by Sienna Blake
I went over to Nora’s place and gave her one last hug. I threatened to give myself away when I squeezed her for too long. She just thought I was still upset about Roman. She didn’t realize my veiled attempt at goodbye.
Just one last goodbye to make. My stomach tumbled around as the phone rang. It didn’t matter how much I blamed him, he was still my father. He would hurt enough as punishment when he realized I was dead.
My heart fluttered with relief when my father’s phone went to voice mail. His gruff voice came on over the speaker, telling me to leave a message. The same voice that rumbled “I love you” against my forehead when I was a child and he thought I was asleep. It would be the last time I would hear it. He might have killed Roman, but he was still my father and he would mourn me. I knew he would mourn me.
Beep.
“Dad? It’s me… I just wanted to tell you that I know what you did to Roman. I know you shot him. I wish…” my voice cracked, “I just wish you’d gotten to know him, the real Roman. He is…was…my air. Just like Mom was yours. I can’t live without him. I hope you understand. Goodbye, Dad.” I hung up before I broke down.
I lay myself in bed, dressed in a long nightgown. The vial watched me from the bedside table as I played the audio recording of my mother’s voice one last time, letting her voice infuse me with strength. When the recording ended, the silence was swollen.
It was time.
I picked up the vial. My future felt weightless and so delicate in my hands. A river of fear ran up my arms. What if Father Laurence had been lying? What if it was painful? Or worse, what if it didn’t work?
I pushed down these thoughts. If I wanted to see Roman again, I would have the courage to drink every last drop. I focused on his face, clear in my mind. My chest filled with resolve. I unscrewed the top and dropped the tiny cork stopper. It bounced off my bed cover and rolled around on the floor somewhere.
I remembered Roman’s last words to me. “My life began with you. It will end with you.”
I lifted the vial up in a toast. “To endings, that are really just beginnings.”
I knocked back the vial and the cool liquid hit the back of my throat. It tasted like bitter almonds and grass. I forced myself to swallow it all down.
I dropped the empty vial. I lay back on the covers, staring at my ceiling, waiting.
First, my toes and my fingers began to tingle. Then a tightness, like a frost, closed around on me. My heart thudded as a shot of fear went through me. What had I done? It wasn’t too late. I could run to the bathroom and make myself throw it all up.
“Be brave,” I heard Roman whisper.
The frost swept over my vision, making all my edges blurry. I embraced it. I began to float. It wasn’t long before the blackness took me.
32
____________
Roman
I got into my small pickup truck and wiped the back of my hand against the sweat beading across my forehead. It was only nine a.m. but the sun was as raw and exposed as the land here around this desert town. As empty and vacant as my heartscape. The steering wheel of the truck was almost too hot to handle. I ignored the burn and accelerated down the dusty road away from my one-bedroom shack, windows open to try to cool the inside of the cab.
My name was Remy Montague now. I hated the name. I hadn’t shaved since I left Verona, my three-day stubble already transforming my features, making them darker. The sun was already turning my olive skin a deeper shade. The desert dust was in the weave of all my clothes, in the creases of my elbows and stuck in the eyelets of my boots. No amount of cleaning would ever get them out. The desert was already consuming me. Soon I would be nothing but a part of it. This relocation wasn’t a new life, it was an exile. This desert town was only a two-and-a-half-hour flight and four-hour drive south of Verona, but it may as well have been another planet.
Even as part of me raged against my purgatory here, another part of me knew I deserved it. I may not have gotten life in prison for my crimes, but this was another type of prison. The wide-open spaces, the sky touching the edge of the dry, dusty landscape, rocky crops where only the most daring and brave of the desert flowers could grow. They were my bars. This scorching, glaring sky became the walls of my prison. The rattlesnakes, my wardens.
There was not a second since I’d left Verona that I didn’t think of Julianna. I prayed that she would not hurt for too long. Maybe it was better that she thought I was dead. It was a cleaner break. It gave her some closure. She could move on. Closure that I would never get.
I drove into town every day to get internet reception so I could check my phone for news on Verona. I couldn’t help it. I sat in the same seat on the porch of the only café in town and ordered a coffee, black. Some things didn’t change.
I connected to their Wi-Fi, which was spotty at best, and waited. My coffee had cooled to the point where I could sip it by the time the browser loaded. It pained me every time to read about a city I was no longer a part of. But I greedily drank up every headline—a new development proposed, the local elections coming up, a local school attempting the world record for most consecutive turns of a skipping rope—because these things were happening around the woman I loved.
Today was different.
Today’s headline was blackened, poisoned words shaped like knives that cut me so that all heat drained from my limbs in a rush.
Chief’s Daughter Commits Suicide.
There was some mistake. There had to be some mistake. Some other chief. Some other daughter.
I clicked through to the article, my finger shaking as it tapped the screen. I glared at the white screen as the Wi-Fi struggled to keep up.
Come on, load, damn you. I only realized I had slammed my fist on the table when it rattled my coffee cup. A few patrons turned their heads to stare at me. I was the grouchy stranger among them who refused to make any friends, and they already didn’t like me for that reason.
