There was nothing about her as warm as her voice though.
It was sultry and felt like velvet on the skin. That was how profound it was. Her notes didn’t only linger in the air, they reached out and touched. Caressed in a way that felt physical.
I was riveted by her sound. Her very presence. I couldn’t tell whether she was reaching inside of me and shining a light on every sadness I harbored, or putting balm on them.
On one particularly beautiful note, I felt a hand touch my skin.
When I could pull my eyes from the stage, I realized that my cheeks were damp. When I looked at Aniello, his eyes were still on the stage.
So were Quentin’s. Even though the club was packed, it seemed like she was singing just for him, and he was there just for her. I wondered if that was something special they did for only the two of them.
Like I did for Aniello each time he left for a job and whenever he returned.
“I kissed you that way every morning and every night?”
He shook his head, using his thumbs to dry the tears that fell from my eyes. “When I left for work, and when I came back to you.”
“Oh,” I said, understanding. “She did it as a blessing.”
He nodded. “You did the same.”
The thought made her song speak to me even more, because I wasn’t sure if the thought of us sharing something so profound, something that was “our thing,” made me feel sad or was healing me, because we had shared things that made our love…worth dying for.
“If you die, I die.”
I didn’t know who I hated more in that moment. Him. Because he wouldn’t tell me everything I needed to know without me asking. Or me. For not asking. For being so programmed by the organization that I couldn’t bring myself to speak up. For being faulty.
My attention diverted when Sharon sat next to Abe, which put her next to me. Maybe because it never mattered before, I really looked at her. She had similar lines to Catherine. Tall. Thin. And she had eyes that were almost too sharp and didn’t hide anything. Including the glances she kept throwing at my—Aniello—because the music set a certain mood.
He wasn’t paying attention. His eyes were still hard on the stage, and every so often his jaw would tighten.
I finished the last of my wine and didn’t decline when the waiter came back and filled my glass. When he came back again to refill it, Aniello gave him a look that made him almost wilt. The waiter pulled the bottle back so fast that it seemed like something had burned him.
Aniello stood right after, and taking my hand, pulled me up. I could have protested, but the song was slow, the club quiet, hanging on to Simone’s every word, and I didn’t want to interrupt the magic.
Stopping at an empty area of the club, Aniello pulled me close and started to dance with me. We said nothing as we stared at each other, moving in time to the music, but a million words seemed to be moving between his mind and mine.
Right as the song came to a gorgeous finish, and applause echoed around the space, I whispered, “Why did you bring me here?” Even though I kept my voice down, I knew he’d heard the heat in it.
His eyes reacted. That familiar heat in his met the sudden rush in mine, if the heat suddenly charging through my veins reflected.
“Why do I plan every move, every step, when it comes to you?”
“That’s not what I asked,” I said.
“That’s a better question.”
“How about no questions,” I said. “How about you just tell me.” I went to pull out of his hold, but his grip was firm.
“A fucking good reason,” he said.
Our stares held, and I was preparing for the imminent explosion. I’d reached a turning point, maybe the red wine giving me more courage, and I refused to go back.
Unless I knew where we’d been, I couldn’t go forward. I was stuck in purgatory.
Suddenly, it was no longer a want but a need that burned deeper than the attraction, for lack of a better word, that existed between us.
I could let those memories go, I realized, but I still needed to know them like I inexplicably knew him. I had to give the ghosts shapes and faces and scents. I had to make them into what they were so I could carry them with me as they were—so they would stop being empty shapes and fucking haunting me.
