Page 55 of The Mafia's Christmas Baby

“I'm not a package to be moved,” she says.

Her voice shakes once and then strengthens like a muscle that remembers what it's for.

“I'm not a problem to be solved. I'm a person who feeds you and stitches you and keeps your cover when two officers decide my voice is their business.”

“I know,” I say, and I mean it enough that it burns.

“I know what you are. I know I'm asking you to let me be the wall for once.”

Her eyes shine and not from tears.

Light hits them and stays.

She puts her hand flat on my chest where the rosary ink sleeps under cotton.

The pulse jumps.

I don't mean to cover her hand with mine.

I do it anyway.

“I told you once that I'm not the kind of woman who lets a man bleed in the street,” she says. “Don't ask me to be the kind of woman who lets a man run her life because the street is scary.”

“Then let me stand in it with you,” I say.

The plea is in my throat before I tidy it. “Forgive me for the parts I did wrong. Let me back in, Elisa. Let me be where you are.”

She takes a breath that shakes a little at the end.

For a second, I think she will turn and walk away because people have limits and I have tested hers twice.

Instead she pushes me, palms at my shoulders, enough to make me take one step back.

It's not rejection.

It's space she claims so when she closes it again, it belongs to her choice.

“Don't make promises you can't keep,” she says.

The words are firm.

The hand at my shirt is not.

“I'm not promising the world,” I say. “I'm promising me.”

She looks at me like she is grading the sentence, then reaches.

I meet her halfway because I have been waiting since the first time she steadied my hands in a bad light.

Her mouth is warm and certain.

The kiss is not gentle.

It's careful the way a lock is careful when it finally takes the right key.

She makes a sound in her throat that I will hear when I'm old if I'm lucky.

I say her name and she pulls me down harder, fingers at my collar, forgiveness arriving the way storms do when the pressure finally breaks.