Rooted (The Pagano Family Book 3) (16 page)

She’d surprised him, and he arched his head backwards with a groan. “God, Carmen. Fuck.”

She yanked him forward again by his hair and kissed him, shoving her tongue between his teeth. As she ground down on him, trying to get him as deep as she could, feeling him reach every single part of her, he growled and jerked his mouth from hers. Then his hands were in her hair, grabbing for the elastic and pulling it free. He pulled roughly, taking some strands with him. When her hair was loose over her shoulders, he wove his fingers into it.

“I love your hair so much. So black and thick. I want to be tangled in it and never set free.”

He tugged her forward and kissed her, shifting under her until he was up on his knees. And then he fucked her, hard, pushing her away, his hand between her breasts, forcing her backwards, to drape over his arm. Screw control. She relaxed and went with it, bowing back so that the top of her head went into the water and her hair floated all around, like a net.

In this position, he pushed constantly against the most intensely sensitive spot in her body. He rose up higher, got deeper, moved faster, and the water sloshed around them. The room dimmed by degrees as each wave of water doused more candles.

They were both grunting like beasts, the sounds rebounding, ricocheting. He bent over her and took a breast in his mouth, sucking it deeply, nipping at its tip, and Carmen again came hard enough to arrive at the edge of consciousness. Theo came right after her, while she was still throbbing. Then he sat back abruptly, keeping hold of her so that she went with him and ended up resting on his shoulder. He combed his fingers through her hair as they caught their breath.

“I love you, Carmen.” His voice was strained. “I love you. I love you.”

Jesus. Her head spun and spun.

She wanted to do the thing that felt good. For once, she wanted to follow the path of want and leave should behind.

When she opened her eyes, the first things she saw were the pendants around his neck. So she put her hand flat over them. Fuck them. Fuck Maggie. Fuck the past. Fuck her family. Fuck grief. Fuck fear. Fuck should. Fuck it all. Just fuck it blue.

His heart beat under her palm.

“I love you, too.”

~ 10 ~

It took Theo a while to convince himself to open his eyes the next morning. But even before he did, he knew he was alone. He’d gotten used to sleeping with a partner again, and the bed felt different—even the air felt different—when he was alone. He lay still and listened; the room was quiet; only the pastoral sounds from the balcony broke perfect silence. She wasn’t here at all.

It was Sunday, though. She must have managed to get to Mass.

Theo was fascinated by this deeply rooted faith in Carmen. She was a contradiction, it seemed. Her personality was not beatific in the slightest. She was impatient. She expected the worst from people. She was guarded and cool at first meeting—and beyond. She swore like a sailor and blasphemed without a blink. She sinned without compunction—she was sinning like crazy with him. And yet she prayed regularly. Just quiet moments, closing her eyes for a few seconds before she ate, things like that. And she tried never to miss Sunday Mass. When he’d asked, she’d simply shrugged and said she didn’t know any other way to be.

Theo’s ideas about faith and religion were more academic, he supposed. He was interested in the symbolism. He didn’t disbelieve, but he didn’t often think of it, except to be curious about others’ faiths. Maggie’s beliefs had been of a more Eastern persuasion. Not Buddhist, exactly, but spiritual in that quiet, inward way. They hadn’t focused on religion in their parenting of the boys. Theo had always felt a light rub of guilt, or maybe incompleteness, about that. Nothing he could put his finger on. But he’d been raised with just enough religion to make him notice.

His mother had taken him to a Lutheran church in Cheyenne sporadically. She’d taught him the bedtime prayer and insisted he kneel at his bedside every night until he’d grown old enough to put himself to bed. She’d put a crèche under their little artificial Christmas tree every year. She’d spoken sometimes, usually when things were hard, about ‘God’s plan,’ but she hadn’t really taught him a faith, not in any intentional way. Not in the way Carmen had been taught. He’d come to think of the Catholic Church in Carmen’s life as he’d come to think of the family she would only talk about obliquely—the image he had was of tendrils coiled around her ankles, holding her in place.

Whether they were nourishing roots or constricting bonds, he wasn’t sure.

