Memories Without Him novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: One Hour

She walks into the Orsini engagement dinner and asks him for one hour in front of both families; he refuses, then she collapses in a seizure and he carries her out.

The Orsini family's restaurant was on the top floor of a hotel in Midtown, and its private room had a glass wall.

I could see the whole dinner from the doorway.

Forty people sat at one long table, and every one of them was in the families.

Vincent sat at the head of it in a black suit.

Francesca Orsini sat at his right, in white, with her hand on his sleeve.

Aldo had begged me in the car not to go in.

I had told him I was only going home, and then I had gotten out at the next light and taken a cab.

The doorman at the room tried to stop me.

I walked past him, because I was past being stopped.

The talking at the table broke up one voice at a time.

Vincent looked up.

His face had not changed at all in six months, and I hated that I noticed.

"Gemma," he said.

It was the first time he had said my name to me since the text.

"Take Miss Sorrento out," he said to the doorman, in the same voice.

"I'll go," I said. "I only want one hour."

Nobody breathed.

"An hour with me," I said, "anywhere you pick. Tonight or tomorrow."

Francesca laughed, a high clear laugh, and turned to the table.

"Is this the stray?" she said. "The charity case from your guardianship file? Vincent, you didn't say she was this dramatic."

A few people laughed with her.

I kept my eyes on Vincent.

"My father took a bullet that was meant for you," I said. "He didn't ask you for anything, so I'm asking. One hour."

Vincent put down his glass.

I had known that gesture for seven years, and it meant he was angry.

"Your father was a good man," he said. "I paid that debt. The house, the school, the account. We're done."

"You didn't pay it with an hour."

"I'm engaged, Gemma."

"I can see that."

He stood up.

The chair scraped, and every head at the table turned from me to him.

"You sent me a message," he said slowly. "Six months ago."

"I did."

"And you got an answer."

"I got your answer."

Something moved in his face then, a fast tightening around the eyes, and he took one step toward me.

I did not understand it.

Then the floor tilted.

It started as a smell, burnt and sweet, that nobody else in the room could smell.

I said, "Vincent," and the word came out in the wrong shape.

My right hand would not close.

I tried to say the word for chair, and there was nothing there to say.

Francesca stopped laughing.

I heard a glass break somewhere to my left.

My knees went, and the carpet came up toward me, and then Vincent was there.

He had crossed the whole room.

His arm was under my head, and I felt the edge of his jaw against my forehead.

"Gemma." His voice was not cold now. "Gemma, look at me."

I looked, but his face split in two and the halves would not join.

My arm and my leg began to shake on their own, and I could not stop them.

I could hear people shouting.

Someone said, "Call an ambulance," and someone else said, "Is it a drug, is she on something?"

"She's not on anything," Vincent said, over all of them.

"Move," he told the table. "Move."

He picked me up.

I was shaking so hard that I felt him almost lose his grip, and then he did not.

He carried me out past forty people, and not one of them said a word to stop him.

Francesca was still at the head of the table with her mouth open, and her napkin had fallen at her feet.

In the elevator, Vincent held me against his chest and pressed his hand to the side of my head.

"Stay with me," he said.

I could feel his heart going hard against my shoulder.

"You're all right. I've got you. Stay here."

I could not answer.

My mouth was full of words I could not reach.

His mouth was close to my ear, and he said something so low that I almost lost it.

"I should have come out of that building."

Then the doors opened on the lobby, and a car was waiting with its engine running, and everything went white.

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