Page 23

Chapter Twenty

Vanessa

My head hurts and my stomach hurts, but my chest feels lighter than smoke as I stand at the window and watch the scene below unfold. The unbelievable scene.

The Wyvern— the Wyvern—is playing basketball with my youngest three brothers. Him and Luca against David and Emmanuel. I’m in my childhood home, my fingers playing with the same pale-pink curtains that have been here ever since I moved from my previous short-term foster house. I moved between three of them before the caseworker assigned to me brought me here. It was only supposed to be temporary, too, so for the longest time I didn’t let myself get my hopes up.

The place I lived in before all that—the one the Wyvern just burned to dust—was in the unincorporated township outside of Sundale. It’s mostly abandoned now. I’d never been back. I’d never even Google Mapped it. But seeing it burn to the ground made me wonder why I hadn’t done that already. I made okay money right out of college. I could have afforded a few boxes of lighter fluid ...

But would it have been epic, though? Because being there with the Wyvern was surreal.

Not just because he burned it so efficiently, but because it was as if he took a branding rod to a wound that was raw and open and full of pus, and scarred it over instantly. The blackened earth looked incredible from the sky. Flying with him, feeling his arms smooth and steely around me, was ... impossible. And just right.

And now, standing in my childhood bedroom—my real childhood bedroom—watching his insanely muscled body on the basketball court below, I can’t help but feel like he loaned me a little bit of his strength out there on those abandoned country roads. Maybe more than that. He gifted it to me, if I was being honest with myself, and it felt happily given.

I’ve never liked asking people for things. I dislike the feeling that I’m forcing someone to do something they otherwise wouldn’t want to do. But I don’t get that feeling with Rollo. I never get the sense that he’s doing a chore, being with me, doing things with me, taking me on dates, being here, playing basketball with my brothers—burning down my house. He seemed like he enjoyed that and like he’s enjoying this too.

“This is fucked up!” Mani shouts. He curses a long string of Spanish words, half of which are muffled through the glass, but I still laugh as he gets all up in Rollo’s face and Luca—Luca, of all people—shoves him off. Mani turns his ire on Luca then and takes off his backward baseball hat, throws it on the ground. It takes me to then to realize that he’s dripping with sweat. All my brothers are. And Rollo doesn’t seem to be sweating at all.

“They seem to be having fun, don’t they?” Elena’s voice is soft and doesn’t make me jump. I don’t know where she got the ability, but she can enter any room, even one she hasn’t been invited into, and make everyone within it feel warm and welcome. I think that’s what made me first realize that I could live here. Stay here. And be a part of this family that was already so much family without feeling totally like an outsider.

I half turn to face her, not willing to relinquish sight of the scene unfolding as David tries to cut between Mani and Luca. Meanwhile, Rollo doesn’t seem to be helping matters. He seems to be instigating things, egging Luca on.

“He’s just as bad as they are,” I say, laughing a little.

Elena grunts. “A perfect addition.” She moves to stand next to me and looks out the window until I turn my attention to her more fully. “You slept most of the day, nina.”

I nod. “Yeah.”

“Roland was worried.” Elena gives me a look.

I give her a tight smile. “Thanks for letting him sleep in the bed with me last night.”

Elena rolls her eyes. “I didn’t. Your father couldn’t pry him off with a crowbar. And he tried.” She takes my hand. I notice she has a mug in the other. She slips it into my fingers, and it doesn’t escape me that she’s looking at my face with concern scrawled over hers.

“I don’t remember that.”

“You were out of it when he brought you in. I managed to get you changed and bandaged up the best I could, but I’d like to double-check my work.”

I nod, and Elena tilts my face to the left and right. She reapplies some ointment and gives me a new butterfly suture, then lifts my shirt. Her eyes go round and red. She sniffs once and looks me in the eyes as she fights through whatever words are on her tongue.

