Page 31 of Twisted Promise

Anya bought yarn and a crochet hook at 7:29 PM, and Alessio asked what happened to the all-purpose cleaner over a text with no punctuation.

He was responsible for getting take-out from the restaurant on date nights while she was on shopping duty for household items—two birds with one stone.

She told him the cleaner was out of stock, so she bought other things instead of leaving empty-handed. He met up with her outside, his car coming to a rolling stop in front of her at the perfect moment, and he took her cold hands into his to warm them up when she got in.

He didn’t see anything wrong with holding up traffic and kissed her, unfazed, after an infuriated car horn blared behind them. The vehicle flashed its high beams, but he pretended not to notice.

Over the next few days, she made a nest on the couch with the TV showing professional archery matches. She did her thing, and he rewatched the matches to learn more.

She had asked him once, when they hung laundry on the balcony after the dryer malfunctioned, if he was planning something nefarious because he was on a streak of watching bowhunters.

“To hunt you down if you leave me,”he said.

She gave him a goofy, crooked crochet animal for his key fob as revenge. He looked awfully proud every time he unlocked his car in public.

It took him until Christmas Eve, two full months, to tone down his preening.

“I don’t preen,” he would say into the crook of her neck.

She’d wipe the pout from his lips with a kiss when midnight struck on Christmas, but he managed to deny he was pouting against her smiling lips.

It was their third Christmas together, and the third time was the charm for miracles.

As a tradition, they went to see Christmas lights downtown. Couples walked with arms linked, fingers intertwined, and hair static from snuggling.

Anya pulled him to the massive, decorated tree. It smelled of life, passion, and happiness as she wrapped her arms around him, burying her nose in his arm while his coat grazed her grinning cheeks.

She wanted to try the Whimsy Winterland minty drink, so she left him by the tree with him supporting awoundedexpression.

Anya came back with two steaming cups of the drink, raising them proudly over the heads of passersby.

Fireworks roared in the sky. Sparks reflected off the Christmas decorations, and the unusual skidding sound was drowned out by cheers and colorful bursts of lights.

There was a scream and a bump on her shoulder before she lost sight of him amid the terrified crowd. She couldn’t move, being packed and carried with the motion. When her feet touched the ground, someone tackled her with the force of an 80-kilogram wrestler.

Everything was chaotic. The screaming and stomping magnified her headache.

A woman in a trench coat, unfitting for the negative-five-degree weather, groaned in distress as she lay on Anya’s lap.

She was pushed away rudely as Alessio knelt and frantically patted her body for injuries. He cupped her cheeks, the tremors wreaking havoc under his fingertips, and her heart was the same.

He pulled her into his arms as they wrapped around her shaken body. It was tight, suffocating even, but she greedily inhaled the collar of his coat for comfort. Anything to stop her mind from wandering to the worst when she saw the wreckage over his shoulder.

An angry crowd surrounded the car that hit a streetlight and demolished the metal base. Relief caught up to her as she realized she could have been crushed if it wasn’t for the woman who tackled her.

The crowd shouted over each other, demanding answers from the driver, who stumbled out of the smoking car, and the first punch ignited a brawl.

Alessio never looked back at the chaos.

He carried her to their car and headed straight to the emergency room just seven minutes away. They made it to thehospital before the ambulances returned with patients, so she was checked on quickly.

She didn’t want to stay overnight. Alessio was not happy about it, but he still took her home.

Neither of them talked about the incident, though it left an unmistakable trace on him.

They went on with a temporary fix, like a bandage, without treating the actual wound. It healed, but there would be an ache every now and then.

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