Page 26 of Shame

“You’re one fine woman, Elena. I should’ve found you when you were younger. We would’ve made pretty children together.”

She scoffs, and so do I.

“You,” she spits, “a father? You couldn’t nurture a snake.”

It grows silent, and in the quiet house, my worry grows. Did she go too far? Is he going to hurt her? I know without a doubt I’d throw myself in there if he did. I also know I’d die, but I don’t care.

“I guess you’re right.”

His voice is subdued. Nothing like the mafia boss I met a week ago. In that moment there’s something human to the cruel beast that is Salvatore. I don’t have to see him to know it. It’s the one thing he wants. A child. I would laugh, hadn’t it been so beyond fucked up. Why does he think he should have the honor to care for a new little life? A shudder runs through me as I think of the hallucination with the spiders. He’d breed a monster, he’d raise a new Luciano.

I tiptoe back to my room, my back crawling from knowing he’s here, so near, but I make my way back safely. I don’t sleep the rest of the night, though. He is everywhere. He permeates my whole life. I wish Lucas was here. My blond, strong man with the warm hands and soft blue eyes. I want to listen to his rich voice as he reads to me, hour after hour. I want to just snuggle in and be little again. We’ve only held hands, and I don’t even know what he thinks about me, but in this moment my whole being aches for him to be here.

Lucas

Her bruises fade a little more each passing day, and her soft, exotic beauty returns. I love seeing her face like this, without makeup. It makes her look her age. I was shocked to learn she’s younger than I am, only eighteen. She’s lived such a hard life and it has made her see the world through her own set of glasses, and they’re not rose-tinted.

Reading to her keeps the questions at bay, the self-doubt, the nauseating knowledge of what I almost did. I fill the room with words, paint another realm between us. It’s more fascinating to look at her response to the story than the story itself is. It actually bores me a little, it just goes on and on. So much text and so little action.

“So, Lucas,” she says one day as I’m about to leave, “you come here a lot. Did you take the matron up on the offer?”

I frown. “What offer?” I have no idea what she’s talking about.

“To be with the girls, silly.”

I inhale sharply. “No! I’d never—”

“Be with a whore?”

“It’s not that…”

“You don’t like sex?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then why not?”

I’m sweating. The room is suddenly infinitely hotter. “I don’t think of them that way.”

“They’re good girls, Lucas. Kind. Clean. You’d have a good time.”

I dart back to her side and stare down at her. “I don’t want to be with any of them.”

“Why?”

“Because… because I… I just don’t.”

I am so close to telling her that all I dream of is her, that all I see when I close my eyes at night is her delicate hands, her big brown eyes, her rare smile.

“You’re a funny guy. When was the last time you had sex?”

I swallow. “A while.”

“And how long is ‘a while’?”

“About six or seven months, I think.”

“Wow.”