Chapter 13 #2
And so they talked of her childhood, and his childhood, and the sort of innocuous, innocent early memories that were of a different time. Best intentions and innocence, before life and selfishness could intervene.
The distance between Valentino’s island and Luca’s villa was not overly great, but they did not rush the return journey.
With no crew, only Luca was available to navigate the boat, and he preferred to spend his time cooking alongside Ally, teaching her the recipes he’d been taught so long ago, or sleeping with her—in both senses of the word.
Standing at the wheel and controlling the boat felt like a waste of his time.
Yet it was how they’d chosen to get home, so little by little, he crossed some distance each day.
Unconsciously, though, he slowed their pace.
Unconsciously, the closer they grew to the villa, the more reluctant he was to moor, and so he charted paths that were deliberately circuitous, and he told himself it was just about giving Ally breathing room, when in reality, he wasn’t ready to get home.
To be back amongst staff who expected things of him.
He wasn’t yet ready for the outside world to intervene.
But after more than a week on the water, he knew he had to get back. His grandfather had seemed content to pass the group onto Luca, but there was still much for him to do. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d paid such scant attention to the Di Santis holdings.
He was reluctant to leave, though. Only the reminder that they had almost a full year together kept him focused on what he knew he had to do: go home. They could do this again, though. And they would.
On the last night on the yacht, with the lights of his villa glittering in the distance, they stood on the deck, beneath a sky that glowed with delicate pinpricks of silver light, and he held her close as they danced.
Their bodies had become so familiar to one another, so perfectly matched.
She was so much smaller than him and yet she fit against him perfectly, and his hands rested against the curve at the top of her backside, in the small of her back, as though they had been designed for that very space.
As though she had been designed for him to hold her.
He knew he should squash the thought, but he’d experienced it – and many like it – so often over the course of the week that he just let it go.
It was the yacht. The yacht made everything feel different.
When he was back in the Villa, it would be easier to remember the confines of their relationship, to go back to a healthy, manageable distance from her.
It would be easier to create a world in which she did not dominate his every thought, from dawn to the middle of the night and beyond.
“You’re quiet,” she murmured, glancing up at him, her eyes like turquoise pools, her lips full and pink.
He forced a smile; it felt tight.
“Is it because of tomorrow?”
“What is tomorrow?”
She hesitated; looked uncertain. “You know, we leave this behind.”
Something shifted inside of him. A sense they would never really leave it behind, even when a moment ago he had been clinging to that idea.
“The boat—or one like it—will always be available to us.”
Her lips twisted. “You know what I mean.”
He was quiet. The water lapped at the edges of the boat. He was just about to agree with her, when she continued.
“Back there,” she gestured towards the cliffs. “It’s different. We’re different.”
Hell, he hoped that would be true. He couldn’t live with this level of obsession. He couldn’t want someone like this, be aware of them, need them. It threatened everything he’d predicated his life on: being a silo.
“I don’t want it to change.” She said it so quietly that it was easy to pretend not to hear. It was easy to let the words drift out to sea, to stir up trouble over distant waters. Because there was trouble in her admission—and how much he felt it, right in the middle of his chest.
She eyed the villa with mixed emotions. It continued to be the most stunning place she’d ever seen.
It was like something out of a fantasy, a wonderful creation someone might bring to life to indulge an Italian tourist’s every whim.
From the terracotta to the tumbling wisteria and geranium, the splashes of colour against the grandeur of the ancient home, the white cliffs, the pristine ocean, it was all utterly breathtakingly beautiful.
And yet, it was overlaid with memories for Ally that made it hard for her to appreciate its aesthetics alone.
She felt herself slipping back into who she’d been when they’d first arrived. So much had changed since then, but that woman—and their relationship—was layered over the home like a fog.