“No.”
“Then what?”
“I want you to be angry.”
She laughs, a harsh sound in the darkness. “I was angry. For months. It didn’t help.”
“It helps me.” This admission costs me something, but I say it anyway.
“Yeah, well, your anger gets to have guns and henchmen. Mine just got me more bruises.”
I reach for the bedside lamp, needing to see her face. She blinks in the sudden light, her eyes red-rimmed but dry.
“Tell me his name.”
She shakes her head. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t need you to fix this for me. I don’t need another man deciding what happens in my story.”
I study her face, looking for cracks in her resolve. There aren’t any.
“Fine,” I say finally. “But if you change your mind?—”
“I won’t.”
“If you change your mind,” I repeat, “I’ll make him regret ever touching you.”
She looks at me for a long moment. “You know what’s weird? I believe you.”
“Why is that weird?”
“Because I’ve known you less than a day, and you’ve been mostly terrible to me.”
I almost smile at that. “Only mostly?”
“The sex was good.” She says it so matter-of-factly that I nearly choke. “And you did pay for that wedding cake I ruined.”
“Low bar.”
“Yeah, well.” She shrugs. “I’ve learned to adjust my expectations.”
The silence stretches between us, not uncomfortable but heavy with everything we’ve said and all the things we haven’t.
“What was his name?” she asks suddenly.
“Who?”
“The man you shot. When you escaped.”
I haven’t thought about his name in years. “Carlo. Carlo Bottaro. He was the newest guy, lowest on the totem pole. That’s why he got stuck with babysitting duty.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No. Hit him in the hip. He lived.”
“Do you wish you had? Killed him?”