didn’t know how to read. He’s never hidden that he keeps score. “You’re not a piece. Take it or not,Cara, you’re the board,” he says, his gaze turning liquid honey on fire. “If I don’t keep the edges, the game ends.”
“You hear yourself,” I say, a part of me refusing to see it for what it is. “This is a pageant, not a war.”
“It’s both,” he says, and that lands like a cold coin on the table between us. “I would prefer it were not.”
I take a step back because if I stay here, I’ll either fold into him or swing at him, and neither belongs in front of Mrs. Brewster’s angels. “I’m going outside,” I tell him. “You can keep your watchman act in the gym.”
I push through the doors into air that stings. Steam slips from my mouth in a thin ribbon. Snow begins with that whisper that says it isn’t serious yet. I walk to the edge of the steps and lean on the rail that needs paint again. My fingers remember smoothing primer, waiting for the first coat to flash before the second. That work got finished, unlike the words pressed deep in ballpoint on a hotel notepad left behind for me in another life.
The heavy door opens and closes. He takes the space beside me, one tread down. No apology comes. He wouldn’t fake one, and if he did, I wouldn’t believe it.
“I will not say I’m sorry for standing in a doorway that keeps you upright,” he says. “I’ll say something else. They’re here already.”
The sentence chills me more than the air. “Who?”
“Benedetti,” he says, the name grinding like a wrong gear. “Their men are in the crowd.”
I look over the parking lot. Cars line up in rows that’ll never be straight. Boot prints wander because people don’t walk like rulers. The inflatable snowman someone donated bobs on the lawn, plastic and stupid in its cheer. Nothing on the surface says danger. But he’s never looked at the surface.
“How many?” I ask, even though I don’t want to know.
“A handful I can see,” he says. “More I can’t.”
