“She’s awesome,” Roux told him. “We’re awesome.”
And the helicopter sailed into the sky.
Chapter 33
By the time we landed at Battery Park, my parents were there waiting.
And they were hysterical.
It was sort of hard to hear what they were saying at first because they were squeezing me so hard, but I was able to make out, “… you THINKING?” and “GROUNDED FOR LIFE!” and “… could have DIED!” I didn’t care, though. I was so happy to see them that I just hugged them back as tightly as I could.
And then they were letting go of me and hugging Angelo, then hugging Roux and Jesse, and then Angelo was hugging me, and then I was hugging Roux, and it was such a scene that you would have thought we hadn’t seen each other in fifteen years. I was exhilarated, nearly lightheaded with happiness, but that came to an end when I heard Angelo say, “We weren’t able to get him.”
“The loft is the safest place,” I heard my mom say, and pretty soon we were being hustled into a car (my dad kicked out the driver and took the wheel; apparently no one was to be trusted) and heading back to our place.
My parents, Angelo, and I put it on lockdown pretty fast. Lock codes were changed, phone SIM cards were put down the garbage disposal, and my dad yanked all the hard drives out of the computer and dunked them into a sinkful of water, while my mom scanned the rooms for bugs. “Are you two all right?” I asked Roux and Jesse, who were sitting at our table, both wide-eyed in astonishment. “Do you want something to drink?”
They nodded. Across the room, Angelo and my parents were all on pay-as-you-go phones, each speaking quietly and urgently. Angelo’s face was especially tense, and he had lapsed into French, which meant that it was serious. My dad was speaking Italian across the room, and I heard “figlia mia” several times. My daughter.
I poured water for both Jesse and Roux. “Are you in shock?” I asked them. “It’s okay if you are. It’s a lot, I know.”
“Not in shock,” Roux said. “Just … okay, maybe in shock a little bit.”
Jesse reached out and encircled my waist with his arm, then wrapped his other arm around me and buried his face against my neck. I pressed my cheek to the top of his head, smelling his shampoo, realizing just how badly things could have gone and shaking with gratitude that they hadn’t.
“Hey,” Jesse whispered, low enough that neither my parents nor Roux could hear him.
“Hmm?” I said, closing my eyes and trying to will away the trembling.
“I love you, too.”
My eyes flew open as I looked down at him. His face was honest and open and a little scared. “You said it first and I never said it back,” he murmured. “I realized that when we were running. I never said I love you, too.”
I smiled at him, then gave him several kisses in quick succession.
“You all right?” he asked when I pulled away. “Are you in shock? You’re shaking.”
I shook my head. “Just don’t let go, okay?”
He didn’t. I reached one arm out to Roux and she scrambled against my side, and the three of us formed a little huddle, staying like that until Angelo said quietly, with as much dignity as he could muster, “It’s over. They’ve shot him.”
Everyone breathed a little easier after that, especially my parents, who suddenly noticed Roux, Jesse, and I clutching each other in the middle of the kitchen. “So,” my mom said, “who wants a snack?”
“Can that snack be vodka?” Roux asked in the tiniest voice imaginable, but she couldn’t keep a straight face, and pretty soon Jesse and I were giggling along with her, and it felt so good to laugh again that I thought I would never stop.
Suffice it to say, a lot went on that afternoon.
My parents met Jesse (I mean, obviously, he was right there), and there was some awkwardness, followed by my dad trying to “bro down” with him (yes, those exact words were used, I’m still mortified), and then finally my mom just made Jesse a sandwich and he said, “Thank you, ma’am,” so that earned him points. Still, that was not how I expected their meeting to go, but hey, it could have been worse.
Then my parents and I had a long, long, looooong talk about Trusting Each Other and Being Honest and If You EVER, EVER Take On a Case by Yourself Again We Will Ground You Until You’re Eighty-Three. “No matter what, we are a family,” my mom said. “We come to each other first.”
“But I did come to you!” I protested. “You didn’t believe me!”
They exchanged glances. “We have things to work on, too,” my dad admitted. “But that doesn’t mean we stop counting on each other, okay? We’ll all make a better effort.”
And then there was the whole thing with Roux and Jesse. At first, not even Angelo was thrilled that they had been involved, but after the three of us explained how we had figured it out, and how Roux had been a badass and broken Colton’s nose, they started to come around. “I needed help and they helped,” I said. “They were amazing.”
But the biggest surprise of all was Roux. After a few hours, things had calmed down enough so that we could eat something. Angelo was still at our house, as were Roux and Jesse, and my dad was serving up leftover chicken enchiladas when I heard a sniffling sound.
Roux was at the end of the table, bawling. Huge tears rolled down her cheeks, and when she saw that I was looking at her, she held up her hands and waved me away. “I’m fine!” she sobbed, which got everyone’s attention.