Giovanni just dragged us with him into the parking garage where we’d parked earlier and pushed us up the ramp.
I’d let him drive. Now, I couldn’t remember why. But as I climbed into the back of his Escalade with my spookily silent girlfriend, I was grateful. As much as I wanted to rid myself of Gio and this night entirely, at least I could wrap my arms around Mia. At least I could tip up her chin to gaze into her eyes.
Dark, empty pools reflected back at me.
“Mia.” The fear was back, stronger than ever. He could warn me of death threats, and I’d only be marginally afraid. No one would touch her in my presence. I would die for her without thought, without question.
Staring into her eyes now, I wondered if she’d gotten there first.
“What’s wrong with her?” Giovanni demanded, throwing the vehicle into reverse and rocketing out of the lot with a squeal of tires.
I don’t know. I couldn’t find the words. She was in my arms, but she was just…gone.
A tremor went through me and I lowered my forehead to hers. Softly, I breathed against her mouth until I heard hers hitch as if she’d begun to inhale and exhale once again. Her eyelids shut, blocking me from the vast expanse of nothing her eyes had become.
“Is she okay?” Giovanni asked, taking another corner so fast that the vehicle skidded. “Goddamn you both, fucking talk to me.”
“I’m okay,” she said hollowly, and it was as if a stranger had spoken. She looked like Mia, sounded like Mia, but she wasn’t the girl I loved. She was a facsimile, a passable reproduction.
Giovanni glanced at me in the rearview mirror, and in his gaze were the questions I would never answer. He knew, as I did, that Lorenzo had hit on something she couldn’t bear. All people have weak spots, places too sensitive too touch. Mia’s was an exposed nerve, raw and aching. Even a wisp of air brushing the root was enough to make it throb.
No amount of camouflage makeup or thick layers of scar tissue would ever be enough to cushion the agony.
“Where am I taking you?” He slowed slightly to swerve around a lumbering bus before punching the gas again.
I rubbed my cheek against hers, struggling against the helplessness that seemed to seize me all too often. Where were we going? Where had I started this goddamn night? Nothing made sense in my jumbled brain. I just wanted to be in the dark with Mia, every part of our skin touchi
ng, her breaths mine. I would heal her the only way I knew how. Not with sex, or words.
Just with the therapy of her heartbeat matched to mine.
“The gym.” That’s where all of this had begun. And before that, with my mother. With welts of blood blooming under her skin and gushing freely under mine.
“No,” he said softly.
My gaze lifted to his again. And held. I didn’t understand everything he was trying to nonverbally communicate. Hell, any of it.
“It’s not a good idea for you to go back there tonight. Let me drive you both home. Tomorrow, I’ll pick you up, take you to your car.”
Arguing would take more strength than I had left. I felt drained, as if I’d fought a succession of increasingly larger opponents. Each one escalating the level of pain until it was on scream. Eventually it reached a point where numbness was the only recourse.
I was so fucking there.
“Okay.” I rattled off her address—my address now—and drew her tighter against me. If I could, I’d absorb her tissue and bone into mine, reinforce it until she became whole again.
But I didn’t have that option, and hell, I wasn’t even close to whole myself.
She curled into me, her nose bumping my chin, her ice-cold hands disappearing into the folds of my shirt. It was the closest to a reaction I’d received since getting into the truck with her, and I sighed as I rubbed my cheek over her hair.
And discovered Gio was watching us through the rearview again, his gaze thoughtful.
“What?”
“I never saw it. With you two. I mean, I saw the sparks. Everyone does. But this…I guess I didn’t think it was possible.”
Indignation smothered the crushing weight of…nothing. That blissful beyond that held nothing but dark. If not for my fear for Mia, it would swallow me whole.
“That she could love me?” My lips felt too thick and clumsy, but somehow I formed them around the words. They were important. “That I could love her?”