“You’re not bleeding anymore, Vanny.” She makes a strangled sound and shakes her head. When the one called number Three grabbed me, either their rings or their nails punctured my skin in several places. The bruises were bad, but the scratches made them look—and feel—a thousand times worse.

“That’s good.”

Elena mutters something under her breath that sounds along the lines of “ Voy a matar al maldito que hizo esto ” ... But before I can call her out for cursing, she sniffs once, straightens up, and pats me tenderly on the uninjured cheek. “I still think I should change the bandages. Let me get you cleaned up. Un segundo.”

Of course Elena does nothing halfway and reapplies huge swatches of gauze to my hips, wrapping bandages all the way around my sides so only my lower back and the space above my groin is visible.

“Is this necessary?” I ask on a hiss. “It’s cold, and as you said already, Mamá, I’m not bleeding anymore.”

“And this isn’t for bleeding. This is for bruising. The gauze is soaked in witch hazel, aloe vera, and a dash of frankincense and cypress essential oils. That’s why you’re getting a smaller one on your cheek,” she says as she places tape over a swatch of gauze that covers my entire right cheek. “We’ll put some ice on it downstairs.” She takes my hand and starts pulling me behind her, and I comply, pulling my baggy sleep shirt down over my leggings to hide the bandages.

“Don’t tell anyone about the hip ones, okay? They freaked out enough about my face.”

“Hm?” she says as we make our way down the stairs. Dark wood, they creak on each step. Always have.

“I know you heard me,” I grumble.

“Sorry, you know how hearing goes when you start to get old.”

“Mamá!” I gasp and shake my head, nearly dropping my mug full of a special spiced tea she always served us whenever we were sick as children. I clutch it for strength now, really hoping she’s bluffing. Rollo didn’t get a full look at my hips, which look worse than they feel, given how focused he was on my face, which feels worse than it looks.

Her eyes are crinkled at the corners as we reach the bottom of the stairs. From here you can hear my brothers, my dad, and Rollo shouting at each other outside more clearly. “Drink your tea, mi amor.”

I drink.

“And tell me the truth. You promise me, Vanny, it wasn’t Rollo who hurt you?”

I choke, tea spraying from my lips. “No. God, no.”

She frowns. “I’ll let that slide, but next time, you owe me five. And good. I didn’t think so, and don’t worry—it didn’t even cross your father’s or your brothers’ minds. I just know that sometimes men and women can be very different in public than they are in private. I just wanted to be sure.”

“He ... we ... I ...”

She gives me a dull look, rolling her eyes and sweeping her fingers back through her thick black hair. She’s got freckles on her nose that I’ve always wished were mine. I don’t know how she manages to look fifteen years younger than she should, but she glows with magical light.

“Por favor, you do not need to tell me everything, but you will not lie to me, Vanny. That boy is head over heels in love with you. No convincing me otherwise. What you tell yourself is one thing, but I know what I see with my own eyes.”

I duck my head into my shoulders, feeling exposed but wanting ... wanting to believe her. “I like him too.”

Elena smiles at me, and this time I’m sure she’s never smiled at me in quite this way. “I know.”

“He would never hurt me.”

She nods. “Then why have you not told him who did this to you yet?”

I wince, my hand going up to cradle my hurt cheek. I could tell her that Roland didn’t push and so I just didn’t offer, but that would only be a partial truth. Very partial. Because after the ashes literally settled and my mind fired all night long, I kept coming back to something. Something small.

Number Three didn’t call Roland by his name, not once. Instead they called him number Sixty-Two.

Three. Sixty-Two ... Forty-Eight?

The math wasn’t mathing, unless Three was referring to something else, and I needed to decide how to wrap up my suspicions with words and then further decide who to share those words with.

They could be dangerous.

But only if I’m right.

I shake my head and shudder. “I ... I’m ... it’s confidential.” She looks so disappointed when I say that, even though she nods, that I tell her something I shouldn’t at all. I lean in and whisper, “Mamá, I ... met someone who shouldn’t exist. I can’t say more. I need to talk to Roland and the COE first.”