I didn’t give a shit what they thought. Just that this goddamn page would load and the mistake would be cleared up…
The page presented me with cold, ordered font in neat lines.
Detective Julianna Capulet, the daughter of Chief of Police Montgomery Capulet, was found dead in her apartment yesterday by her father. It appeared that she had ingested poison and her heart had stopped. There were no signs of forced entry and she left a note in her handwriting. The police have ruled it a suicide. A memorial will be held for her tomorrow at Waverley Cathedral.
Julianna.
Dead.
Suicide.
Everything in my body seized.
My blood turned to swollen hot lava in my veins. This was Chief Capulet’s fault. He should have told her I was still alive. I let out a roar that echoed across the desert plains.
I was alive, Jules.
I was alive.
The unfairness, the sweet life she just threw away, burned in my body. For what? A lie that her father perpetuated.
I was half-blind with rage as I stood, knocking my chair back. I threw money down—too much money—for my half-drunk coffee. I tumbled into my truck and turned it immediately towards the nearest city with an airport, letting my blood roar along with the engine.
I didn’t care that I would be imprisoned for life if I were caught. Tonight, I would return to Verona.
* * *
I wore a cap pulled down low over my eyes as I pulled up in a cab to the back entrance of the Waverley Cathedral grounds, the morning dusk creeping across the slated roofs of Verona. I caught a glimpse of myself in the side mirror as I got out. My four-day beard darkened my face. Sorrow made my eyes weary. I doubted even Nonna would recognize me now.
The cab crawled away across the crackly gravel. I slipped into the rusted gate that led to the graveyard. I trudged past the rows of bone-like headstones as I made my way to the back of the cathedral building. It wasn’t long until I found myself standing at the very place that I first saw her standing by her mother’s grave. The plot beside
it had been dug up, a fresh headstone stood beside her mother’s.
Rest in Peace
Beloved daughter and friend.
She left us much too soon.
Julianna Abigail Capulet
My vision blurred, her name disappearing behind my grief.
I could not believe she was dead. I would have known. I would have felt it, her soul ripping from where it joined with mine when she flew away from this Earth. Was it a trick to weasel me out? To get me back to Verona by the Veronesis who wanted to finish off the last of the Tyrell line?
I knew deep down, these were just the desperate thoughts of a man close to madness. I was balanced on a knife’s edge.
Her memorial was not scheduled until later this afternoon. Just as my empty coffin had been, only a few days ago, her coffin would now be in the room at the back of the cathedral.
The cathedral appeared empty as I slipped into the back door, keeping an eye out for anyone who might be around. I walked the same path that Julianna had walked towards the back room. My steps slowed as I neared the door, everything in my body screaming at me to turn back.
I had to keep going. I needed to see her body with my own eyes, even as my heart banged against my ribs. Until I saw her, she was alive somewhere in my mind.
I placed my hand on the smooth wooden door, be brave, and pushed my way in.
The coffin sat where mine had, upon a stone table. Unlike mine had been, the lid was open. My vision narrowed so that it was all I saw. They had sent my mother away dressed in mahogany too.
Oh, God, I can’t do this.
Yes, you can, Roman. You have to make sure it’s her.
I forced myself to step closer, my throat closing up as I neared and the inside came into view. Nestled like a gift in wrapping paper was my Julianna.
She was still so beautiful. At least death hadn’t stolen that away. Not yet. Her eyes were closed. She looked just like she was sleeping, except her lips were pale and the veins showed through her thin eyelids. She wore a soft white sundress printed with sunflowers, the same dress I had first seen her in, her hands clasped across her stomach.
It was true.
She was dead.
Because of me.
“How dare you,” I slammed my fist down on the stone platform, reveling in the pain that flared up my arm, “your life was not yours to take. It was mine. It belonged to me.” I clutched at the edges of her coffin, my fingernails scratching against the wood. I wanted to crawl in there with her and never wake up. “You belonged to me.”
I couldn’t protect my mother.
I couldn’t protect Jules.
I had failed.
Everyone I loved was now gone. There was nothing for me left on this Earth.
Nothing.
My gut twisted with resolve and relief as I made up my mind. I would not go back to my purgatory. “I’ll be with you soon, my love,” I whispered.
One last touch. Just one. I reached out for her cheek.
“Roman?” a male voice spoke from behind me.
I spun. Father Laurence was standing at the door to the room, dressed in his white priestly robes, a purple sash falling on either side of his neck. I’d been so focused on Julianna I hadn’t heard him come in.
His face broke out into one of relief. “Thank God. I knew you’d come back. I tried to get a message to you, but no one at witness protection would talk to me.”
“I read about it in the news,” I said, my voice wooden.
Father Laurence’s face dropped. “I’m so sorry, Roman. You shouldn’t have had to hear about it that way.”
“I’m sorry about a lot of things.” I pulled the gun out of the back of my belt, a gun I had bought off a street thug on my way here. There were only three bullets in the chamber. That was fine. I only needed one.
