And I’m too exhausted to fight it, too terrified of what nearly happened tonight to try to beat against him.I deserve this.To be chained to Curse again.
After being separated from him earlier, not knowing if he still breathed or not, I think I maybe even crave it.I don’t bother to look obstinate as I crawl onto the couch beside him.Plastic crinkles under my knees as I offer up my left wrist, skin-and-bone payment for what he’s been through.He secures my wrist, and then his own, binding us together with his twisting metal.Is this submission to my own destruction?Or a harrowing kind of homecoming?Whatever it is, when it all clicks into place, it cracks something inside me.Tears come pouring through the barrier of my control, not desperate and choking and panicky, but relentless all the same.Through the blur of them, I can see Curse grim-jawed and silent beside me.
He hates it when I cry.
I want to touch him.
He hates it when I do that, too.
I try to stop, but I can’t, not yet.It’s like this is some kind of mechanical process my body must complete without my mind’s input, a ritualized emptying, as automatic as a tap being turned on.Bizarrely, it throws me back to our first night together in New York, back to the darkness of Marco’s bathroom, me dressed in my pure wedding white, him in all black.So much blood on his hands.Turn the tap on for me.
When I lay my arm down on the couch between us, locked to his own, he lets out a ragged breath and seems to relax, only to tense up a second later when I run my fingers through my hair and pull it over my right shoulder.I glance at him to find his bloodshot eyes glued to the side of my face, the place just above my ear.
“Morelli!”he barks.The doctor comes at once, and I snap with alertness, wondering what’s wrong now.
“There,” Curse says tightly.“Her temple.”
My temple?
Morelli bends between us, examining my temple, prodding gently and then clicking his tongue.
“Some swelling.An abrasion,” he says in English.He taps his own temple.“You have a headache?Dizzy?”
I can’t for the life of me figure out why he’s asking me questions when Curse is the one who almost died tonight.But then I remember Alessandro’s gun, the bright burn of it connecting with my head.I pause, letting myself actually stop and feel my own physical body, sinking into the present moment when I’ve been hurtling into the future and the past all night.All I feel is syrupy exhaustion and the pain, where I have it, throbs between my legs.
“No,” I reply honestly.“My head is fine.”
“What happened?”Curse asks acidly when Morelli turns away to grab something.The bespectacled doctor returns once more with what appears to be antiseptic and gauze, dabbing at my temple until the tender skin stings, then taping the soft white square into place.
“Was it Severu?”Curse demands when I don’t answer.“What else did he do?”
“Not Severu,” I reply with a shake of my head.The movement makes my hair feel strange and stiff at my temple.“Alessandro.I didn’t want to go with him.His gun…”
“He hit you,” Curse says with a deadly slowness, “with his gun?”
I nod mutely, my throat stopped up with the fact that that wasn’t even the worst part.The worst part was watching Alessandro plant that very gun against Curse’s forehead.
In the silence of my wordless reply, there comes a crackling sound.For a second, I think that it’s the fireplace across from the couch.But I feel movement at my bound wrist, and see that the noise comes from Curse cracking his knuckles.He crushes the pad of his right thumb against the tattooed knuckles of his right hand, one at a time, making each finger pop loudly.He does the same with his left hand, then repeats the entire process, the thumbs digging hard into the finger knuckles long after the cracking of the joints has ceased.He’s no longer looking at me, at the bandaged skin of my temple, but staring directly into the flames.
Perhaps feeling my eyes on him, he says, “Don’t ask me what I’m thinking, Aurora.I can promise you that you don’t want to know.”
“Maybe I do want to know,” I challenge.Because isn’t it true?That I’ve wanted to know every thought that’s gone through his head for more than twenty years?“I can handle it.”
He doesn’t answer – doesn’t even bother to laugh at me, or to scoff.He just keeps his empty eyes ahead, still crunching the knuckles of each finger against his thumbs.I watch the way the skin deforms under the pressure, the way the letters of Florencia’s name stretch and morph.
I wilt at the lack of reply.The way he won’t even rise to my bait.Because we both know that he’s probably right.Look at how I handled Marco’s murder on our wedding night.I was a guilty, anxious, crying mess, puking in the motel after the fact, while Curse was clear-headed, composed.Emotionless.Strong where I was weak.
I almost wish that he could teach me.Teach me not to care.About anything.Or anyone.What would it be like to live as he does, a monster unbound by concepts of sin or souls or mercy?To hurt whoever you want to, whenever you need to?To never have to suffer?
But then again, he’s still suffering now, isn’t he?At least physically.It looks as if all the doping effects of the opioids have been cleared from his system, leaving only the sickness of the withdrawal.The pallid agitation creasing his brow.The ruthless clenching of those hands.
“We should get some rest,” I say listlessly.I kick my boots off and draw my feet up under my bum on the couch, leaning sideways against the back of it.When I lay my head against the plastic, I feel the tug of the taped gauze at my hairline.Curse’s stark profile, carved by lamplight and fire, is the last thing I see as my eyes slide shut.
When I wake, I know without even opening my eyes that Curse is no longer beside me.Terror spikes, taking my heartrate with it.Sucking in a gasp, I’m about to leap off the couch when a deep voice stops me.
“He’s in the shower.”
I blink in confusion, trying to locate the source of that voice, so similar to Curse’s.I’m alone on the couch, but not alone in the room.Elio sits on an armchair across from me, one that someone has removed the plastic covering from.The fire has been turned off.
