Gio drives us back into the city.

Maybe it’s a bad idea. Maybe it’s the worst idea we’ve ever had. But where else are we going to go, right now, in this moment? My brain is a whirling mess of contradictions. I don’t know which thoughts to follow and which to let go.

“It’s the one place nobody will expect,” says Gio, turning onto the Loop. The heart of downtown Chicago is bustling. Traffic everywhere. “We can blend into the crowd.”

He picks the cheapest hotel, a Travelodge that looks like it hasn’t been updated ever, and tests the lock too many times.

I’m exhausted.

I’m exhausted and sore and still, the sight of him stretched out on the bed fills me with the kind of heat that’s hard to contain.

I press myself against him. I’ll only close my eyes for a few minutes. Gather my strength. And then...

It’s late in the night when I wake up, the city glow coming through a thin curtain. Where the hell are we? Someone in the next room drops something onto the floor. The Travelodge.

It’s like this all night. Restless, broken sleep, but I can’t pull myself out of it long enough to get up, to make plans. Eventually, toward dawn, I give in.

When I wake up for good, Gio is in the shower.

I climb in after him, rubbing sleep from my eyes.

“Wife,” he says, and gathers me into his arms.

I can’t help it, the way all the worry seeps out of me and rushes down the drain.

He kisses me under the hot stream of water. “Gio, I’m so tired.”

“Don’t think about that.”

“What should I think about instead?”

He knocks my knees apart with a foot between my legs, and from the first circle of my clit with the pads of his fingers, I’m gone.

Freshly fucked, I stand in line with him at the courthouse. I sign my name next to his on the paperwork to register our marriage with the state. Even humming from the way he made me come in the shower, I still can’t shake it off.

“What’s wrong?” Gio sits down across from me at a little restaurant near the courthouse. “Have you seen the fries?”

I stare at the little stand for them. It’s cute as fuck. On any other day, I’d love them, wrapped in their little paper cone. “They look amazing.” They are amazing, honestly. These are what fries should be—fresh and hot, a little crispy on the outside, fluffy potato on the inside. I chew the first one and swallow. I try another, dipped in ketchup, but the small joy of eating a good fry is covered over with guilt.

Gio notices.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know if I can live with myself.”

“For what?” He’s eaten only a few himself, and his dark eyes are focused on me. It’s overwhelming, a little, how those eyes can make me feel like the only person who exists in the world. Even at a time like this.

“For running away from my uncle like that.” There’s a waver in my voice that I hate. I made a decision. I knew it was the right thing at the time, but now...

Gio lets out a terse breath through rounded lips. “I know why I ran.”

“Why?”

He looks down at his hands on the tablecloth and presses his lips into a thin line. He’s wrestling with something, clearly, and his face is all pity when he looks up at me again. I’m not a fucking fan of that, but my heart beats faster just from his glance. “The look in his eyes. That wasn’t a panicked man coming for his niece. That was—” He shakes his head, taking his lip between his teeth.

“But what else could it have been? How did he even find us?”

“That bothers me, too.”

“Are you sure Father Lawrence—”

“Yes. I told him everything. He wouldn’t have reported me.”

I eat a few more fries in silence. There’s a strange pressure in my chest and it’s almost unbearable to sit still, to sit here, without having any more information. “What do you think he was doing, then?”

“Sia, I don’t want to—”

“Tell me. What’s the point of being married, of being together, if we’re not going to be honest with each other? If there’s something I need to know, then tell me.” I shove another two fries into my mouth. “God, these are good. I wish I could enjoy them.”

A smile flickers across Gio’s face. “Aren’t they?”

“Yes, but—” There aren’t words for the anxious storm rampaging through my chest. Why was it so wrong to see my own uncle? Why? Why?

“He looked like he was there to do a job,” Gio says solemnly, answering the question I have perched on the tip of my tongue. “He looked like he was there to do the kind of job—” He motions at himself.

I could throw up.

That’s not who my uncle was. That’s not who he is. There’s no way that Gio’s right. It was dark out. It was a moment of panic. It was—

I take a deep breath, like they teach in yoga class, and let it out slowly. “It’s too much,” I admit.

“We don’t have to talk about it anymore. Not now.”

Gio’s words are comforting enough that the sound from the restaurant cuts back in. The tink of silverware against glasses. The rustle of paper cones wrapped around fresh batches of fries. The waitress comes back to our table, her big smile so achingly normal I want to sit in this restaurant forever.

“Refills?”

My reply sticks in my throat.

“Sure,” says Gio, and she whisks our glasses away to the back.

I look at him, my husband, my anchor, and feel a million years old instead of nineteen.

“What do we do now?”

“Leave,” he says, simply, quickly, no hesitation, as if that’s been the plan all along.

“To where?” The thought of fleeing again, the thought of running like this, forever, makes me want to put my head down on the table and give up.

Gio takes my hand in his. “We just got married, Sia. Don’t you think we should go on a little honeymoon?”