Luca’s Pov The Doughnut

LUCA’S POV THE DOUGHNUT

Growing up in the underbelly of Chicago, I was used to danger. As the grandson of the most revered mob boss in recent history, I was born into the possibility of it. By sixteen, I had seen it all – the guns, the drugs, the violence. Kill counts and vendettas, and a world turning on the axis of revenge.

I thought I had seen it all.

The day Sophie Gracewell called me a snowflake was the day I realized I was in a different kind of danger. The kind you stumble into accidentally – the kind you’re not sure you want to get away from.

We were outside the prison, pretending that the world wasn’t falling down, that the cloud of grief above our heads didn’t belong to us. I told her she was a bright spark and she told me I was a snowflake.

Right after she said it, she pulled her hair around her cheeks, as though the streaks of blonde could hide the pink hue beneath them. ‘Shut up.’

‘I think you were trying to tell me I was special,’ I needled her. There was something exquisite about it – the comparison, the ensuing embarrassment. She loved to make me suffer and I loved to watch her squirm.

‘Icy,’ she said. ‘I meant you were icy. And unique, in that you’re uniquely annoying ,’ she added. ‘God, you’re annoying. That’s what I meant.’

‘If I’m annoying, then they haven’t yet invented a word to describe you,’ I told her.

‘Shut up. I’m perfect.’ She stuck her tongue out, and the giddiness of the moment made me remember myself. Who I was. Who we were together, on that bench.

‘I suppose you’re not the worst.’ I pulled away from her, fixed my attention on the sky. My arms were spread out behind me, and I was trying to ignore the way my fingers were brushing against her shoulder, but I could feel every single solitary cell in the hand that was touching her skin.

We fell easily into the pattern that had become as much a part of me in recent weeks as Cedar Hill had. Me, scolding Sophie Gracewell. Sophie Gracewell dodging my criticisms like an acrobat, insulting me all the while.

And I tried to pretend it didn’t bother me – her recklessness. I tried to pretend I hadn’t thought about the warehouse every day since it happened, that I couldn’t still remember the way her hair fell around me as she shielded me, the smell of her strawberry shampoo, how her hand trembled as she covered my heart. How she had fought for me when no one else had. How she had protected me when I was too weak to open my eyes.

In the lingering silence, I watched her watch me.

‘What?’

‘You realize you’ve been staring at me for the past five minutes?’

‘No, I haven’t,’ she said, aghast. ‘I was staring into space. I was thinking about stuff.’

‘If I didn’t know better I’d say you were getting lost in my eyes.’

She sprang to her feet, like I had lit a fire right under her. ‘Oh my God, I was not. You are so full of yourself.’

In the distance the bus was rolling to a stop. This was how she got here – hours inside this cube of desolation just to sit across a plastic table from her father and pretend like her life wasn’t falling to pieces around her. We weren’t so different, she and I. We were propelled by the same things – family, loyalty, hope.

‘Do you want a ride back to Cedar Hill?’ I didn’t realize how badly I wanted her to say yes until the invitation was out of my mouth.

She waved at me over her shoulder. ‘No thank you, Zoolander. I’ll leave you to your vanity.’

‘You’ll melt on that thing,’ I called after her. ‘It’s from the Stone Age.’

She twirled her fingers in the air. I leant against the bus stop, watched her a second longer.

There’s pride and then there’s self-preservation, and something told me she might just change her mind…

She backed down the steps and skipped over to me, her hands clasped behind her back, her eyes impossibly wide. ‘Sooo… about that ride you offered…’

It was easy in the car without the prison looming behind us, the clouds gathering overhead.

‘This is amazing,’ she sighed. ‘I can’t believe I was going to take that bus.’

She was stretched out in the passenger seat, her head tilted towards the ceiling and smiling so broadly I could see her dimples. ‘You are easily pleased, Sophie Gracewell.’

‘I’m trying to concentrate on the small things right now, and this small thing is nice.’

‘That’s a good philosophy.’ Something in the rear-view mirror snagged on my attention.

‘Thanks.’ She cracked an eye open, rolled her head around. ‘I just came up with it.’

