Page 22 of Little Deaths
“I don’t know about that.” Christophe took a step back but his eyes were flinty. “Have you read his books, Donni?”
All the moisture left her mouth. “No,” she lied.
“Well, maybe you should. Then you’d see what I’m talking about. He’s dangerous. And if I were you, and he were under my roof, I’d be fucking terrified.”
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Dangerous.
The word stayed with her throughout the wake, as free-flowing drink and endless strangers made all the faces blur. She had arranged for an open bar, which might have been an overly generous mistake—Donni had forgotten how much men could drink—but then she thought,fuck it. It was all going to come out of the estate anyway, when the lawyers took everything.
She wondered why Rafe was biding his time to take what he wanted. If he wanted to overpower her, he could—easily. She had felt the strength in his hands when he’d held her upright. That same force could be applied to hold her down. She knew all about men like that, predatory men who liked putting their victims at ease. Conquest was that much more brutal when the victim was helpless and afraid.
(You’re such a beautiful girl)
A scream rose in her throat and she felt all the warmth drain out of her skin, leaving her feeling as if she had been hewn from a wet block of clay. She told the bartender to close the tab out at five o’ clock and to send her the bill. He looked startled when she fled without another word, skirts flaring out behind her as she locked herself in her car, putting her head between her knees to stop the ringing before she even attempted the road.
He's gone, she told herself.You’re safe. He can’t hurt you anymore.
But she kept replaying that ferocious kiss over and over in her mind, and soon she wasn’t even sure whichheit was that was scaring her so much.
Eventually, the lead weight eased from her chest and she could breathe again without hearing bells. She drove home, kicking her heels off first thing, balancing on one leg to massage her sore ankle as she set her clutch on the credenza.
She felt a little better once she was changed into loose shorts and a tank top, with her hair combed back into a big puffy ponytail, the way she’d worn it in junior high. It made her feel girlish and youthful, which was a feeling she experienced less and less these days.
She wondered what she should make herself for dinner. She was starving but so drained emotionally that she seriously considered just eating some olives out of their jar.
The doorbell rang. She padded to it warily, half-wondering if it could be Rafe. Whether she dared turn him away, and if so, whether he wouldlethimself be turned away. Peeking through the peephole, she looked at the man on her porch. He was wearing a uniform of some kind and a cap pulled low, but it was clearly not Rafe.
Her fear spiked a little higher. “Who is it?”
“Food delivery for Adonica Blake.”
She looked over at her cell phone on the counter. “I didn’t order any food.”
“It’s from a Rafael Nicastro,” the man said. “The note says, ‘to keep your energy up.’”
Donni cringed and slowly opened the door, catching a glimpse of blue eyes as the man looked briefly at her before turning away and handing her the bag. “Enjoy, Donni.”
There was a slight irony in his voice that made her wonder if he knew her.
She watched him go, her eyes scanning the hedges impatiently, as well as the houses across the street. No suspicious lurkers, no flashing lights. Just an overly familiar delivery man.
Donni closed and locked the door behind her, leaning against it. Then she looked down at the bag, curious what Rafe had sent her.
Her heart plummeted in her chest when she saw the sealed bowl of pho and a cup of chè ba màu. “Oh,” she said, in a high, quavering voice. It was exactly what she had used to order in her mother’s café as a girl.
Had she told him that? Probably. And he had remembered, just as he’d remembered that she hadn’t eaten anything at the funeral, and known she’d likely abstain at the wake.
It nearly lured her into a false sense of hope that maybe whatever he was planning on doing to her wouldn’t be that bad. A man who wanted to hurt her wouldn’t send her food. And then she nearly laughed at her own stupidity. Because of course he would.
A fleeting moment of sweetness would only enhance the bitter.
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Rafe drove his mother back to the clinic in silence. He’d brought a CD along with him to play in the rental but his mother had closed her eyes at the sound of hard rock and said, “Please turn that off.”
He felt a brief flicker of defiance; for a moment, he wanted to refuse out of a childish desire to shock her into being well, as if cruelty itself could be substituted for a kind of electrotherapy. Then the anger subsided into cool indifference because reality, he knew, didn’t work that way. And neither did wishing.