Sons of Thunder (19 page)

He skidded across the sidewalk, rolled, and landed on his face in the blackened snow. Shards of ice cut his skin even as he lay there, breathing in blades of air.

Blood ran into his mouth, his lip split. His eye burned, and he couldn’t see out of it. And when he breathed in, his body turned to flame.

He rolled over, sprawling on the sidewalk, his pulse slowing enough now to taste his broken parts.

Overhead the stars still winked at him, as if saying, yes, Dino, we see you. He raised his arm, his fingers slowly closing over one, the brightest, until finally, he snuffed it out.

“I should have guessed the hobo on the sidewalk was you.”

The voice raked over him like a storm wave, gritty, cold, even violent as it turned him. It dragged him across the gravel of the beach, filled his mouth with sand, turned out a moan. He flayed his arm out and it caught in seaweed, trapped him. He thrashed against it—

“Dino—stop. I’m just trying to help. Give me your arm.”

He tried to pry his eyes open, but one of them didn’t work. A frost bore through him, so cold he couldn’t feel his toes, and his fingers had turned fat. His lips wouldn’t move. “Hel…”

Someone moved his arm, and he nearly cried when his ribs rubbed against each other. “Ahh—” Was that
his
voice? It sounded far away.

The second moan, however, he knew came from him as his rescuer dragged him to a sitting position. “No—just leave me…”

“You’ll freeze.”

He recognized the tone now, short, angry.

Sofia. He rolled his head back—it seemed as if on marbles. Opened his good eye. Sofia, indeed. Her hair pulled back in a bun, her blue eyes darkened with mascara, her lips rouged. “Sofia.”

“Use your legs, Dino. I can’t lift you.”

Behind her, the stars still sprinkled across the sky, the music still pulsed as it dribbled from the bar. He gritted his teeth, trying to push from the sidewalk.

With a cry, she fell as he collapsed, hard. He caught her—or rather cushioned her with a mind-numbing burst of pain. “Oh—”

“Sorry—but you’re not helping. Get up!” She scrambled off him, brushing herself off. She wore a dress under Markos’s coat, her feet in a pair of high heels.

“Howdchya fine me?”

She wrapped her arms around his chest. “C’mon, Dino. Give a girl a break.”

He shook her off. Leaned back on his hands, his head again swiveling back. “Were ya celbratin’ the newyr?”

She made a face. “Are you
drunk
, too?”

“No…I donthinso.” Although the way she split into two, spun, well… “Just lemme sleef.”

“I should. I should leave you right here. I can’t believe I’m walking home only to find you crumpled on the sidewalk, looking like you riled a fleet of navy men.” She glared at him. “What would Markos say?”

“I don’ care! He’s gone….it don’ matter anymore.” He knew his words probably squirrelled out into an incomprehensible knot, but what could he do? He hung his head, let the tears dribble out. “Is all gone. It’s all…”

He stood above his father, watching his mother moan.

A gentle touch on his cheek. “Come home with me, Dino. It’ll be okay.”

He hated how he leaned into her soft hand. How he let her wrestle him from the sidewalk, how he draped over her shoulders as she shuffled him across the street, through an alleyway, and up the back steps of a nearby rooming house. How he swallowed her down—the entire lovely form of her, from her delicate neck to her beautifully knotted lips as she fumbled with her lock. Or that he flopped into the only bed—a single bed—shoved into the corner of the room.

He lay there, watching her ease off his shoes, his coat. Closed his eyes as she sponged off his face, put snow on his swollen eye.

What would Markos say
?

He didn’t care. He’d left Markos and his empty promises long behind. Especially when he sandwiched her hand in his, tucking it into the pillow under his head as he drifted off to sleep in her comfortable, sweet-smelling bed.

CHAPTER 14

He couldn’t place the smell. Rich and earthy, only with a tang that made his stomach growl. Dino breathed in, winced, his breath webbed inside a fist of pain.

“Oh…”

“Shh…don’t move. I think you should go to the hospital.”

He opened his eyes—only one worked. Light stabbed into the room between the shuttered curtains, fanning out as it hit the tiny bureau kitchen, the one-burner stove, the porcelain sink. A faded green chair pushed against a round table in the corner, a stack of books piled on a side table. In the other corner, paper cutout ornaments hung from a frail pine tree in a silver tin bucket.

Sofia turning away from him, wearing a bulky green bathrobe, cooking something on the stove. Her black hair brushed her shoulders. He remembered when she’d cut it off, how delicate she looked then, almost breakable.

Dino also remembered how Markos had nearly lost his mind.

“What are you making?”

“Fig bread. I thought you needed a taste of home.”

He edged himself up on one elbow. A familiarity syrupped through him, something sweet and warm as he watched her hands move the dough on the small counter. “With cloves and coriander?”

“Cinnamon. It’s the best I could do. And I wouldn’t have had the figs if it weren’t for Zoë Petros downstairs. She has a friend who runs a Greek restaurant.” She still didn’t turn around.

He lay back on the pillow, now running his fingers over his body. He felt his ribs, decided that nothing was broken, although his eighth and ninth seemed swollen. He could be bleeding internally, but, although he winced at his own touch, none of his organs seemed distended or hardened. His face, however… He probed, and guessed that while his nose might be broken, his eye socket seemed intact—then again, the pain that nearly made him weep prevented too much examination.

He still had all his teeth.

“I can’t believe I got into a bar fight.” He stared at her paneled ceiling. “I’ve never even had a drink, let alone started a brawl.”

