Page 23 of Don’t Say Mafia

And then I watched some more.

A light flicked on in one of the windows, bleeding dimly through cheap curtains. After a minute, it went dark again, and the feeling that hit me was suddenly something familiar.

“Do you think she’ll ever walk again?” My voice was steadier than it should have been.

I was seventeen, still in my varsity jacket, sitting in a hard plastic chair outside an ICU room that smelled like bleach and old socks. Machines beeped in uneven rhythms from behind the door. The air pressed in, cold and over conditioned, raising goosebumps along my arms.

Her dad stood beside me with his hands fisted at his sides as we waited for the doctor to answer. It had taken him a while. That was what I remembered most.

The pause.

“The damage to her spine is extensive,” the doctor finally said.

I understood that word for what it was. In that case, extensive meant forever.

Carlie had been mugged in a grocery store parking lot that evening. She was picking up something for her mom, and it had just been the wrong place at the wrong time.

I’d slipped into her room when they let me. She’d been propped up in the hospital bed, pale against white sheets, tubes and wires running everywhere. Her hair was still in the messy ponytail she’d worn to school that morning.

She looked smaller somehow, muted. Nothing like the loud, fierce girl who shoved me when I was being an ass and kissed me five seconds later. Just that morning, she’d walked through the high school hallways like she owned them.

Now she couldn’t walk at all.

“Hey,” I said, stepping closer to the bed.

Her eyes had found mine, and she’d smiled . . . but it didn’t reach as far, and when I’d taken her hand carefully, it didn’t tighten around mine.

Later, in the hallway, I’d punched a wall and started to understand that the world wasn’t safe. That daylight didn’t matter. That it only took one man with nothing to lose to change everything.

I blinked, and the hospital lights from the past were gone, and I was back outside Eden’s shitty apartment, staring up at the dark window like it was my worst enemy. Strange . . . I hadn’t thought about Carlie in years.

Apparently, my brain enjoyed terrible timing.

Scrubbing a hand down my face, I finally turned and headed back to my bike, irritation riding shotgun alongside something else. I swung a leg over, settled into the seat, and let the city noise fill the silence for a second before pulling away from the curb.

She was inside . . . relatively safe . . .

For now.

I just wasn’t a big fan of anything with the words for now attached to it.

CHAPTER 6

EDEN

The lock clicked behind me, and I leaned my forehead briefly against the door, exhaustion sinking into my bones the way it always did after a long shift. My feet ached, my shoulders felt knotted and a hundred years old . . . and all I wanted was my bed.

Instead, the apartment smelled like food.

I straightened slowly, confusion threading through the fog in my head as I slipped off my shoes. It was only then that I realized that Ryan was standing at the stove, cooking something. I blinked a few times because it was hard to comprehend that I was seeing him awake and upright. When was the last time I’d gotten home and he hadn’t been passed out on the couch or sprawled out in our bed too drunk to greet me?

The pan in front of him sizzled, steam curling up toward the ceiling, and my eyes widened even farther when I saw our tiny table was set with two plates. An actual candle was burning between them, its flame wavering like it was also in disbelief over the scene.

My feet had forgotten how to move. “What are you doing?” I finally asked, my voice coming out thin and incredulous.

He turned, smiling like this was the most natural thing in the world, like he hadn’t shattered my expectations simply by being vertical. His eyes were bright, and his movements were energetic in a way that didn’t match the hour.

“What does it look like?” he teased. “I’m making dinner.”