Redemption - Garrett Leigh Page 0,57
because he turned his back on them and couldn’t follow their lips, but because of his thundering heartbeat. His hands had been shaky since he’d come round from that beatdown with the iron bar. The doctors said it was anxiety, not brain damage, and as Luis flailed over the grill, he finally accepted they might’ve been right.
He dropped the tongs in the oil-filled frying pan. Cursed, and retrieved them, burning his fingers, again. At first he’d been numb to the pain, but not anymore. Everything hurt now, old wounds and new. The scar on his head throbbed, his damaged ear buzzed, and despair lanced his heart so hard his knees went weak.
The cafe door opened and closed. Luis mechanically cooked the orders in front of him. Paolo collected the plates. Luis hyper-focused on scraping the grill and didn’t look up until he realised no new order slips had appeared. He didn’t need to turn around to know the cafe was empty.
He glanced at the clock. It was a little after two. What the fuck? But he sensed Paolo’s presence behind him before his brain thought of an answer.
Again, Paolo didn’t touch him. Luis spun to face him to find he wasn’t close enough to reach. He was sat at the table by the door, his lovely face twisted into the same suspicion he’d thrown at Luis the first time he’d opened the cafe door. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”
“What?”
Paolo slammed his hand down on the table. “Don’t fucking do that.”
“Do what?”
Paolo stood with a screech of his chair on the tiled floor, and he was in Luis’s face before Luis could blink. “Don’t come at me with this bullshit that you don’t know what I’m talking about. You’ve been acting weird since your brother showed up, now there’s gang graffiti everywhere and you expect me to believe there’s nothing going on?”
“There isn’t graffiti everywhere. There’s one thing outside, and you said it yourself it was probably kids.”
“That was before I knew what it was and realised we saw three of them on our way here this morning.”
“It was dark this morning.”
“Street lamps exist, mate. And this is a city, not a remote village in the mountains.”
That morning, like every morning, Luis had been too engrossed in how it felt to hold Paolo’s hand to concentrate on his surroundings. They could’ve walked to the moon and back and he wouldn’t have noticed. “I didn’t see anything.”
“Even if that’s true, you saw the one outside, and you know what it means. I know you do; I saw it in your face when that woman told me.”
“Oh yeah? What else did you see in my face? Cos you seem to think it’s the fucking oracle.”
“Don’t get tricky with me. I know you’re freaking out about something. What did Dante want when he came in?”
“He didn’t want anything. If you’re so observant, you’d have seen that he didn’t eat anything.”
“Exactly. He came to see you. Why?”
“Why do you think?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.” Paolo’s voice rose to a shout by the end of his sentence, and his anger made him impossibly hotter. His cheeks were flushed, and his dark eyes blazed. In any other circumstance, Luis would’ve jumped him, rolled him to the floor, and fucked him right there, but his scrutiny scared Luis more than Dante did.
“He didn’t want anything specific. Just likes winding me up, I’ve told you that before.”
“Have you?”
“Yeah. Maybe you’re the one who needs your fucking hearing checked.”
Luis pushed past Paolo and stormed into the kitchen, trying to remember if he had told Paolo that particular snippet of joy about Dante. They talked a lot, sometimes without Luis realising it was happening, and he’d shared so much with Paolo that it had become a blur. You should’ve kept your mouth shut. For all the good it would’ve done him. Paolo hadn’t needed Luis’s confession to know Dante was bad news.
On cue, Paolo barrelled through the kitchen door. “I don’t need my hearing checked to know you’re losing your mind about something. Do you think I’m asleep when you spend all night staring at the ceiling? That I haven’t noticed you’re lost in your own head every night you come home and don’t talk to me for hours on end? What have I ever done to make you think my head is up my arse so far that I don’t give a fuck what’s going on with you?”
Paolo had never done anything to make Luis