I adjusted the mirror, watched the car a few vehicles back. ‘Cazzo.’

‘What is it?’ She sat poker-straight, her attention following mine.

A horn sounded behind us. The car was three vehicles back, and was still overtaking.

I slammed my foot against the accelerator. ‘Sophie, get down.’

I pulled my gun from underneath the seat.

She was still sitting up, staring at me, and I had a sudden image of her keeling over, blood spurting from her lips, and the panic that came with it was violent. ‘Luca…’

‘I said get down!’ I shouted.

The car behind us was swerving from one side of the highway to the other. Oncoming vehicles were honking as it veered into their lane.

Finally, she crouched on the ground, her head resting above the seat. I rolled down the window, ready to shoot. My thoughts were racing, plans forming and re-forming as I tried to assess the threat level. The Marino windows were blacked out; I didn’t know how many of them were inside but even if they outnumbered me, there might still be a chance for Sophie. If I could shoot first, I could get the upper hand, maybe swerve the car along the grass bank and hold them off. She could roll out, make a run for it.

‘Don’t get up,’ I warned her. ‘Whatever happens, don’t get up.’

The Marino car overtook the one directly behind us. I veered towards the side of the road, watching the side-view mirror, my gun outstretched as I pulled the window down, and then as quick as they had come upon us, the car backfired and sped around us, a group of dumb frat boys shouting and waving as they passed.

‘Dio.’ I shoved my gun down the side of the seat and reminded myself to breathe.

Sophie crawled back up beside me, pale as snow.

‘Oh my God. I really thought we were dead,’ she panted.

I was grinding the steering wheel between my fists, playing out all the ways it could have gone wrong – all the ways we were lucky… and yet, in the end there was no threat. Just the ghost of one. So why did I still feel like my heart was climbing up my throat? ‘I thought it was…’ I pushed my hair out of my eyes. ‘I thought it was the Marinos.’

‘So did I. In an alternative universe, we could both be dead right now,’ she said, narrating the horror flashing in my mind.

‘Don’t say things like that.’

Ten minutes later, we were in the parking lot of a Dunkin’ Donuts, and I was trying to think of something that would paint the smile back on her face.

In the drive-through, she drifted into that other world inside her head – the one that seemed to claim her more and more – the one I couldn’t reach. ‘What do you want?’ I asked her.

She waved it away, her gaze vacant. ‘I’m fine.’

‘You’re not fine.’

‘I’m just having a moment.’ Her voice was small, her fingers lacing and unlacing on her lap.

I wanted to slam my head off the steering wheel for frightening her like that.

I ordered her a doughnut, because there was nothing else but bagels and coffee and she was staring so helplessly out the window that I needed something – a spark of colour, of sugar, to pull her out of the spiral.

And this. This was the best I could do for her.

Back on the highway, I downed the coffee and put the doughnut on the dashboard above the radio. It was pink and covered in sprinkles, and stupid as it sounds, it kind of reminded me of her. This bright rainbow of colour in a place where there was little joy.

It smelt amazing.

And she wasn’t taking the bait.

Yet.

Come on, Gracewell.

Without taking my eyes off the road, I nudged it half an inch across the dashboard towards her.

She lasted less than two minutes.

The sense of triumph was unexpected. This was, after all, just a girl eating a doughnut in my car.

But it felt bigger than that.

She took a bite and a groan escaped, long and languid. I turned the air con up. She put the doughnut back on the dashboard and nudged it towards me.

My smile flickered for half a second before I caught it. I didn’t want her to know she was doing what I wanted her to do, since being contrary was one of her primary traits that might grind the whole thing to a halt. I took a bite on the other side, so it was symmetrical. I wanted to keep it equal.

I revelled in the taste of the glaze as I licked it from my lips.

I put it back and she took another bite. Another groan. Dio.

We shared it most of the way home, small bites and careful glances, neither of us speaking. We were saying everything we needed to say with that doughnut: I’m here, you’re here.

That’s all that mattered.

We didn’t talk about any of the other stuff – old vendettas and new feuds. Danger and violence. Family. We existed inside that car only for that doughnut, and the joy it brought, passing it back and forth like it meant something else.

