Page 33

HURRICANE

SANTINO

“ A nd now, do you, Santino Antonio D’Alessio Donahue, take Vanessa Annabelle Watson to be your lawfully wedded wife, for the second time? To have and to hold from this day forward, in sickness and in health, forsaking all others, till death do you part?”

It was a beautiful day. The sun was blue, the sky was yellow.

Vanessa, his bride, stood before him dressed in her cape and body-hugging outfit, now all white and made of lace.

They stood holding hands at the altar of the cathedral.

The choir above them was invisible but singing loudly.

He had to speak even louder or else they would drown him out.

Vanessa’s hands in his were slippery for some reason, like they’d been slathered in baby oil. Santino looked down at them and back up into her eyes. They were shining with such light they could have blinded him, were blinding him.

“Oh hell yeah…Hell yeah, I do!” he shouted over the noise of the choir, which kept growing louder and higher with discordant notes.

But her hands…. He couldn’t keep his grip on them.

And as they slipped out of his, he grasped tighter, a sensation of panic starting to ripple through him when an alarm bell started sounding in the distance.

He smelled smoke. It was curling up toward the ceiling, but it wasn’t sweet like incense. It was acrid, and choked him.

“Vanessa, wait,” he called out, his voice betraying that growing anxiety.

She didn’t stop, kept retreating. The alarm was closer, louder, right next to his ear. Vanessa was still smiling but floating backward and away, away from him and his outstretched arms.

“Wait,” he cried out, coughing as the smoke thickened his throat and choked his lungs. “You didn’t say your vows. You didn’t say them! Vanessa, wait!

Behind her, the doors blew open, and the yellow of the sky was now flame.

It outlined her lithe body in a silhouette, showing him everything he ached to possess again.

Santino ran, ran hard and fast, but it was as if he were standing still.

Before he could reach her, she lifted up into the sky, cape fluttering wildly, then shot upward and away out of his grasp.

She became the blinding sun, scorching him where he stood.

Santino woke up with a start. Vanessa was nestled against him on his left, peaceful and beautiful with big, messy careless curls.

To his right, on the nightstand, his phone was blaring.

Before he could pick it up, the call ended.

The number was restricted, yet again, and there was no indication that the caller had left a voicemail.

His heart was still racing. He lay next to her for a while until his pulse slowed and the dream receded.

He was actually a little angry with his own subconscious for doing this to him.

After last night, after finally being inside Vanessa again when it had been all he could think about since their separation, he’d expected to wake up satisfied and stoked about how beautiful it had been.

It wasn’t the first time he’d had wild dreams like that.

He’d been having dreams of fantastical things happening since childhood.

Those dreams were the inspiration for his drawings.

When he met Vanessa, she became the star of gentler dreams, sometimes sexy, sometimes adventurous.

But they’d become different, more anxious since the breakup, usually involving Vanessa in danger.

But why was he having the danger dream now, when things were going so good between them, finally? Was it a coincidence that they were integrating with these fucking weird calls?

He ran through his history, and there’d been more than he’d thought, at least two or three a day since they’d been in town. Could it be…?

Fuck wondering. He eased himself out of bed, pulled on his boxer briefs and shorts, and took the phone to the living room.

Pausing, he noted the rumbling of his own stomach and figured it would be nice to surprise Vanessa with breakfast in bed, the way he’d done on their honeymoon.

He ordered room service, including the foods he knew she’d say she shouldn’t have but loved, then went outside to the terrace, leaving the sliding door open so he could hear if anyone knocked on the front door.

The skies were several shades of gray. What had been blue the day before was now a fine, light silver with thickening gunmetal and charcoal clouds forming rapidly.

The smell of the river mixed with the scent of fresh incoming rain.

They’d planned to go for a ride on the giant Ferris wheel near the port, but once he saw that first crack of lightning, followed by a rumble in the distance, he figured their activities were going to be indoors that day.

Then he turned his attention to the mystery caller. He tried *69, but it turned up nothing, then merely tried the blocked number directly. No one answered. Looking out over the city skyline and at the green rise of Mont Royal Park, he hit Dom’s number next.

“Yo. How’s Montreal?” Dominic asked, picking up on the first ring.

“Fucking awesome.”

