Page 101 of Reckless Woman
I see what our child might have looked like had they survived.
I need to find Joseph.
I glance at the clock. It’s ten p.m.Didn’t Gabriela say he spent his evenings by the pool?
Rising from the bed, I wash my face before heading downstairs. The house is quiet tonight, the atmosphere tense and expectant, but when I reach the pool area, only the moon and stars are waiting for me.
Frustrated, I kick my sandals off and sit down on the edge to wait for him, slipping my feet into the cool water. The rippling surface reflects a distorted sky. He always demands we own our badness, when in truth his father has always owned his. He’s never had a chance to know anything different. It’s what’s pushed him deeper into places where people like Santiago dwell.
Before I can stop myself, I’m sliding, feet-first, into the water. My black dress billows up around my waist, and then we’re sinking like a stone. When I reach the bottom, I scull my hands to keep me in the depths until my lungs are raw and burning. There’s a scream rising up inside me for two broken people who never set out to be law breakers and murderers. A man and a woman who found love in a dangerous place, and how I’m such a fucking idiot for letting it all slip through my fingers.
There’s a violent force in the water behind me. My eyes spring open as an arm wraps around my waist and drags me upward. We break the surface together, coughing and spluttering, and wiping droplets from our eyes.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he roars, pushing me against the side of the pool, crowding me out with the size of his body and the strength of his anger. “Next time you want to commit suicide, do it in a more public place. That way, I can save you quicker.”
I love how he can still love, despite all the hate in his world.
I justlove him.
“You always save me,” I whisper, wrapping my arms around his neck and pressing my lips to his. His mouth is a frozen fortress, and then it’s a welcome home sign as he drives his tongue between my teeth to explore every inch of my mouth.
“I thought I’d lost you.” He groans into the kiss, reluctant to break away fully.
“You can’t lose the moon,” I say, wrapping my legs around his waist, too. “She’s always there.”
“You turned blue for a while.”
“I’m not so blue anymore.”
He kisses me again, more violently this time, tearing at my lip with his teeth.
“I’m so fucking sorry, Anna. You deserve—”
“I take it all,” I say shakily. “The guns, the bullets, the scars, if it means I can have you.”
“You’ll always have me.”
We rise from the water, still locked together. He carries me up the pool’s steps and toward the house, with me wrapped around his body and dripping. Just before we go inside, I see a flash of white over his shoulder and I swear I see a little boy grinning at me.
* * *
He laysme down on the bed and peels the wet clothes from my body. When I try to hide my scars, he pins my wrists to the mattress, before kissing every single one of them.
“Don’t,” he murmurs. “They made you live. I’m going to worship every single one of them until the day we die.”
“We?” I say, frowning up at him. “I don’t think death offers a two for one deal, Joseph.”
I catch a brief smile before his head disappears inside his wet T-shirt. “You can’t get away from me that easily.”
When he drops his jeans, he’s hard already. Thick and long, bobbing in front of me like temptation and terror.
“What if I can’t do this?” I say, panicking suddenly. “I know the doctors said it should be fine, but what if—?”
“Hush.” He leans over to mute my fears with another kiss. “I just want to lie with you, Anna. To feel your skin against mine, heartbeat to heartbeat. Everything else will fall into place in time.”
Lying down next to me, he pulls me into his arms. With his breath heating up the nape of my neck, his hand skims downward and flattens against my largest scar.
“I thought you didn’t care about the baby,” I whisper. “I thought I was trapped in a town called grief all on my own.”