Page 115 of Sinner Daddy

Midge barked.

One bark. Sharp. The particular high-pitched alarm she reserved for situations that defied her understanding of how the world was supposed to work, which apparently included her person being elevated four feet off the ground without prior authorization. The bark said put her down. The bark said what is happening. The bark said I have not been consulted about this change in protocol and I am filing a formal objection.

But he didn’t put me down.

His voice. Against my neck. Into the warmth of me, into the pulse point where my heartbeat hammered, into the skin that knew his mouth the way it knew its own nerve endings.

His voice broke.

I felt it—the crack in the sound, the fracture in the register that had been steady through gunfire and car chases and interrogations and the flat, declarative delivery of a man who said what he meant and meant what he said. The voice that had read me The Little Prince and called me brave and said come for me, good girl and held steady through every single moment of the last four months cracked open on these words, spoken into my neck with his eyes closed and his arms around me and the test pressed against his skull:

“Dante will finally get to be Godfather.”

The laugh that came out of me was wet. Tears and sound together. The laugh and the cry occupying the same breath because the moment was too big for either one alone and needed both. My hand found his hair. The dark strands between my scarred fingers. I held on.

Midge barked again. The objection sustained. The altitude unacceptable. The world completely, irreversibly changed.