Her faded eyebrows pull together; her voice mellows into a hush. “Mi amor, are you in danger?”

“I don’t know. The person ... something about them was wrong. I’ll tell you when I can, I promise.” If I can. “When it’s safe.”

My mamá nods and glances toward our front door, which hangs open, guarded by a magnetic screen through which I can see the boys in the driveway clearly. “You stay close to that boy then, princesita. At least until you know for sure.”

“I will.”

“You trust him?”

“I do.” And then I huff, “You probably think I’m crazy, though, huh? Trusting one of the Forty-Eight?”

Elena smiles softly. She glances at the door again. “He told us what he did for you ... to that place.” She makes the sign of the cross over her chest, and for once, I know she’s not making that sign because he’s an alien.

I tense, but not for as long as I should. In fact, my initial hesitation at the mention of that wretched place feels more like a trained reaction. But when I think about that place? Really think? I don’t feel anything about it at all. Just the shadow of a ghost of terror. When Elena mentions it, the words in my head are no longer in that terrible woman’s voice; they’re in mine.

“Roland may be special, pero es un buen hombre.”

I beam at her, my lower lip pinching as the butterfly bandage stretches. I’m immediately annoyed when my eyes tear up again . I throw my arms around her shoulders and squeeze her shorter frame against my body with all the love I have in me. “This family is the best thing that ever happened to me, and I don’t want anything bad to happen to you because of me. I love you, Mamá.”

Elena’s whole body softens like butter. She hugs me back ferociously. “No, honey. We didn’t come into your life. You came into ours. You are the best thing that happened to us . We love you so much. I love you so much.” She pulls back, and her eyes are glossy as they dart to the window, where the sound of the ball against the pavement lets me know that the game has restarted. “And maybe, just maybe, I might be willing to share a little of your love with the right person.”

“Roland’s not really a person, technically.”

She swats my shoulder and points to the door, but she still doesn’t make the sign of the cross. I take that as a good start and laugh as she says, “Now go. Go outside and break up the brawl before your brothers hurt your novio, or accidentally hurt themselves on your novio.”

She flutters her hand toward me and heads toward the kitchen, leaving me to shuffle through the magnetic screen guarding the open front door. After admiring the doorknob, which is still misshapen from the very first time Roland met my parents, my attention pulls toward the sound of a basketball hitting pavement. I look up and whoosh .

Rollo is standing near the center of my parents’ circular driveway, coming down from a jump shot that would count for a lot more than three points if this were a regulation-sized court because the hoop is all the way on the other side of the driveway. His bright-red sneakers hit the pavement, and I know they aren’t his because he was wearing his uniform before with the shoes built in, and I feel some kinda warmth rise in my chest at the knowledge that one of my brothers must have loaned them to him.

He hits the ground. My dad’s standing closest to the basket and nabs the ball as it drops cleanly through the hoop. It looks like it’s all four of them against Rollo. I can’t help the smile that envelops my face and soothes my soul. I feel the same way I did watching that blackened patch of earth from the sky, tucked inside the world’s strongest arms.

My brothers are all waving Roland off. Luca is muttering under his breath. Mani, who’s the most competitive among the bunch—after Luca—is shouting, “That’s not fucking fair! We said no jump shots!”

“All his shots are jump shots. We said no flight shots.” David might be defending him but sounds just as pissed. My dad passes him the basketball, and David tucks it under his arm. He points at me. “Your boyfriend cheats.”

I try to suppress my grin but can’t. I like the way my body heats when David says that. “I take it that means my boyfriend is winning?”

“Heaven help me.” My dad shakes his head and punches the ball out of David’s grip. It hits the ground, and he dribbles once, twice, turns, and shoots ... The ball bounces off the rim. “He has a name. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you all used it.”

Mani runs for the ball while Luca and David turn toward me. David is closest. His hair is damp with sweat and brushes the tops of his shoulders. I glance at Rollo. He’s smiling with one half of his mouth cocked up, his head tilted a little to the side. He looks almost wistful. Boyish, even.

