The further away we got from the car the more buoyant he became. He was practically bouncing with every step, and not for the first time over the last six months, I found myself marvelling at this version of him: unguarded, happy, free.
I hurried along beside him, my yellow summer dress whipping behind me. The sun rippled along my arms, and I raised my face to it, letting it splash freckles across my cheeks. ‘I forgot how much I loved summer in the city,’ I said.
Luca nodded his agreement, his blue eyes blazing in the brightness. ‘Some day, we can come back here for good, Soph.’ His voice changed, a shred of darkness creeping in. ‘Just not yet.’
Not yet, I reminded myself. It was too soon to rebuild a life with permanence, a life without threat. For now, everything was not yet.
‘But we have today,’ he said, his lips curving as he looked down on me. ‘We’ll make the most of it.’
Then I saw it. In fact, I would have seen it way sooner if I hadn’t been dissecting every square inch of perfection on Luca’s face. By the time I realized where we were, we were almost inside the Cadillac Palace Theatre. And I was standing directly in front of a giant billboard.
Every word in the English language galloped into oblivion. I was reading the words The Phantom of the Opera and I was trying very hard not to burst into tears. I thought I had sorted that annoying little problem out in recent months, but my heart was hammering in my chest, and my breathing had turned to little spiky inhales and I could feel Luca watching me, waiting for my reaction. I clamped my mouth shut and waited for my emotions to stop bouncing around inside me.
Calm down. Focus. It’s just a musical. It’s not a big deal.
Yes, thank you, rational Sophie.
No. It’s not just a musical. It’s the musical. He’s taking you here because your mother never got a chance to bring you.
‘Sophie?’ Luca was leaning against the wall, his head cocked to one side, watching me. Concern rippled across his forehead. ‘You haven’t said anything.’
Oh God. I could feel my lip quivering.
His hand came to the small of my back – a gentle touch, a current of warmth in my skin as he drew me towards him. The world faded away, until it was just the two of us.
‘Are you happy?’ he asked me quietly. ‘If you’re not happy, we can go.’
‘I’m happy,’ I said. ‘I’m so happy I think I might cry.’
He swiped a renegade tear from my cheek. I averted my gaze, clenching my nails into my palms to stop another one from sneaking out.
‘Are you crying because you have to endure this with me?’ he asked, delicately. ‘That’s it, right?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘You’re just the worst.’
He pulled two tickets out of his pocket and pressed them into my hand. I wrapped my arm around his back, and he kissed the top of my head, his breath ruffling my hair. ‘Happy birthday, Cuore mio.’
If anyone would have told me twelve months ago that I would be in a theatre, watching a giant chandelier swinging towards the ceiling as epic music shook the walls around me and thudded right down inside my heart while sitting shoulder to shoulder with the former boss of the entire Falcone dynasty and actually enjoying myself, I would have called them a dirty liar.
How quickly the world can change.
Months after being shot in the shoulder – after staring death in the face and rolling out from underneath it, after burying my mother and my father, relinquishing every tie to an identity I never wanted and clawing my way out of an underworld that once threatened to consume me, Luca had ignited something I thought I’d lost for ever. The soaring music, the drama, the passion, the sense of being elsewhere and other, of feeling safe and happy and thoroughly content. I felt joy, sitting in that dark room, my arm laid on top of his, our fingers grazing, our heads bent together. When the last song hit its crescendo, my eyes filled with tears, and I let the music sweep me up, away from the badness of the last year, and all the darkness it had left behind. I felt it then – the keenest sense of possibility – surrounding me. This other life – with creativity and art and music and love.
We emerged feeling giddy and breathless. I had a thousand different thank yous waiting on my tongue but they all jumbled together, so instead I grabbed Luca’s hand, pulled him around the side of the theatre and kissed him until I lost my breath.
‘Well,’ he murmured, his finger tracing a line along my bottom lip. ‘I should take you to the theatre more often.’
‘Let’s go home.’ Back to a small, inconsequential town on the edge of Wisconsin that would do for now. Back to not yet.
He wove his arm around my back, his fingers trailing along my waist as we walked. ‘My thoughts exactly.’
We hopped out on to the sidewalk, our footsteps made quicker by desire, our words lost to the thoughts in our head. At the next crossing, we hovered inside a huddle of theatregoers scattering into the evening, and I don’t know quite how, but I sensed it before I saw it. I felt it in the hairs on the back of my neck, in the goosebumps rippling along my bare arms. This feeling that the world was dimming, just a little.
We watched as a familiar black SUV rolled to a stop on the street beside us, the traffic light reflecting bright crimson along the hood of the car.
‘Luca.’ The word lodged in my throat, my heart climbing up to meet it.
He bristled against me, his hand moving behind his back. We stayed frozen like that until the traffic light turned green.