lying in the shrubbery. “Blood sister or not, I’ll never, ever leave you.”
And I wouldn’t. She was all I had left now too.
5
Ben Traina forgot nothing. The Italian restaurant was the same place he’d taken me on our first date, years earlier, in a borrowed pickup truck and a suit that didn’t quite fit. This time his clothes did fit—a snug pair of jeans that made me look twice, and a worn leather jacket that called for a third glance—and the vehicle was his own, though still a four-wheel drive and still souped to the nines. The restaurant had hardly changed at all.
Taverna Deliziosa was an intimate Italian-American hole-in-the-wall that lived up to its name. The dual scents of Italian sausage and fresh bread greeted us at the door, and Sinatra wafted from invisible speakers. The dining area was simply one large room with heavy velvet curtains to soften the corners, and photos of Italian sports and movie stars adorning the crumbling brick walls. A mahogany bar lined the opposite side of the room, its mirror reflecting us back on ourselves, and its edges adorned with greenery, grapes, and old Chianti bottles. Individual tables sported red-and-white checkered cloths, and were topped with atmospheric gold hurricane lamps that did little to brighten the room.
There were a fistful of couples dining tonight, and a Mormon family with an absolute brood of children had taken up the long trestle in the corner. Only one man was alone, his back to us as he sat hunched at the bar. I studied his face through the bartender’s mirror but saw nothing to alarm me. A retiree probably; older, graying, and harmless looking enough, but I still maneuvered so my back was to the wall and the scope of the entire room available to me. If Ben noticed, he didn’t let on.
“The waiter knows you by name,” I said after a bottle of Panna and a bread basket had been placed in front of us.
Ben shrugged out of his jacket. He was wearing a shortsleeved, collared shirt, and it moved nicely with his body. I looked up, trying to focus on his words, but his lips were equally distracting. “They keep cop hours and it’s on the way home.”
He said nothing about it being the setting for our first date, so neither did I.
“Seems I’m a little overdressed, though,” I said, motioning down. I’d worn slacks in concession to the blade sheaths fastened at my boot and lower back, but had chosen a bright coral top to stand out against the contrasting black, its neck draping nearly to my navel. A short battle with double-sided tape had ensured it concealed all the right spots, while a matching purse easily concealed my aluminum
“That’s all right,” Ben said, leaning his elbows on the table. “I’m enjoying looking at you again, Jo-Jo.”
I blushed, such a novel reaction for me that I was forced to look away.
We’d seen each other just once after the attack. I’d just been discharged from the hospital, and it was a long enough period for the bruises to have faded from my skin but short enough that neither of us had yet become the people we were today. I didn’t talk much back then—didn’t see or think or taste or feel much either—and I’d been too afraid to call him or to meet, knowing that the sweetness of the moment—being pierced beneath that concerned gaze as he remembered how I’d felt beneath him—was the same thing that would make it bitter.
I was right. I hadn’t been able to clear that bitterness from my throat long enough to reach for words, and didn’t know what to say even if I had.
“Jo?”
“Sorry.” I shook my head, realizing both he and the waiter were now looking at me.
“I asked if you’d like some wine with dinner.” He laughed, a little self-consciously. I must have been staring at him forever. “I don’t know what you drink anymore.”
“Wine would be great,” I said, forcing a smile, but I had to wonder if we should really try to start this again.
Once upon a time—and it was a long time ago now—we could’ve married, and continued on together. Or we might have just as easily drifted; a simple slipping away of two people who’d grown up and apart. Either way it would have been a choice unmarred by tragedy.
Instead, the unnatural death of hope lingered between us, a love murdered as surely as I was meant to be. So the question was, in this world, in my current reality, was that something that could be overcome? Because I was frightened by the long dormant emotions stirring inside me. It felt like I was on the verge of something risky and steep. An emotional precipice I could either leap from into a headlong tumble or pull back from and wisely head for safety. For a full decade now I’d chosen only safety.
“You’re thinking too hard, Jo,” Ben said, with a smile that made my world tremble.
I leaned back casually, just reclining, I thought. Calm as an earthquake. “How can you tell?”
“Your eyes go black,” he said, peering into them. “Nervous?”
“Petrified,” I said, surprising us both with my honesty. He laughed, and I was startled at the way it boomed out of him at first, then settled into a rumbling chuckle. Were you supposed to forget your first lover’s laugh?
“Don’t worry, I don’t bite,” he said, leaning forward again. “I wouldn’t dare.”
My gaze dropped to his lips. Too bad.
I searched for a subject that wouldn’t stir my hormones or remind us of the past or, God forbid, make my heart start that perilous tumble, finally settling on a part of his life that had nothing to do with me. “Do you still write?”
He nodded. “I’ve graduated from poetry, though. I’m into mysteries now, whodunits. Nothing published yet, but I’m still trying.”
“I’m glad. Your poetry was wonderful.”
He shrugged, a self-conscious rolling of the shoulders that gave away just how much it still meant. “It keeps my mind agile, anyway. I like creating the worlds, the characters, the situations.”
“And solving the mysteries?” I asked, and he nodded, popping a piece of bread in his mouth. “Is that why you like being a cop?”
He stopped chewing, looking thoughtful for a moment. “I’m not sure I do like being a cop.” And even he looked surprised at the admission.
“Then why do it?”
“I have to. It’s a compulsion. A calling.”
“An obsession?” I asked warily.
He looked at me. “Yes.”
I hesitated. This was fragile territory again. “Because of what happened to me?”
He blinked, but his expression didn’t change. I guess he figured if I could speak about it so openly, he could as well. “And because I can’t just live a comfortable life on the sidelines while horrible things happen to people who can’t protect themselves.”
I just stared at him, determined to say nothing until he answered my question.
He shrugged again, but there was a tremor, a visible fury, beneath the movement this time. “What do you want me to say, Jo? Yes, what happened to you, to us, marked me. It changed the way I viewed the world. How could it not?”
I found I couldn’t meet his eye. “But how can you let it still affect you?”
Ben circled the question like a tiger, coming at me from another direction. “What about your career, then? The photographer who captures the truth but remains safely on the other side of the lens. Nobody and nothing touches you, is that right?”
I folded my arms over my chest. That wasn’t right at all. My photography was good