Happy, most of all.

“Do you mind them calling you my boyfriend? Or me?” I ask him.

Rollo’s expression shifts. His hand, which had been touching his naked chest, tantalizingly trailing over his abdomen, drops to the band of his basketball shorts. He swallows and shakes his head, then reconsiders on a nod. “Actually, yes. I do mind.”

“You do?”

“Thank heavens,” my dad mutters.

“Yeah.” He takes a step toward me that raises the temperature of the air surrounding us. “Only because you won’t let me call you wife yet.”

“That ain’t happening,” my dad all but snarls. He passes his hand over his coiled curls.

I laugh loudly . I don’t usually laugh like this, and I can see the surprise on my brothers’ faces take root for a second before they start laughing too. “You all should mind! That’s your baby sister. You’re my baby girl, and you’re too young to be dating.”

I scoff—well, I would have if I weren’t still laughing. Meanwhile, Luca’s coming closer and closer to me. Reaching me, he picks me up and spins me around, making me laugh even harder. “This girl? You think this girl’s too young to date? She’s an old lady and gettin’ older every day! It’s about damn time she found an old man.”

“ I’m her old man. Now put that young girl down before her boyfriend lights your pants on fire.”

Luca drops me, and I wince but still chuckle out, “He’d probably just melt your shoes to the ground.”

“Shit, you can do that?” Luca says over his shoulder. He reaches into his pocket and steps back toward the driveway. He fishes out his phone. “Go on. Do it then, boyfriend.”

“What?” I’m still chuckling, even as I bite through the pain. “Why?”

“So I can film it! I’ll tell the world the Wyvern melted my shoes to the ground because I beat him in a game of ball.”

“You little shit,” Roland says from a crouched position on the ground, retying his shoelaces and shocking the hell out of me, making me smile so wide I can’t control the muscles in my face. I can believe he’d cuss out my brothers, sure, but not that he’d do it in a joking way given how recently they were actually trying to well, you know ... kill each other. “You know as well as I do, I beat you guys forty to two.”

“Only because you cheat!” Emmanuel shouts.

“Is this still going on?” Elena comes out carrying a large tray covered in glasses of her famous lemonade that’s actually lemongrass, sage, and agave and doesn’t taste that bad if you ignore the earthy flavor—i.e., it tastes like grass. On the tray, she’s got two ice packs for me. “What are you doing still standing up, corazóncita? Sit.” She kicks the side of the rocking chair next to the front door intentionally and conspicuously.

“Mamá, I don’t need it now. It can wait. Your wraps are doing enough.”

She sets her tray down on the table between the two rocking chairs on her porch. She hands me the ice packs, trying to fight me to get them into the waistband of my sweats. “Mamá, quit it!” I shout on a laugh.

“What is this?” She curses in Spanish. “You already messed it up?”

“Sh ... Luca picked me up.” I see the flap of a bandage peeling away from my skin. Elena starts to pull it free while I fight with my shirt and her to push it back into place. “It’s fine. See? Look.”

“Did I hurt you, Vanny? Shit. I’m sorry, hermanita.” Luca’s voice makes me cringe. I give Elena my best glare.

“What?” she mouths back at me.

“It’s fine. Elena just redid my bandages,” I start, but when I turn, I crash into Roland, spinning directly into his grip. He grabs the edges of my T-shirt. Elena moves away as Roland lifts my shirt up and then higher. He reaches for one edge of a bandage, peels it back, has a look. He does the same to the other side. His nostrils flare both times, but his expression otherwise doesn’t change.

He meets my gaze and lowers slowly into a crouch. With his height and my lack thereof, he ends up eye level with my hips. He kisses the one on the left, over the bandage, and then the one on the right, over the bandage through my T-shirt, while Luca makes gagging sounds. I don’t care about that now, though. Not as Rollo tugs the bottom of my tee into place and looks up at me with eyes that flare orange as they flick to my lip. Not pink. Not white. Orange.