He rolled over, waited for the room to settle again, and cracked open his desiccated eyeballs. Fuck, they’d had a wild night. Parts were foggy now, but as he levered himself to sit, he looked around, and his memory cleared some. The room service cart was still in the room. The table was heaped with the leavings of their dinner, and, mingled with the familiar aroma of their sex, the room smelled vaguely of beef. Two empty wine bottles. A nearly-empty bottle of bourbon. And the silver champagne bucket, now on the nightstand, full of water and the magnum upended in it.

Little wonder his gut felt like his liver had abandoned ship.

She’d said she loved him. After that first time, in the bath, she’d said it again and again. A lot of the night might be faded around the edges, but that was perfectly clear. Things were different between them now. She’d taken that armor off. And now, in the sober light of this new day, they’d need to figure out where they went from here.

Sober.

He knew he was drinking too much. He hadn’t skidded down the slope yet, but the incline was getting steep. Carmen was drinking a lot, too, and he had a thought that he was to blame, in some part, for that.

But not today. Today, they’d go out in the sunshine and enjoy their last day in Avignon together, and they would do it with clear heads and open hearts.

His left shoulder itched oddly, and he brought his hand up and scratched absently at it, hissing when instead of an itch, he found a sharp pain. He looked down and found a perfect, oval  impression of Carmen’s teeth—in some depth and detail—and a long streak of dried blood down his arm. Further inspection showed blood on the sheets, too.

He laughed, wincing at the spike of pain it brought to his forehead. Well, she’d said she’d make him pay.

~oOo~

“71 Rue de la Lavande.” Carmen sat back in the seat of the taxi as Theo closed the door.

“Wait—what? Why there?” For weeks now, she’d been staying with him, and Eli had been staying with Rosa. He’d expected her to give his address.

She turned her head slightly toward him but didn’t meet his eyes. “I want to go there.”

“Carmen? What’s going on?”

She didn’t answer.

They’d had a wonderful day on Sunday. She’d gotten back from church, looking good, looking relaxed, and he’d been dressed and ready. While she’d been gone, he’d had housekeeping take away their room service detritus, and he’d swallowed down a handful of aspirin with two cups of coffee.

They’d spent the day just wandering and talking. They’d had a good lunch, and later made out to a decided ‘R’ rating against the wall of a building in a quaint little alley. Then, after dark, they’d eaten by candlelight in the courtyard restaurant of the hotel, with just a couple of drinks. They finished the night in bed, being a great deal more gentle—and sober—than the night before.

They hadn’t exchanged the words all day, but he’d told her he loved her again as they were falling asleep. She hadn’t responded. Last night, he’d thought nothing of it.

But today, as they’d packed and traveled, returning to Paris, Carmen had been quiet and distant. She hadn’t ignored him; she simply hadn’t engaged.

But since they’d stepped off the train, she’d been ignoring him. He was pissed. And hurt. And scared.

When she gave her address and not his, the lining of his stomach turned to lead. He knew what she was doing. He
knew
it.

And fuck her for it.

He crossed his arms over his chest. Paltry protection. “Don’t behave like a teenager, Carmen. Answer my fucking question.”

“Don’t patronize me,
Theodore
.”

“Then grow a spine and say what’s on your mind.”

She shifted in her seat, turning toward him to the extent the seat belt would allow. “What’s on my mind? Here it is: I’m done playing house with you, Theo. That’s what’s on my mind. I want the taxi to drop me off at Izzie’s apartment, and that is where I will stay, on my own, until it’s time to go home. This trip was for Rosa and me, and I wasted almost all of it with you. It’s over.”

She turned back to face front, as if the conversation were over, too. The driver was paying a lot of attention to the rearview mirror. Theo glared into it until the driver looked back at the road. But they had an audience for this, no way around it.

Feeling sick, Theo stared at her profile. She seemed made of marble suddenly, cold and hard. But even from the side he could see a host of emotions rioting in her eyes.

He had a few options. He could do the thing that he most wanted right now, and shout at her. He could try to reason with her, get her to talk about what was scaring her so badly—because it had to be that. It couldn’t be that she didn’t care. They’d been together long enough, and he was perceptive enough, that he knew she cared. He’d believed her when she’d told him she loved him. He’d thought things were different between them, that they had opened up at last. That
she
had opened up. And now she was afraid. He was sure of it. So he could try to open her again.