Sofia said nothing as she formed the bread. He had a vague recollection of her cooking back in the taverna on Zante.

He lifted his hand, examined his torn knuckles. He’d always envied Markos’s hands—chapped, calloused—he’d had working man’s hands. Dino kept his soft, precise. Surgeon’s hands.

Now they looked like someone had held them under a grinder.

“Would you like some tea? Or maybe coffee? I have a percolator.” Sofia slipped the bread into the oven, her movements almost stiff. And in her profile, he saw her wince.

“Are you okay?”

She glanced at him—quick—and back again, nodding.

“I’m going into the bathroom to change. Make yourself at home.”

Clearly, he already had. Still, he got up, noticing that she’d left him fully clothed. He hated that he’d soiled her sheets, and brushed off dirt piled in the center. She had a nice place—nicer than his boardinghouse. He clenched his teeth against a groan as he pushed himself off the bed,
shuffled over to the table. A novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald—he’d read him in college—an abbreviated history of the United States. A dictionary. A Louisa May Alcott book.

The door opened, and Sofia emerged, wearing a pair of jeans and an oversized shirt. She looked about twenty, like she belonged on some college campus.

She kept her back to him as she opened the oven, checking on the bread. The fragrance of cinnamon and yeast nearly turned him inside out. The whiskey had snarled his stomach into a frothy mess. “Thank you, Sofia.” He lowered himself to a chair.

“I couldn’t let you lie on the street and freeze to death.” She picked up a bowl, whisked her fork into it. “Would you like some eggs?”

“You could have. But you didn’t.” For a second, he was back at Uncle Jimmy’s, watching her outline through the curtain as she climbed into bed. Or tracing the shape of her lips as they sounded out English in the basement of the Orthodox Church. “What were you doing out that late?”

“The Orpheum had a midnight encore showing of
Gone with the Wind
.”

“Well, thank you.”

“Stop saying that. We’re family. Of course I brought you home.”

Family. Maybe. Before, she had acted like a big sister to him. And yes, he’d always seen her as Markos’s girl, her arm tucked into his, his dark eyes on her, studying her every move. He expected to hear him, any moment, tromp into the room, shuck off their father’s jacket.

His gaze went to it, hanging from a hook by the door.

Markos never showed.

“Why didn’t you come to Dr. Scarpelli’s? We
agreed
you’d come. He would have taken you in.”

She poured the eggs into a hot cast-iron skillet. They crackled as she pushed them through the pan. “I did.”

Her long hair hung like a drape in front of her face. He expected her to look at him, to clarify. When she didn’t, he pushed himself from the chair. “I don’t understand.”

She opened the oven, took out the bread. Set it on the counter. It was all he could do not to leap like a dog at it.

“I stood on the step, about to knock, but I knew I didn’t belong with the Scarpellis. They were
your
life,
your
friends. I—saw that through the window, and decided to let you go.”

Let you go.

The words should have brought him relief, perhaps a release from shame that could still find him late at night, suck him back into that moment at the train station when Markos reached out to him, extracted from him a promise he had no idea how to keep.

“You should have come in,” he said quietly.

She scooped the eggs from the pan, piled them on a plate. “No. I… needed to start over too.”

She set the plate in front of him, turned away.

“Sofia, why won’t you look at me?” He caught her arm, and she stilled. When he moved to touch her chin, she turned away.

He took her shoulders then and moved her to face him.

Oh. For a sick, revolting second, he traced his own actions—please, God, don’t let him have been the one to blacken her eye. Although, the bruise looked green around the edges, as if a few days old. “How did that happen?”

She snapped her chin out of his grip. “It doesn’t matter.”

“What are you talking about?” His voice thundered, and he didn’t care. “Is someone hurting you?”

“It was an accident. He didn’t mean it.”

“He—didn’t
mean
it? Who didn’t mean it? He
didn’t mean
to connect his fist to your face? What, he slipped, he accidently—”

“I fell, okay?” She tightened her jaw, turned away.

He watched her body posture as she moved away to cut the bread, and yes, she seemed stiff. As if maybe she
had
fallen.

Right.

“How?”

“I was coming home from work, and it was late, and he startled me.”

“Who startled you?”

She shook her head. “Just eat, Dino. You need to balance out all the alcohol you have inside you.”

“I’m not drunk, Sofia.”

“Anymore.”

He winced at that but sloughed it off. “I deserve that. But I want to know who startled you. Why? What is going on?”

“It’s just—an admirer. He’s been hanging around the theater.”

“An
admirer
? You told me you weren’t on stage.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Does a girl have to be on stage to have a man think she’s beautiful?”

Ouch. She should have just slapped him. “No—but—who is this guy?”

“Just a man I met. He—keeps showing up at the theater. Wants to walk me home, or take me out.”

“And you keep turning him down.” A picture had started to form in his mind, one that churned up a darkness he hadn’t felt in over a decade.

The kind of feeling he had when Uncle Jimmy settled his sausage fingers on Sofia’s shoulder.

He let his eggs go cold, caught her arm again. This time, she didn’t pull away. “He didn’t just startle you, did he?”

She didn’t meet his gaze, those beautiful eyes cast down, and he ran his hand across her face, lifted it. When she raised her eyes to him, a jolt went through him. Yes, her eyes sparked with fierceness—but behind it he glimpsed something broken and even scared. Oh, Sofia. “We had a tussle. I fell down the stairs.”