Burn (35 page)

“You told Zae that you’d say yes, but you left me
hangin’ all this time?”

“I’ll say yes.” She laughed. “Ask me again, and I
promise, I’ll say yes.”

“I’m offended,” Gian teased. “I’ll ask some other
time. Unless I forget . . .”

“Gian!”

Grinning, he cleared his throat. “I want to do this right.” He got on one knee and pulled a ring from his
breast pocket. He looked up at her, his bright, beautiful
eyes shining with every hope and dream two people in
love could ever hope to share. He took her left hand. “I
never imagined that I would fall in love, until I saw you. I never thought about getting married and building a
family, until you. Nowadays, that’s all I think about. I
love you. I want to share the rest of my life with you.
Cinder, will you marry me?”

Tears blurred her vision, and emotion clogged her
throat. Smiling so wide it hurt, she nodded. Her hand
shook as Gian slipped the blinding twinkle of a square-
cut, two-carat diamond on her ring finger. Cinder blinked
away tears to see that Gian’s eyes were misty, too. She framed his face in her hands, moving in to kiss him. Her
lips took his to trigger a response that transformed her
mute acceptance into something hotter, more insistent.

She wanted to marry him. She wanted him.

Their clothes were cast away and his flesh met hers,
generating invisible sparks that sent a current running
through them, one that heightened every sensation,
deepened every kiss. Every part of them moved in har
mony—lungs and hips pumped, backs and necks arched,
thigh and jaw muscles hardened and relaxed.

Cinder now knew what it truly meant to belong to
someone. Not in a possessive, degrading way as practiced
by Sumchai Wyatt, but to belong to someone as the sun
belonged to the sky.

C
inder slipped a hand between them to feel Gian’s
movement in and out of her. That part of him was so dis
tinct from her own body, yet closing her eyes, she
couldn’t tell the difference between her flesh and his. He
ended where she began, and that was where she wanted
to spend the rest of her life.

* * *

Kneeling at the edge of the mat, Gian leaned over and
whispered to Cinder. “Sionne is one and seven against
this guy. This should be a very interesting match.”

Cinder wondered which of the huge men kneeling on
the opposite edge of the mat was Sionne’s opponent.
Each one of them had a chest like the side of a cliff, arms
and legs built for crushing, and fists like small canned
hams. Cinder knew that Sionne would be fighting
someone named Clarence Clark, but when the referee
called that name, none of the big men rose. Instead, every
head turned toward the archway leading to the locker
rooms, where a fighter in a black
gi
stood with his fists
propped on his hips and his chest thrust forward. Cinder
gasped. “
That’s
who Sionne’s fighting?”

“Clarence Clark’s only loss to Sionne came when they
fought the day after Clarence’s pet gecko died,” Gian
whispered. “Clarence’s head just wasn’t in the match.”

“I can’t believe you’re going to let this happen,”
Cinder muttered.

“Sionne can beat him. He’s been training harder than
ever. This is his last preparation match before the
Internationals tomorrow.”

C
inder turned to face Gian. “This kid is the size of
the sub Sionne ate for lunch.”

Chuckling, Gian shushed her, and the match started.

Clarence and Sionne circled each other. Slight and
sinewy, Clarence couldn’t have been more than twelve or
thirteen. A beautiful kid with a nut-brown complexion
and a sharp fade, Clarence put Cinder in the mind of a Jack Russell terrier circling a buffalo. Agile and quick,
Sionne dropped his weight and lunged at Clarence, who
skirted free of Sionne’s grasp to deliver three quick
punches to Sionne’s ribs. Whirling in a blur, Sionne got
in one blow toward Clarence, who again dodged it, suf
fering no more than a brush of Sionne’s knuckles at the
side of his
gi
. Sionne gave the contest his best, showing
off some of his strongest moves, yet nothing fazed
Clarence, who toyed with his much bigger opponent.
With no points scored and two minutes remaining in the
match, Clarence darted behind Sionne. He used Sionne’s right calf as a step to climb onto the bigger fighter’s back.
The boy’s skinny arms captured Sionne’s head in a tight
hold.

Sionne pulled at Clarence’s arms, he turned and
shook, but nothing weakened Clarence’s grip. His face
reddened, Sionne struggled to breathe, spittle shooting
from his lips.

Gian rushed onto the mat. “Clarence, that’s enough!
We don’t choke opponents to unconsciousness in tourna
ments!”

His dark eyes innocent, Clarence released Sionne and
backed off. “Well, when
can
we choke somebody out?”

“
When that somebody is trying to shove you into the back of a van.” With a little push to his back, Gian sent Clarence to his coach. “What are you teaching your stu
dents? You know the rules of tournament competition.”

Cinder went to Sionne while the two sensais argued.
She roused him with light pats to his cheeks. “Are you all
right?”

“That kid,” Sionne panted. He sat up, shaking his
head to jostle his wits back into place. “I hate that kid so
hard.”

Cinder helped Sionne stand, nearly collapsing under
his bulk.

“Would you feel better if you came to Mama’s for
dinner with us?”

Sionne straightened, almost good as new, at Gian’s invitation. “Thought you’d never ask, boss.”

