Stephanie
I smell pasta.
Good pasta.
Really, really good pasta.
And a rich sauce. Something meaty and earthy and deep. The kind of smell you only get after hours upon hours of simmering.
My mouth is watering.
My eyelids hurt, but I open them. I blink the sleep out of my eyes and the fog out of my brain and try to gather my surroundings.
There’s a silver-lidded tray that is definitely not hospital-issue on the table beside my bed.
I stare at it a second while my eyes regain focus.
Then, I see him.
Smiling, quiet and relaxed, yet so cocky it’s almost deafening.
He’s in street clothes, which, for him is still a high-end designer button-up, suit jacket, and slacks. For him, casual is not wearing a tie.
“How did you get here?” I manage to croak out.
He leans down and gives me a kiss on the cheek.
“Good to see you too, bella,” he whispers. “I came in through the door, that’s how.”
I glare at him. “You know what I mean.”
He kisses me again. On the lips.
I’m less angry, now.
“I came to bring you a bit of a ‘Get Well’ present.”
Then, he takes the lid off the tray and sets a plate of pasta before me. It’s beautiful.
“Ragu alla bolognesse,” he says. “It’s my nonna’s recipe.”
My mouth starts watering and I’m still so doped up that the drool is dribbling out of the corners of my mouth.
“What’s in it?”
“You’ll have to ask my nonna — when you meet her. Until then, it’s secret. She’ll kill you, and me, if I tell you without permission. I’m serious. She’s done it before.”
I take a bite and lose all interest in anything except shoveling as much of the pasta into my mouth as quickly as I can. It’s that good.
I get halfway through my plate before I give myself a moment to breathe. Then I realize that Luca probably should be in prison right now.
“How are you free? How are you even still alive? I saw on the news…”
Memories of the newscast pop into my mind and, even though he’s right in front of me and clearly alive, I still feel this rush of agitation at thinking about him being zipped up in a body bag.
“I had to go to jail. I had to sell the idea that I was under arrest like everyone else from the Durante family. Otherwise, if they think I’m a snitch, this will never end. And they did charge me with something, by the way,” he chuckles. “I think they decided on unlawful possession of a firearm. Which they’ll allow me to plead down to a misdemeanor.”
“Huh?” I say. And I just kind of stare at him.
It’s not eloquent, but it gets my point across.
I mean, what the fuck?
After all that, he’s only got to worry about a slap on the wrist? If I wasn’t high, I’d be staggered at how much he’s managed to work over system.
But I am on whatever they’ve got in my IV, so, instead, I grunt and I stare.
Which is more than enough for him.
His chest puffs up a little bit more, which I wouldn’t think is possible considering he’s already so supremely confident, but, somehow, he manages.
“I wasn’t going to half-ass this job, love. I’m not going to risk any of this blowing back to your family,” he pauses to try and reach in and steal a bite of my pasta, but I slap his hand away. “So I had them put me in the cell next to Angelo. And, well, I may have had them put our cells in the same block as the Nuestra Familia.”
My eyes get wide and I know I must look beyond stupid because I’m wide-eyed and stuffing my face with messy pasta, but Nuestra Familia is one of the biggest Mexican-American gangs in California. They run half the prisons in this state and most every gang in this part of California pays tribute to them.
My boyfriend — Is that even the right word for him? — is legitimately insane.
He snatches a bite from my plate. “Then, I stirred the pot. Things got messy. Didn’t take much work, though. Angelo — rest in peace — is already a prick, and those Nuestra Familia guys don’t fuck around. But, point is, no member of the Mafia is going to want to set foot in Arroyo Falls for a long time. Not unless they want to go to war with one of the biggest gangs in the US.”
He pops a bite of pasta in his mouth and chews it while looking at me with the biggest, craziest grin on his face that I’ve ever seen.
Yeah. He’s fucking insane.
But, he’s mine. And he’s alive.
“So, what now?”
It feels so good to ask that question, knowing that the future is open to us. That we don’t have to worry about anything but how we want to build our future together.
Luca raises his leg and lifts his slacks a bit to reveal a tracker anklet. “I have this little electronic babysitter until my hearing. And we both need our bed rest, too.” He says, pointing to his arm where he was shot.
I cringe, thinking about the hack-job the prison doctors probably did in fixing that wound up.
There’s a moment where he pauses, and he gets this thoughtful smile on his face.
“But after that? I don’t know, bella, I’d say we’re free to do whatever the fuck we want.”
“True. And I’ve been thinking about that.”
The thoughtful smile turns to a mischievous grin.
“How do you feel about Vegas?”
I wince. “I’ve had enough of sleaze for a while. Thanks.”
He almost looks disappointed. Even though it hurts, I reach out and I take his hand in both of mine. Which is more difficult than it sounds, because there’s still a bite or two of pasta left on the plate.
“How do you want our future to look, Stephanie?” His expression changes as he says it. His voice changes, too. There’s nothing about this that isn’t serious to him.
Even as hurt as I am, I’d go through it all just to be at this point, right now, with him.
We have a future together.
“These last six months have been bad, Luca. Real bad. I don’t know any other way to say this, except that I feel…” I pause, rattling around in my addled head for the right words. “I feel like I’m tainted. I hate so much of what I did.”
Even thinking about what’s happened to me, even though it’s over, brings tears to my eyes.
Luca reaches out and brushes one off my cheek and looks tenderly into my eyes.
“We’ve got the whole world in front of us, love. Tell me what’s on your mind. Because I’ll do anything for you. You know that, right? You saved my life. If it weren’t for meeting you, I’d probably be back to my old life, and whether or not I’d be dead, either way I wouldn’t be worth the breath I was taking.”
He’s so intense, and so sincere and just… unhesitating. Most people would dance around saying they don’t deserve to live, but he just charges right in. If I only had a tenth of that kind of courage, life would be so much easier.
Still, I have him. And that’s pretty good.
“I feel like I need to do something to make up for everything I’ve done.”
“And?”
“I have this idea.”
I swallow and he senses my reluctance, even if he doesn’t know why. This is something I’ve been thinking bout ever since I wound up in this hospital bed.
“I’m yours, Stephanie. Whatever it is, you can tell me. We’ll do it together.”
I smile a bit, because I know that he has no idea what I’m thinking about. And I wouldn’t expect him to. The type of guy he is, the kind of life he’s had, I know for a fact he’s probably never even considered anything even close to what I have in mind.
“I’ll tell you, but I don’t think you’re going to like it. And that’s OK. This is something I’ll do on my own if I have to, but I love you, Luca, and it’d mean a lot if you’d join me.”
He squeezes my hand, gently, and looks into my eyes. There’s so much love there. So much dedication and ferocity.
I know it doesn’t matter what I say, he’s going to say yes.
This man is not leaving me.
“Tell me.”