Page 39

For ten years, I had obeyed every bell. I had risen when it called me to prayer. Knelt until the stone bruised my knees. Lowered my head and asked God to remove every violent thought, every old hunger, every memory of the man I had been.

Ten years since I had touched a woman.

Ten years since I had permitted desire to have shape, voice, or name.

Then Adriana had staggered through my church doors covered in blood, and every prayer I had ever made shifted out of place.

Now as she sat beside me with her shoulder pressed close to the window, I started to notice things about her that I had no right to notice.

Adriana was not beautiful in the polished, unquestionable way that caused a room to fall quiet when a woman entered it. Her face did not possess the careful symmetry painters sought or men praised when they wanted beauty to be simple.

Her nose curved slightly at the bridge, as though it had once been broken or had simply refused to grow according to anyone else’s expectations. Her brows were dark and strong, too expressive to conceal what she felt. Her mouth was wide, the lower lip fuller than the upper, though one side was swollen now. There was a small mark near her chin. Not quite a scar. A pale interruption in her olive skin that I found myself wanting to ask about.

Nothing about her was delicate. Even injured, she appeared made of stubborn lines and quiet defiance. Yet there was something about her that held the eye.

An air. A gravity. Grief did not make her elegant. Fear did not make her fragile. It made her terribly human. Which was worse, because beauty could be admired from a distance, while humanity asked something of a man.

Dark strands had escaped beneath her beanie and curled damply around her temples. She had tried to smooth them back more than once, but they refused to remain hidden.

Her gaze moved towards the front of the bus. A passenger had stood to remove a coat from the overhead rack. The sudden movement made Adriana stiffen. The man sat again, but still she didn’t relax.

Fear lived in her eyes now. Not the wide, helpless terror of someone waiting to be rescued. Hers was more watchful than that. It searched each face, measured every movement, and tried to calculate where the next threat would come from.

Instead of making her look weak, the fear revealed the effort behind every breath she took. She was terrified, but she remained seated. She wanted to run, yet she forced herself to trust the route I had chosen. There was courage in that, though I doubted she would have called it courage. People rarely recognized strength while they were using it merely to survive.

She turned to me suddenly. I turned my attention towards the aisle before she could catch me studying her.

We had spent hours crossing and recrossing the country, moving from one bus to another, changing routes so no-one could understand where we were going. From the church car to the farmer’s truck. From the truck to the first depot. Then three buses travelling in directions that made no sense when placed beside one another.

Now we were finally on the last leg of the journey. Tuscany waited beyond the darkness. It was distance from Rome. It meant roads I knew, land I understood, and places where men still remembered that certain lines were not crossed easily and without consequence.

Tuscany meant safety. It also meant home. That word sat heavily inside me. I had spent ten years refusing to speak it. Home was an estate behind iron gates. A long table crowded with men who shared my blood. A father whose death had begun with a decision I made. A sister who had grown older without me. Brothers and cousins who might have buried the memory of me because it was easier than wondering why I had never returned. I was taking Adriana towards the one place I had sworn I would never go back to.

Beside me, Adriana shifted. Pain tightened her face before she could conceal it.

“How much longer?” she asked.

“Less than an hour.”

She looked through the rain-streaked glass.

“We’ve changed direction so many times that I no longer know which way Tuscany is.”

“That’s the idea.”

Her fear was still there, but now it sat beside another emotion. Trust. Small and reluctant. Though I knew there were few lies more seductive than another person’s faith in you.

I hadn't slept.

I had sat beside Adriana on the bus with my eyes open, watching the dark road slip past the windows and listening for anything that might tell me we were being followed. Every turn, every change in the engine, every set of headlights appearing behind us had pulled my attention away from the woman sitting beside me.

I tried to convince myself that I had stayed awake just to watch over her, though I knew even that was a lie. For hours, I had tried to think about anything other than her. The road. The men we were running from. Where we would go when we reached the next town. What I would do if someone found us. Anything but Adriana.

Then she fell asleep. Her head tipped slowly toward me until her temple came to rest against my shoulder. Her body relaxed with the kind of trust that should have felt impossible after everything she had been through. A few strands of hair brushed against my neck when the bus hit a bump, and she shifted closer, her face turning into my chest.

I stopped breathing for a second.

She was asleep. Completely unaware of what she was doing to me.