Sionne’s match was the final for the day. He quickly
showered and dressed while Gian emptied Sheng Li.
Sionne rode with Gian and Cinder for the short drive to the Piasanti house in South St. Louis. The battle didn’t
affect his appetite any. After everyone sat for dinner and
Gian said grace, Sionne stacked his plate high at the
Piasanti’s Thanksgiving table. Sionne recounted his fight
between bites. “This kid is fast. He climbs like a lemur.”

“How long has he been training?” Pio Piasanti, Gian’s
younger brother, asked from the opposite end of the
table. Or tables. Josefina “Mama” Piasanti lived in the
upper west apartment of a classic four-family flat. The
rooms were lined up and connected by a long corridor stretching from the living room to the bigger of two bed
r
ooms. The small dining room shrank further with two tables set end to end, accommodating Josefina, her sister,
her two sons, her daughter, a daughter-in-law, two grand
sons, a granddaughter, Cinder, and Sionne.

Gian sat at the head of the table for the meal, his traditional seat since the death of his father when he was fif
teen. Pio sat at the opposite end, his pretty, dark-haired
wife Isabel to his right, Josefina to his left. Cinder, and
Gian’s sister Lucia occupied the place settings at Gian’s
elbows.

From the middle of the table, Sionne reached left and
right, helping himself to food from every platter, dish,
and tureen on the loaded table. “Clarence Clark must
have started training in his mama’s belly,” Sionne said.
He picked up a sautéed green bean that slipped off its serving spoon, and he popped it into his mouth. “I first saw him in competition when he was seven. He’s good.”

“He’s got solid skills but he needs discipline,” Gian
put in. “His sensai is creating monsters.”

“We’re signing the boys up after New Year’s,” Pio said.
“They seem genuinely interested in it now, and who
better to teach them than their Uncle Gian?”

Cinder looked from Pio to Gian and back again,
noting the similarities and differences between them.
They both had distinctively beautiful blue-green eyes
that sparkled when they smiled and darkened when they
didn’t. Pio’s raven black hair was several shades darker
than Gian’s chestnut scruff, and perfectly salon-styled.
Not a hair was out of place, his line razor precise. Where
Pio’s casual holiday dress consisted of a starched collared
s
hirt under a wool blazer with leather elbow patches, Gian
wore an old white T-shirt under a formless crewneck
sweater with what looked like paint stains on one cuff.

The Piasanti brothers were a genetic odd couple on
the surface, but underneath, they were exactly alike in
their humor, quickness to smile, and affection for their
mother and sister.

Cinder tried not to stare at Lucia, whose remarkable beauty made it difficult. Her shoulder-length black hair
complemented her alabaster skin. All three Piasanti chil
dren had full, overly sensuous mouths, with Lucia’s natu
rally ruby lips forming a Cupid’s pout. She sat between her mother and one of her nephews, overshadowed by
her mother’s talkativeness and her nephew’s rambunc
tiousness. If her posture was any indication, Lucia
wanted to be anywhere but at the dining table.

“Your lady friend is so dark,” Gian’s elderly Aunt
Veronica said, drawing out her last word. She peered over
her glasses. The lenses were thicker than the crystal butter
dish. “She’s from the north, isn’t she?”

Gian hid his mouth with a loosely curled hand and
leaned toward Cinder. “She thinks you’re from northern
Italy,” he explained.

“The northerners are so dark-skinned,” Veronica
went on. “She’s a beautiful girl, Gianni. You done good.”

“Thanks, Aunt Vee,” Gian said. “But Cinder is from
Massachusetts. She’s not Italian.”

“Are you sure?” Veronica squinted at Cinder, her
wrinkled face resembling a dried apple. “She looks just
like a northerner.”

“Yeah, I’m sure, Aunt Vee.”

Aunt Veronica directed a fresh round of queries
toward Sionne, who happily shared his Samoan origins.

Gian clasped Cinder’s knee under the table. He
stroked her inner knee and thigh, enjoying the feel of her
silky black hose. “Do you know why I wanted you to see
Sionne’s match today?”

Cinder swallowed the bite of winter squash she had
been chewing. “Of course. You wanted me to see that a
fighter’s size doesn’t matter as long as he has proper skills.
When Danielle brought down Chip on Halloween, I saw the effectiveness of proper training. She punched him in
the groin, which brought his head down so she could
gouge his eyes. She stomped on his foot and kicked him
in the shin, which would have hindered him chasing her.
G-E-F-S. It’s perfect for a kid or a short adult, especially if an attacker isn’t expecting it.” She dabbed at the cor
ners of her mouth with a napkin, then helped herself to
a few stalks of marinated asparagus.

“You’re smart.” Gian smiled.

“Sometimes . . .”

Josefina’s loud voice drew Cinder’s attention to Lucia,
who had sunk another two inches in her chair. Lucia’s
large, somber eyes glanced at Cinder before returning to
her untouched plate heaped high with turkey and a few
of the eleven side dishes. Lucia was present, but she
wasn’t there. She seemed to withdraw further under her
mother’s scrutiny.

“I seen on one of those afternoon talk shows, how
sometimes women who have been attacked grow to
b
ecome lesbians,” Josefina said loudly. Isabel cringed and
glanced at her sons. “I want Lucia to get herself out there
and start dating and meet a nice man, get married, have
a family, before it’s too late.” She set down her fork as a
judge would a gavel, then stared at the table over the top
of the glasses perched on the end of her nose.