“What are you doing?” the Father asked, his palms coming up, his face turning pale.
“You need to leave this room. Right now.”
Realization sparked in his eyes. “Roman, I can’t let you do this.”
“You can’t stop me.” I raised the gun to my temple, the cold eye of the barrel biting my skin.
“No, wait,” he said. “I beg of you, just one more minute. It’s not what you think.”
“What will change from this minute to the next?” I cried, letting out an angry growl. “Julianna is gone and—”
“Roman?” a soft girlish voice called, heavy with sleep.
I turned my face towards the voice, my breath a solid ball in my throat. Julianna was lying in the coffin, in the same position as before. But her eyes were fluttering.
I couldn’t speak. I tried.
I felt Father Laurence pulling the gun from my hand. I let him.
Those perfect whiskey irises looked right at me, right into me. I wanted her to be alive so much I was hallucinating.
“Roman?” she said, her voice cracking as if her throat was too thick. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard.
Speak again, bright angel.
My heart began to rattle in my chest like a cage. My body coursed with fire. But my feet had turned to sand, my body to wood. I just stared at her. Looking at her. Trying to understand. What was happening. To fit these missing pieces together. Two seconds ago, she was dead. My life was over. Now…she was blinking. Speaking.
Could it be that there was a God? Could it be that there were such things as second chances? Had He decided I was to deserve one?
Julianna tried to sit up, her movements weak. She fell back down on her pillow.
“Help me get her out,” Father Laurence said.
On autopilot, I stepped up to the side of the coffin and reached in for her. My arms went around her tiny waist. Her arms flung around my neck.
She felt so real.
“Father,” I said, “it’s the strangest thing. She feels alive to me.”
“I’m alive, Roman,” the ghost of Julianna said into my ear.
“I’m dreaming, then.” I inhaled deeply, taking in her smell of clean skin and the hint of her sweet perfume. I pulled her out of her death-box and placed her on her feet. I didn’t let go. I couldn’t. She’d disappear if I let her go.
I was losing my mind. Or maybe I was actually dead. I had pulled the trigger and shot myself and this was heaven. Julianna’s arms were heaven. So in heaven I must be.
“I’ll just leave you two,” the Father said quietly. The door clicked shut behind him.
“You’re not dreaming,” she whispered. “I’m here.”
My head spun with all of my wildest hopes and dreams. The relief was so palpable it hurt. Like boiling water over icy glass, cracking my grief to pieces. I just kept whispering her name and rocking her in my arms, holding her so tight I was sure I was hurting her. She didn’t complain. She clung to me with her own delicate fierceness.
I pulled back and touched her face. I brushed her hair. I ran my fingertips across her cheekbones and jaw. My eyes sought every freckle, ran over every crease in her bottom lip. Everything was in place.
This was real. She was alive.
I shook my head. “How?” I asked. She began to speak. I shushed her. “I don’t care how. Just that you’re here and alive. Jules, I couldn’t live without you.”
“You don’t have to.”
Our mouths closed against each other’s, my tongue swiping across her lips before she let me in. My arms wrapped so tightly around her, pulling her soft, warm body flush against mine. She moaned into my mouth and fisted her hands into my hair, telling me she wanted more.
It was a kiss made of stars and light. Of gunpowder and sparks. A kiss that stirred up a lost hope as fragile as snowflakes. We kissed for what had ended and for what was only just beginning.
33
____________
Julianna
My head spun with lightheadedness. From the toxin’s effects. From his kiss.
His lips moved over mine with desperate tenderness, with pained hunger, with crazed relief. Our he
arts collided against each other, drumming the same beat, as they had always done. If there was a way to draw him all into me—his scent, his taste, everything—I would.
I couldn’t believe it had worked. The Father’s plan had worked. The drug had worked, thank you, God. The Father warned me that the toxin was dangerous. He warned me that it could actually kill me. Or that I might never wake up.
I hadn’t cared. I was dead anyway if I couldn’t find a way to be with Roman.
Now that I was “dead”, I was released from the shackles of my previous life. I could go with him, anywhere, be anyone…
“Julu?”
I jolted away from Roman, lips swollen, breath caught in my windpipe. I spun towards the familiar voice. My father, the chief, stood at the doorway in a black suit, tie askew, purple shadows under his red-rimmed eyes. “You’re…alive?”
Oh my God. We’d been caught. So close to freedom and stopped just before the line. We were so screwed. Roman broke his immunity deal by coming back to Verona. I knew what this meant. He was going away for life.
Screw this. Screw the system. I did not come this far, risk this much, to back down.
I stepped forward, shielding Roman from my father. “Don’t you dare blame him. Don’t you dare make this his fault. We wouldn’t have had to lie if it weren’t for you.”
My father just stared at me, an incredulous look on his face. “You… You were going to let me think you were dead.”
“It’s nothing you didn’t do to me,” I said coldly.
My father gave me a pained look, a look that squeezed in through the gaps of my shield. “I guess I deserve that.”
I glanced past my father. The only way out of this room was through him. How far was I willing to go for Roman?