Page 20 of Savage Vows

FORTY-EIGHT HOURS EARLIER…

The train slidesinto the city and spits me back out into the noise. I step onto the sidewalk outside the station and breathe it in. Diesel, hot pretzel carts, wet concrete, a thousand conversations trying to be heard at once. New York feels like it always has, crowded and impatient, a place that forgets you fast if you let it.

I pull my coat tighter and fish out my phone. Julianne’s frantic call sits at the top of my mind like a bruise. I tried her again on the ride in. Nothing. I tried Maksim. Nothing there either. I told myself I would go straight to the house, walk up to the door, and demand answers. Instead I scroll to Bella’s name and hit call.

She picks up on the second ring. “Tell me you’re actually outside and not chickening out in Philly.”

“I’m here,” I say. “Penn. Seventh Avenue side.”

She laughs under her breath. “You sound like trouble. Stay put.”

I tuck the phone away and watch the traffic surge and stall. A street musician works a saxophone near the curb, steady and unbothered by the cold. A couple argues over a suitcase with abroken wheel. I count the yellow cabs until I stop pretending I’m not stalling.

Ten minutes later a dented gray hatchback noses into a gap by the fire hydrant. Bella leans over from the driver’s seat and pops the lock. “Get in before a traffic cop writes my obituary,” she says.

I slide into the passenger seat with my bag on my lap. She looks the same and not the same. Same quick eyes, same chipped black nail polish, hair pulled into a loose knot that should fall apart but doesn’t.

“You look exhausted,” she says, pulling away from the curb. “And like you haven’t eaten something that isn’t from a vending machine in two days.”

“I had coffee.”

“That is not food.” She glances at me. “You really came back.”

“I had to.”

She doesn’t ask why. She knows me well enough to let silence do its work for a block or two. We pass a florist shoving buckets of tulips onto the sidewalk, a deli with a line that snakes out the door, a man selling umbrellas even though the sky is only threatening rain.

“Are you going to them tonight?” she asks finally.

I watch the city smear by the window. “Not yet. I want a shower and an hour to think without voices in my ear.”

“Good,” she says. “You can have both. And a bagel. And a couch if you need to crash.”

“Thanks.”

She drums her fingers on the steering wheel. “You heard anything from your sister?”

“No.”

“Maksim?”

“Nothing.”

Her mouth tightens. “Alright. We start with food and a plan. Then you tell me how deep you’re in with whatever mess dragged you back.”

I stare at a sliver of sky between buildings. “Deep enough.”

Bella nods once, like she was ready for that. “I’m right there with you, you know that, right?”

I don’t reply, partly because I don’t want her anywhere near my mess.

A light turns green and the car rolls forward. I let my head rest against the seat and breathe in the smell of her cheap vanilla air freshener and city air leaking through the vents. I’m home, if that is still the word, and the ground already feels like it wants to shift under my feet.

“Bagel first,” Bella says. “Then war.”

We take the first turn off Seventh and end up in a bagel place that smells like warm bread and burnt coffee, the kind of corner shop that forgets to wipe the sugar off the counter but always gets the order right. Bella orders for both of us without asking, and I don’t fight her. My hands are still cold from standing outside the station and I need the heat of a paper cup to give them something to do.

She watches me while the espresso machine hisses. “I can take you back to my place,” she says. “Shower, sleep, the good towels. My mother will feed you like she’s been waiting all year.”