“Are you ready to leave soon?” His voice is hollow. I can’t read the emotion behind it. His calm is frightening.

I nod. “Yeah.”

“Drink your tea or ... whatever that is,” he says. Behind him my brothers chuckle and Elena scoffs. “Let me get cleaned up, and I’ll meet you back here in five. You got all your stuff?” I nod, but he knows that. When he brought me here, I didn’t have any stuff, and neither did he.

He takes my hand in his and rubs his thumb across the backs of my knuckles before quickly brushing a kiss across them. Caught in his shadow now as he stands, I watch him openly assess my face. I know he’s looking at the bruises and the bandage Elena placed on my cheek and the much smaller one on my lip. The bleeding might have stopped, but the bruising is still there.

“They’re better today. I’m better,” I whisper. My lips quirk. “I’m actually feeling pretty good, not that I believe you’ll believe that.”

A muscle in his cheek ticks. He twists his neck only very slightly, but I still hear the crack. His hand reaches for me, passing over the back of my head and tangling in my curls. He leans in and breathes against my cheek, “You might be fine, but I’m not. We’re gonna go home and get in our bed, and you’re gonna fuck me, and I’m gonna be gentle, but first we’re gonna have a talk about exactly what happened.”

I squeak but don’t want to give anything away in front of my family, so I let Roland go after kissing me on the forehead. My brothers stand around and watch me with eye rolls and frustrated stares. They haven’t tried to ask me about what happened. Besides, Elena’s the biggest gossip here. Elena will tell them what’s okay to share.

“You sure you’re gonna be okay, kiddo?” my dad says, taking a seat in the other rocking chair after I drop down into the first.

“Yeah. When I took this contract, I just didn’t realize that ...”

“That?” my dad prompts while my brothers pick up playing and arguing; I don’t know which they enjoy more.

“That it’d be dangerous. I mean, I know I read all those waiver forms back to front and back again, but I just didn’t really realize that this is real. There are real villains.”

My dad is frowning at me, rocking in his chair. He takes a sip of his lemonade, makes a face, and says the last thing I expect. “You want this contract? You want to do this work?”

I nod. “Yeah.” Without question.

“With him?”

“Yes.”

“Then you stay close to that boy. Don’t let him out of your sight.”

“That’s what Elena said. You really think so?” I smile sheepishly, not used to talking about boys with William.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because.” The front door opens, and my dad raises a salt-and-pepper brow. “That boy made me a promise, and I believe him. You could do worse for a boyfriend, Vanny, but just so you know, if he even thinks of marrying you without asking me first for permission, I don’t care who he is, I’m gonna sock him good.”

He’s speaking loudly enough for Roland to hear him as he reappears through the screen door. He snorts and shakes his head in my dad’s direction but remains undaunted as he walks up to me wearing borrowed sweats that are too short and a T-shirt that’s too tight. “You ready, Nessa?”

I nod and take his hand when he offers it.

Before I leave the porch, I plant a kiss on William’s cheek. “Bye, Dad. Thanks for letting us crash.”

“You know the rules, Vanny. No couples sleeping together who aren’t married.”

I’m about to respond, but Rollo wraps his arm around my shoulder and shouts over his, “Don’t worry, William. I’m planning on fixing that!”

“You little shit.”

My brothers laugh and wave us off as we pile into Vinny’s car; he leaves one here for whenever he’s in town. I haven’t forgotten Rollo’s promise, and I hate myself for what I’m going to say next.

“Rollo?”

“Yeah?” he says as he pulls onto the highway.

“As much as I want to take you up on your offer of gentle sex, there’s somewhere we need to go first.” I pull out my cell phone and dial Mr. Singkham’s private line. He answers on the third ring, and I’m still looking at Roland as I say, “Mr. Singkham, I’m sure my team has told you that I was attacked. Yes ... yes. And yes. We need a meeting ... right now.”