All I know is, I’m carrying water for her. I have to trust her. She needed us to stop pretending we hate each other, for those outside or for the two of us. She needed a physical expression of the truth. So did I.

Covering my eyes with my arm, I lie on the bed. I’ve gotten used to using my elbow to block out the light. It doesn’t even make my shoulder stiff anymore.

My side aches, but it’s healing. I am used to hunger. My body is ever alert, but my heart has fallen into a troubled sleep, dark and still, closed into a cell of its own. It cannot expand, or see light, or beat any harder than a dying man’s.

To survive, I need my heart to stay locked up. But to live, it needs to be free to love her. She brought me a few minutes of light, and now I’m trying to force my feelings back to sleep. They’re too big now, too awake and alive, and the box I’m trying to stuff them into is so small.

Hope is a curse, and Sarah is a sorceress.

Hope is a light I snuffed to keep from giving away my position in a dark place. Sarah breathed life back into it, and now I’m in the dark tunnel and holding a light that won’t protect me from the oncoming train.

Hope is the desire to change what cannot be changed.

Hope is a distraction.

Hope is going to get us killed.

That’s when I let myself accept that she might not come back. What do I do with the hope then? Does light even exist without her?

Someone’s coming down the outside hall. A man. Two feet. No cane. Not Massimo. Too bad. I can talk to him. Maybe negotiate. I don’t know what I’d offer, but if he’d take a limb for Sarah’s freedom, I have two arms. I only need one to cover my eyes.

The footsteps stop on the other side of the glass, but I don’t look at him. Let him knock, whatever that means in here.

“Why do you still look like shit?”

I recognize Sergio Agosti’s sticky smarminess. Great. I prepare myself to talk to this asshole. It takes a few breaths and a heartbeat.

“I want something.” I don’t get off the bed.

“Get in line.”

“I want to talk to Massimo.”

“Sure, anything I should put on the list of demands? Better food? A brush for the shitter?”

“You’re still mad I fucked the girl who left you at the altar.”

“That’s not exactly what happened.”

Taking my time, I breathe, filling my blood with oxygen, then move my arm and open my eyes. I’m going to have to talk to him whether I’m prepared or not. I pull myself into a sitting position.