Page 37 of When Sinners Fall
I end up enjoying watching her spend my money. It makes me get lost in memories. Always did want to find a way to repay her for our friendship. She didn’t need to back me up for those years. Didn’t need to get in front of me to stop them coming for me sometimes, either. She did, though. She stood there and faced them off, using that mouth of hers to try making them feel bad about what they were doing to me.
Gets to the point where I’m making her try clothes on even if she doesn’t want to. She looks at the bags already piling up by my feet. “Dante?”
“Yeah?”
“This is too much.”
“Says who?”
“Me. This is… silly. Kind but… I really don’t need all this.”
“You sure? Cause we can put it all back, and you can just stay naked as far as I’m concerned.”
“No. No I didn’t mean that,” she replies, giggling. “Just not all of this. It's just a few days, right?"
I stand and move to the back of the store, picking up the blue dress from where it's been put. “You got shoes for this?” I ask, coming back to her.
“No, but I don't need that either and-”
“I need it, Wren.” She looks confused for a minute, and then her whole face softens, eyes gazing between me and the leather and silk.
“You do?”
“Yeah. Go get the shoes.”
She chooses them slowly, constantly checking back in with me about something as she does. I get it. No hiding it either because she knows, just like I do, that I just showed her a piece of me she knew a long time ago. I showed her a slice of need, the same kind I used to all those years back. It was a shoulder to lean on then or just a place to hide out and heal. Now it's more like a physical need, somehow connecting back then to the here and now. That's all she'll get, though. Pieces of that guy as and when I feel him. Wish it wasn’t that way for her sake, but it is.
Always will be.
I lay the dress on the table when she eventually gets back to me and puts the shoes down. The assistant looks up at me and smiles. “We’re done here. Have it sent over to the Mansion De La Fete. King Suite.”
Clothes paid for, we’re out on the sidewalk, and I’m looking around. We don’t have any time for much more, not until later. I start walking us back over to the hotel, her hand gripped in mine like I own it. I do now I've made the connection in my head.Have done for a while, whether she knows that or not. There’s no getting away from this, or me, because she’s deep set inside me now, part of who I was and there’s no going back from that.
“I’m so desperate to look around,” she says, trying to pull me over to an avenue. “Look at it all. The architecture. The colours and sights. Do you come here often? Where are we going first?”
“Back to the hotel.”
She stops mid-stride. “Why?”
“I told you. I’ve got a job to do.”
“Oh.” She frowns and looks up at the building. “I’ll go back and get changed then. You can meet me later?”
“No. You’ll stay in the hotel, Wren. I’m not having you and your ass walking around here without me.” I look up and start towing her over the road towards the hotel again. “You’ll wait for me like a good girl and behave.”
“I think I can make up my own mind about that.”
No. She can’t.
I keep walking, though. Keep smiling at her, too, to make sure this doesn’t turn into a scene out on the streets and cause noise I don’t want making around here. We might be safer in this part of the world, but that doesn't mean I haven’t got enemies looking for me on these avenues too.They're always there, always ready to take something precious from me to prove they can.
“I mean, how long are you going to be gone to do this job of yours?” she questions.
“As long as it takes.”
“Well, I’m not hanging out in a hotel all day. Why bring me if you’re going to make me stay in? Dante?”
The doors on the hotel get pushed in and I keep walking and listening to her talking about why she’s able to do what she likes. She isn’t. And it only takes me opening the door to our room and shutting it behind me to make sure she understands that.
