Page 76 of A Love Most Fatal
I think of the ornate windows, pointed towards heaven, and full of stained glass that I used to stare at for hours of my childhood, tracing the iron lines over colored glass in my mind during weddings, mass, funerals, any time I could.
“There’s a big window of the Virgin Mary in the front of the church. It’s behind where the priest stands, so you can’t miss it. It’s just her. I used to love going to church so I could look at her for a while. When I was nineteen and engaged, I was so excited to get married there beneath her blessing. I didn’t love the man, but I thought I could eventually.”
“You were a baby.”
“Yeah,” I say on a breath. “But we knew by then that I was going to take over for my dad. We thought we had decades, but still, it was only a matter of time. I needed a husband.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “That’s a lot of pressure for a kid.”
“I guess.” I nod. “I remember thinking that even if he never loved me, even if I was doomed to sixty or seventy years of a loveless marriage, Mother Mary would be there for all the bigevents, the baptisms and funerals, and she’d make sure I was still okay. That glass version of her would look out for me.”
“What happened? With the guy. You said he was intimidated by you, right?”
I laugh a bitter sound and feel Nate’s hand on my waist squeeze the slightest bit. I recall telling Nate veiled truths about my failed engagement the night of his cousin’s wedding.
That feels like a year ago, but it’s only been a few months.
“It was our wedding day, and I was in this big white dress—I looked amazing. It was Willa’s dress, she has the best taste—and I had these little white and pink butterfly clips in my hair that my dad gave me.” I recall how bright they looked against my dark hair and the way my mother and sisters painstakingly added them to my braided updo. “I looked like a princess.
“We went through the ceremony, kissed at the altar. He thought he’d won, and he pulled me into a room afterward to laugh at how I looked and tell me exactly what was going to happen now that he had me. How I needed to act and be, and he informed me thathewould be the one to really take over after my father died. And he said I would never be able to do a thing about it, because I was his wife. And if I tried, he’d hurt everyone I loved.”
“Jesus,” Nate whispers. I shrug.
“I believed he would kill them, or take advantage of Mary, who was only sixteen then, or hurt the babies—Willa and Sean were living with us, Artie and Angel were just toddlers.”
“How did you get out of it?” he asks. The song we were dancing to ended and bled into the next. A cover of some romantic Ed Sheeran song that Willa loves. She and Sean dance too, all wrapped up in each other.
I inch closer to Nate, my mouth near his ear so I can speak quieter. Images of that day flash through my mind, images I’ve forced myself to remember, that I won’t allow myself to forget.First, I remember the back of his hand slapping across my cheek hard enough to smear my lipstick, then seeing my shocked reflection in the mirror.
Blood spilled over my lower lip, painting it crimson.You’re mine now.You don’t threaten me, he’d said, and I was so afraid. Afraid of what he would do to me, but more afraid of what he would do to them.
Clean yourself up, he said.We’ve got a reception to get to.
“I killed him,” I say. Nate tenses, but he’s still breathing, releasing a puff of air on my neck. It sends hot chills down my spine.
I remember what it felt like to stab the man through the heart, the smell that made my stomach lurch as he bled all over my white dress, cursing my name as he died.
“He was my first kill. I was protecting my family, and every time since has been to those same ends,” I say. I’m talking so low that I’m barely sure if Nate can hear me over the music and surrounding chatter. “And now he’ll never threaten me or my family again.”
The song comes to an end and the singer speaks into a microphone about picking things up a little bit for the last songs of the night. Nate breaks away from me like I might have burned him.
This is it, I realize; the moment Nate really sees me for who I am. My mouth creeps up into a sardonic smile as he backs away. Of course, he backs away.
He’s not meant for this world, no matter how comfortable he is around my family, or how well he’s pretended to be one of us. He doesn’t belong here, he could never belong here, and I see that in his rigid posture, his tight smile as we politely clap for the live band. The way he can’t meet my eye.
It’s clear to me, and now he’s gotten his reminder, too. This world isn’t meant for him.
It never has been.
27
NATE
It’s notuntil I’m back in my room and under the hot spray of my shower that I finally start to calm down. My heart is still pounding in my ears at Vanessa’s admission. I knew she killed people; I literally watched her kill two men behind my apartment building.
But they’d been attacking us,thatwas heat of the moment self-defense!
As I violently scrub soap across my body, I reason that killing a man threatening your family like a cartoonishly evil villain is also self-defense.