Page 17 of Mistletoe & Mayhem
Laura stares at her, as if weighing every syllable on a jeweler’s scale. “I’m done hiding for other people,” she murmurs. “That was the problem, wasn’t it?”
Frida nods, as though grading her on a test. “But sometimes, hiding protects the people you love.”
From the cockpit, an engine whines to life. We’re moving, lifting, hurtling up into the blackness above Newark, and for the first time since I was a child, I’m struck by the quiet. No trains, no cops, no mothers or fathers yelling out the window. Just the hush of sky, the measured thrum of Laura’s pulse beside mine.
“Did you ever—” I start, then stop. I don’t know how to finish the sentence.
But Laura does. “Did I ever want to run away and never look back?” She turns to me, and in her eyes I see the outline of thegirl I loved: fierce, lunatic, impossible to contain. “Every day. I’m tired. Aren’t you?”
I nod, slow and stupid. “Yeah. I’m tired, too.”
Frida leaves us alone after that. Laura leans into me, warm and soft, and we don’t speak for the remainder of the flight. We just hold hands, and for the next three hours, I do something I have not done in years: I allow myself to believe in us.
When we land, the sun is already rising over water so turquoise it looks fake, a screensaver from a happier, gaudier life. The jet is parked on a gravel runway, surrounded by nothing but palms, birds, and the warming air. A man offloads bags we didn’t pack, and for one terrifying second, I realize I have nowhere to go, no one to answer to. I am completely, totally untethered.
“Is this it?” Laura asks, her voice ragged but alive.
I look around, at the impossible light, the way the breeze lifts her hair, the small, secret hope she tries so hard to suppress. “Yeah,” I say, wrapping my arm around her, pulse beating out a new future in my throat. “This is it.”
She smiles, radiant and exhausted, and together we walk into the brightness, not quite free, but as close as two ruined souls can get.
Chapter 12
Laura
On the third day of our freedom, Christmas Eve, I awake to the sound of palms applauding each other outside our villa’s pale window. Their applause is lazy, uneven, sweet as the air on the water at dusk—and every time I hear it I have to remind myself I do not need to grab a gun. I do not need to check the doors, or count out the best escape routes in my mind, or run through old superstitions about how long happiness can last. There is no perimeter to patrol, no hired man with a scar or a shark smile shadowing my every move. There is only the salt-wet hush of the ocean, and the unblinking sun, and Pierce, still asleep beside me, breathing as quietly as a child.
I slip out of bed in a haze, the sheet wrapping my hips, and pad over cool tile toward the wide open doors. The living room smells like pine, citrus, and black coffee. It is Frida’s doing, no question—somehow she had a nine-foot fir imported to this tropical nowhere, and it stands in the far corner, confused and beautiful, its branches sagging with ornaments and garlands of dry orange peel. Beneath it sit two presents, neat and modest, and somewhere in the branches, a string of lights tries its best against the overbearing sun.
I look up: hung carefully from a ceiling fan, all by itself, is a sprig of mistletoe. No note, no explanation. Frida understands me deeper than anyone living. I smile, thinking of her, and the smile stings as much as it soothes.
“Santa came?” Pierce’s voice, sleep-warm, finds me from the bedroom. He is stretching, back arched, black hair spiked from sleep, skin a shade paler than the bronze the island will tattoo into him in a week. He stands naked in the doorway, grinning in an unguarded way that makes my chest ache.
“Apparently, we’re on the Nice List,” I say, pointing at the tree. He comes over, still running fingers through his hair, and I hand him the mug of coffee waiting on the counter. The mug is red with a ridiculous cartoon reindeer, courtesy of Frida again, and he sips it without noticing anything except me.
“Did you hear from her this morning?” he asks.
“She texted at four,” I say. “Says Serpico’s lawyers are already buying up most of the block. Father’s offices, the safe houses, even the bakery on Mott. Diego’s making a show of it. Flexing.”
Pierce nods, face shadowed. “And Dominic?”
I shrug as though indifferent, but the words are a hot brand in my head. “Screaming into the phone. Threats, bribes, the usual dog tricks. Frida says he’s already on the Sicilians’ blacklist. No way out but down.”
We stand together at the window, watching the shore curve away: the sand white as the moon, the water so blue it looks computer-faked. The entire perimeter is open, wild, impossible to secure. I should hate it, but the longer I watch, the more the old panic becomes—something else. A vapor that rises and is burned off by the sun.
I say, “What if this is our life? Mornings with nothing but the heat, and evenings swimming past the reef, and never having to answer to anyone but each other.”
Pierce grins, reaching into my hair to pull me close. He kisses my eyebrow, my ear, the corner of my mouth. His collarbone tastes faintly like salt and the coffee he just drank. “Then I say we’ve earned it. Nobody gets this chance twice. Nobody I know, anyway.”
His eyes hold a steady flame now, banked but unquenchable. I feel its twin burning in my chest, this patient desire that neither of us rushes to satisfy—a rare bloom unfurling slowly in the knowledge of all our tomorrows.
Against all logic, I feel safe.
We eat breakfast—fruit still warm from the sun, sweet rolls, a pair of blood oranges carved into gory, gorgeous halves. The day is a lazy parade: reading old thrillers by the pool, a lunch of fried fish and mango eaten in messy silence, a nap that turns into hours of tangled sheets and not speaking. Our phones remain off as long as possible. The world, for the length of one miraculous day, has no way to find us.
At some point, I remember the mistletoe, crude and deliberate as a dare, and laugh out loud. Pierce looks up from his book—The Count of Monte Cristo—and I point overhead. “You’re supposed to kiss me, you know. Christmas rules.”
He stands and obeys, dramatic, putting both hands around my face. We are utterly alone, but the kiss is shy at first, and then slow, and then not shy at all. He tastes like the orange, and the need is sudden and electric, and I am so unused to the feeling that it makes my eyes damp.
