I blinked twice and nodded. I hadn’t realized he’d gotten so close to me. I wanted to run, but his handsome face came into my field of vision and I touched him gently on the cheek. He smiled at me, and it was Ewan, my Ewan, my killer.
“Let’s go,” I said.
We retraced our steps and left the girl behind. Ewan went first, out through the kitchen, though he paused to make sure the other rooms were empty. Sure enough, Colm wasn’t there.
The car felt tiny and cold when I climbed into the passenger side seat. Ewan sat behind the wheel and didn’t move for a few long seconds. I wanted him to drive, to drive as fast as he could and as far as the gas could get us. I wanted to leave all this shit behind, the war, the Healys, the girls and the drugs, but Ewan pulled out and slowly rolled in the direction of home.
We didn’t speak until he found a spot near his apartment. “What do we do now?” I asked finally, unable to take the silence anymore. It felt too oppressive.
“I’ll tell the Don about Fergal,” he said. “See if he thinks that was good enough. It’ll hurt the Healy family, that’s for sure, and they might escalate things now.”
“The war might get worse?” I couldn’t imagine how it would, but I had to trust him.
“The war’s barely begun,” he said and got out.
I followed him into the night, my killer.
21
Ewan
I watched Tara walk up the aisle toward me, and the rest of the room disappeared.
She wanted an outdoor wedding, so she got an outdoor wedding. The chairs were set up beneath a gorgeous pavilion in Fairmount Park and the Valentino family’s priest stood up near the altar. Dean was my best man, and Tara’s friends from her diner job were her bridesmaids. The seats were packed with Capos and made men, soldiers and anyone else related to the family. The Don himself sat up front in a position of honor, though he still looked pale and drawn. He’d never quite recovered from the attack.
None of that mattered. It all drifted away as Tara came toward me, draped in white, her hair shining in the sunlight, the auburn shifting into shimmering rays of color. For once in my life, I had no words, and I let her come closer as the wedding march played. I thought I wouldn’t care much about this, since we were marrying for the sake of the Don—but seeing her there, my bride in white, my girl, I realized that this was much more than a fake wedding.
For me, this was real.
Tara stood across from me and I held her hands. She looked into my eyes, smiling huge, and a single tear rolled down her cheek. I wanted to wipe it away, but her veil stopped me.
The priest did his thing. We exchanged some vows. The women in the seats were crying, and I thought I saw a couple of the guys discreetly wipe at their eyes. They’d probably say it was allergies.
But finally, she said the words I’d been waiting for since the day I met her.
“I do.”
And then the priest said the words I’d been waiting for this morning.
“I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.”
She tasted like lilacs and grass, and the tent went wild. I held her hand as we faced the crowd, then we walked down the aisle together toward the photographer. We were supposed to stop and get our pictures taken, but I steered her further away, toward a copse of pine trees on the edge of the field. The guests dispersed toward the drink stations and the table and the food, and only the photographer seemed a little confused.
I turned toward her and held her hands. She blinked up at me, then glanced nervously back toward the party. “They’re going to think you’re stealing me away,” she said with a little laugh.
“Let them,” I said, not smiling. “I need to get this off my chest before we keep going.”
“What’s wrong?” she whispered, but she knew what I was going to say already. It’d been obvious for a long time, ever since we first met. She knew what I wanted, and where this was going.
“I love you, Tara,” I said. “I don’t know when it happened, but by the time I figured it out, it was too late to turn back. This wedding’s not some bullshit to make the Don happy, and it’s not some game to keep you safe from the Healys. For me, this is very real, and I need you to know that.”
She stared at me in silence. I’d never been so vulnerable to another person before, and my hands were shaking as she took a second to get herself together. Her veil was swept back, and the breeze made her hair flutter around her face.