Or he could let her go.

He didn’t want that. This summer, he’d come alive again. He hadn’t even known he’d been dormant.

He chose reason. “Carmen, don’t do this. Talk to me.”

She didn’t respond.

He tried again, unfastening his seatbelt and sliding closer to her. She turned and scowled, but said nothing. “I know you’re scared, beautiful girl.” He brushed her face with his fingertips as he spoke, and she flinched away.

“Don’t call me that. You don’t know what I am. You don’t know me.”

“I do. I know you.”

“No. I made sure of it.”

They were in the Arc de Triomphe roundabout, and the complicated, erratic traffic there usually made Carmen nuts, even as a passenger. She hadn’t noticed this time. She was intent on Theo, her eyes hostile. He knew a lot more about her than she thought. Maybe that was the way through.

“
I know you
, Carmen. I know you don’t like people. I know the way people drive this roundabout makes you tense. I know you use movies for metaphors at every opportunity, and that you hate musicals but somehow seem to have seen them all. I know you like Jason Statham best as an action hero and that you think Michelle Rodriquez is hot—a tidbit I’d like to explore more someday. I know you prefer meaty fish to flaky fish. I know you prefer red wine over white, and you prefer a Bordeaux above all. I don’t know what the difference is, but I know you do. I know you like Lilith Fair music. I know Virginia Woolf is your favorite author and that you will finish
Infinite Jest
someday even if it kills you, because you’ve taken it on as a challenge, and I know you don’t back down from a challenge. I know makeup makes your eyes itch, so you don’t wear it.” He smiled, remembering their first morning together. “And I know what you look like in the morning when you do.”

That made her blink, possibly falter a little, but then she recovered. “That’s surface bullshit. All of it. That’s not who I am.”

“Of course it is, Carmen. It’s exactly who you are. It’s how you see the world. I know you think in symbol and image, like I do. I know you are drawn to serious subjects told with wry humor, like I am. I know you think and feel deeply about what you read and see and experience—like I do. And I know that’s why you say you don’t like people. Because you feel everything so much, so much more than most. Like I do.”

The taxi had stopped. Carmen shoved some euros at the driver before Theo could get his wallet out, and he took them with a quiet “
Merci
” and got out and went to the trunk. When she got out, Theo followed.

She took her bag from the driver and said, “
Il a besoin de…
uh, ride? He needs a ride still?”

The driver shook his head. “
Pardon?
” Most taxi drivers in Paris Theo had encountered spoke great English; apparently not this one. Good, because Theo wasn’t getting back in the goddamn car.

Carmen tried again. “Fuck.
Il vit
… oh FUCK.”

Theo grabbed his bag. “
Merci. Bon soir.
” The driver nodded, clearly relieved, and hurried back into his cab.

“You shouldn’t have done that. You’re not coming in. We’re done.”

She tried to walk past him, but he grabbed her arm. When she tried to jerk herself free, he held on and pulled her close. “I’m not done telling you what I know. I know you’re afraid. You’re afraid of fucking everything.”

She slapped him, hard, knocking his head to the side and setting fire to his cheek. But he held on.

“I’m not afraid of anything, asshole. Get your goddamn hand off me.” Her voice was quiet and shaking—a snarl.

He dropped his bag on the sidewalk and grabbed her in both hands. “You’re so afraid, Carmen. You’re afraid of letting your family down. You’re afraid of living your life on your terms. You’re afraid to let yourself be happy. And you’re afraid to let yourself love. You’re afraid of all of it. I see it every day, in everything you do.”

She stopped struggling and laughed. “Oh, that’s right. I don’t love you, so it must be because I’m afraid to love. Arrogant prick. Drop dead.”

“You love me. You told me.”

“I was drunk, you idiot!”

That was a fucking absurd excuse. “Drunk words, sober thoughts.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ, would you stop with the lame lines and platitudes? I don’t love you. I don’t want you. It was a great summer. You’re a great fuck. That’s all it was. Fucking. And now we’re done. Let. GO!” She yanked harder, and this time, suddenly just tired, he let her go.