I held her up, feeling her squeeze around me so tight it hurt, so tight I almost couldn’t last. I lost it with her, groaning against her mouth, hands gripping her so hard I’d leave marks.We collapsed together, tangled, all sweat and shudder and aftershock. Her hair was a mess, her face red and shining; I’d never seen her so gorgeous, so fucking alive.
After a while, our breathing slowed. I set her down on the garage chair, pulled her pants back up, rubbed her arms to fight the chill. She just laughed, wild and unguarded, and buried her face in my neck.
“It’s freezing,” she said. “We have a perfectly good bed inside.”
“I told you,” I said. “I get to have you whenever I want. And I wanted you then.”
She leaned in, chin on my shoulder, and for a minute we just sat, wrapped up and shivering, her pulse still racing under my hand. Then she straightened, wiped her cheeks where the cold and sex had made her eyes water, and buttoned her jeans one-handed.
“We should go in before Marco finds us like this,” she said, voice light but shaky.
I grinned, zipped up, and picked insulation out of her hair. “You think he doesn’t know? I bet he’s listening at the door right now.”
She swatted me. “Can we please have one moment that isn’t a Moretti family sitcom?”
“Never.” I grinned wider, but the truth was, I didn’t want to let her go. I wanted to stay right here, holding her, pretending the world wasn’t out to erase us once we got back on the road. I kissed her, slow and soft this time, then carried her through thesnow to the house, arms tight around her like I could keep her from slipping away.
Inside, the heat was almost too much, steaming off our skin and leaving us dizzy. We stomped our boots and tried to look normal as we tumbled into the kitchen, but Marco was right there, perched at the island with a bowl of dry Froot Loops, watching us with the deadpan judgment only a man on opiates could manage.
“Could you keep it down next time?” he said, not looking up. “It’s like Animal Planet in here.”
Jade went scarlet; I just laughed, shook the snow from my hair, and ruffled his. “Next time you can join in,” I said, and he gagged. Good. Let him have something to hold over me. Let him feel like there would be a next time, a whole future of embarrassment and Froot Loops and inside jokes.
When Jade ducked into the bedroom, Marco dropped the act and fixed me with a look that cut through the air. “So, Big Brother. You got a plan yet?”
“She wants to take you to a hospital in Toronto,” I said.
He grunted, shrugged. “Fine by me. I’m tired of smelling like a murder scene.”
“It’s risky.”
He gave me the look again: Isn’t everything, with us? But then he glanced down the hall and sobered up. “You gotta look after her, man,” he said. “You think you’re the only one freaked about Caruso, about the Feds?”
I nodded. “You think I don’t know that?”
He shook his head. “I just mean…she’s not like us.” Then, softer: “She’s better. Don’t let her get lost in this shit.”
I looked after Jade, and something inside me twisted. She was better.
And something inside me twisted. How could I protect her? How could I protect our son?
What the fuck could I do about it?
It felt like nothing. And that scared the shit out of me.
Chapter 9: Jade
The plan was to get Marco patched up and get out. No drama, no detours, just a surgical strike: Toronto in the rearview before anybody noticed. Instead, the drive up felt like a fever dream—Marco doped to the gills, Dante white-knuckled behind the wheel, the car humming with so much tension it could’ve run on that alone.
Nobody talked. Not that I blamed them. Hours on the highway, numbness in my bones, the world outside smeared by dirty snow and sodium lights. We were chasing the illusion of control: get Marco to the clinic, maybe let them draw some blood from me—“just for a checkup.” Like anything in our lives was ever just for anything.
Toronto rose out of the slush like a dare. Glass towers, slick with sleet, slicing up into the clouds. Would’ve been pretty, if we weren’t barreling for the ER.
Marco broke the silence first, head thunked against the window. “Looks like Gotham threw up.”
Dante actually laughed. It sounded like it surprised him. “You want to Ric Flair strut through the ER, or play it cool?”
Marco didn’t open his eyes. “I’d settle for not faceplanting in the parking lot. Will you wheel me in if I do?”