“Things going good with your woman?” He could hear the smile in Dom’s voice, and that made him smile too.

“Fucking awesome. But listen…I was wondering if you’d heard anything new about my old friends on Park Avenue.”

He pictured Dom’s face growing serious, like his own. “Same as usual, which is nothing. I could take a drive down there, see what’s good.”

Santino had to think about it. “Nah. Actually, don’t. If they’re quiet, let’s leave them that way.”

“Why are you asking?” Dom asked.

“I’ve been getting these calls. I haven’t been picking up because the number’s restricted. If it’s not them, I have a good idea who else it might be. I texted that Malone motherfucker a picture, so I know he’s got this number.”

“Want me to go pay him a visit?”

Santino knew what a visit from Dom entailed, and it wasn’t good. “Nah. It’s alright. If it is him, I’ll have a talk with him myself when I get back.” He heard stirring in the other room and Vanessa yawning. “Anyway, I gotta go.”

“Bring me back something.”

“Like what?” he asked with a grin.

“I don’t know. Anything. Something fucking French,” Dom said, and Santino chuckled.

“Alright, something French, you got it. Talk to you later.”

“Later.”

Just as he was ending the call, there was a knock at the door. Room service. Great timing. He passed the bedroom on the way to answer it. Vanessa was sitting up, cross-legged and sleepy-faced, and utterly gorgeous with her tangled hair covering her shoulders and her bare breasts like a mermaid.

“Who’s at the door?” she asked through a big yawn.

“B-b-breakfast, baby.” Santino had no time to pop in for a kiss.

He got to the door to allow the server to wheel in his cart and deposit the trays on the table, then depart.

By the time he brought her tray into the bedroom, Vanessa had pulled her robe on but surprisingly, had done nothing to try and tame her hair.

“I look crazy,” she said, with a grin without a hint of embarrassment. Nadine would tsk at her hair. Natural waves and curls were not “professional,” according to her.

“You look beautiful.” Santino finally got to lean in for that kiss. “Mm. And you taste as good as you look. Here’s breakfast. Everything you should totally not be eating but know you want to.”

She beamed gratitude at him, and his heart flipped. “Thank you. Looks great.”

“Wait…” There was a single pink carnation in a tiny holder on the tray. After he carefully balanced the tray on her lap, Santino took the flower and snapped off half the stem so he could tuck the bud behind her ear. “There you go. Now you look crazy.”

Vanessa giggled and kissed him over the tray. “Shut up.” He joined her after retrieving his own food, and they ate heartily, both apparently starving from the night of exertion. They’d gone at it for hours. There’d been a lot to catch up on.

“You know what this reminds me of?” Vanessa said.

“Aruba?”

She nodded. “Yes. I think about that sometimes. We’ve been to some great places, but that was a standout.”

Thankfully, she didn’t mention the other memories attached to Aruba.

“Of course. That was our first night married. Nothing could top that, except maybe if we had a second honeymoon.”

Santino’s light-heartedness was temporarily clouded by the events of the dream of their second wedding, but one that ended in another separation. Real life would be different. It had to be.

Vanessa, having no awareness of the scenes that had played out in his sleep, glanced up at him almost shyly through her lashes.

That look did him in. “Let’s say hypothetically…

if there was a second wedding, which there won’t be, but hypothetically…

. Where would we go for our honeymoon? What’s the one place in this world you’d want to be? ”

“Wherever you are,” he responded automatically. “Wherever you are is exactly where I’d want to be.”

She popped a piece of fried potato in her mouth and sighed, chewing thoughtfully. “That’s very romantic of you to say. I don’t know. Maybe here. In fact, let’s live here, and eat these dope croissants every single day. I can’t explain it, but I feel different here.”

“Try.”

“It’s probably just being on vacation. No expectations, no responsibilities.

No impossibly tall yardsticks to measure up against.” Her eyes stayed on his face, but something glimmered in them, an echo of something bittersweet.

“I don’t suppose it would feel the same if I were living here. But the fantasies are nice.”

Santino cupped her cheek, drawing his thumb across the delicate curve of her cheekbone. “The next time you marry me, we’re gonna do it in that cathedral over there,” he said, gesturing with his chin in the direction of the basilica.