Maybe I was going crazy.

Maybe we both were.

When it was finished, I asked her, ‘Better now?’

‘It’s a start.’ She rubbed her fingertips on her shorts and I concentrated very hard on staring at the road. ‘Was that the first doughnut you’ve ever had?’ she asked me.

My laughter surprised me. It went on for so long I nearly choked on it. Choked on the idea that this girl thought I had been raised in a dungeon with a gun strapped to my back, doing army drills every second of the day while my childhood dropped away from me.

‘Are you serious?’ I had to look at her, had to study the set of her eyes, the way her jaw was clenched. ‘Was that a real question?’

‘What?’ she asked, her eyes even bigger than usual, that strange innocence about her practically glowing. ‘Why are you laughing so hard? Don’t be so rude.’

‘Yes, I’ve had a doughnut before,’ I said. ‘I’ve also tried cake and pizza, and I’ve been on a swing set and played on a PlayStation. I did not grow up in a metal cage.’ I laughed again. ‘Dio, sei divertente. What a question.’

‘I wasn’t trying to make fun of you. It’s just… you just seem like such a… um…’

‘What?’ I glanced at her. ‘A killjoy?’

‘I don’t know. Well, yeah, kinda. You’re always so serious about stuff.’

My face fell. So, this is what she thought of me – someone incapable of laughter. Someone who can’t have fun. Someone who can’t eat a doughnut . Something made to turn the world darker just by being in it. I wondered then why she saved me. What she saw in me to throw her body on top of mine in that warehouse.

‘I have to be serious about things, Sophie. It’s my job. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know how to have fun. Or how to eat a doughnut .’

‘OK, then,’ she said, like a child who had just been scolded. ‘Consider me enlightened.’

‘You really are something else.’

She turned her gaze towards the fields outside. ‘Thanks for the doughnut. You were right. I love sprinkles.’

‘I know. I’m always right.’

‘Smart-ass.’

‘So, are we even now?’ I asked her. ‘For you saving me in the warehouse, I mean. I figured the doughnut might make a good thank-you.’

‘Oh, no, no.’ She flopped back against the seat, a smile playing on her lips. ‘Correct etiquette demands a bouquet of flowers. A doughnut, I’m sorry to say, simply won’t cut it.’

I blew out a sigh. ‘It’s an impossibility,’ I said. ‘Surely the sprinkles made it a worthy thank-you gift?’

She shook her head, grinning. ‘I don’t make the rules, Luca. And if we’re being technical, you really only gave me half a doughnut.’

Was Sophie Gracewell challenging me?

‘OK then.’ I slammed on the brakes, swerving us into a mud ditch at the edge of the street. I pulled the parking brake and flung the door open.

‘Where are you going?’ she shrieked after me.

The place was deserted. There were no cars behind us – just fields and trees and muck on either side of us, and flowers as far as I could see. If Sophie Gracewell wanted a bouquet, I would give her a bouquet. For my life. For my gratitude. And all the things in between.

‘Wait there,’ I called over my shoulder.

I stalked through the field, scouring the ground for the most colourful flowers, pulling them out of the grass until they became full and bright in my hands. Back in the car, I clenched them in my fist, held them like a life raft and tried to pretend that this was normal. That this wasn’t the first time I had ever given flowers to a girl. The first time I had ever picked flowers for a girl. The girl my brother was in love with.

I tried to pretend my heart wasn’t ramming against my ribcage.

I held them across the armrest between us. ‘Here.’

For a second, it looked like her jaw was going to fall off. She took them from me, her fingers warm against my palm, her hand shaking as she held them to her chest.

‘Thanks,’ she said, rotating them, her voice tinged with awe. ‘You got me violets.’

I started the engine, eased the car back onto the road before the moment could swallow us whole. I was trying very hard to ignore the sun rising in my chest. ‘Is that what they are?’

She beamed at them. ‘I earned these.’

I smiled at the road, careful of looking at her too long. ‘You definitely did.’

The start of the afternoon – the prison, the highway scare, the gun, the terror – faded with the fields behind us.

She was happy now.

I was happy.