Chapter 30
There's Smoke Where There's Fire; There's Ice Where There's Snow
Aria Amora
We left under the cloak of darkness to travel to Zermatt, Switzerland. A caravan of soldiers followed behind. Once we were to a certain point, Giovanni took our car and brought it to a place the Faustis owned to store it until we returned. A train had to take us to Zermatt; no cars were allowed.
Rocco seemed to be basking in this fact.
I wasn’t even sure who I was at that point. I was physically tired, like I’d never been tired before, because I was exhausted beyond the bone.
The girl’s words replayed repeatedly in my mind.
Signore Rocco Fausti noticed me, as he always has, and he wanted me as badly as he wanted me before.
Perhaps he was drunk and demanded that I warm his bed, after it seemed as if he and his wife were on the outs.
My father-in-law’s words replayed repeatedly in my mind.
There is a possibility of a pregnancy, then.
If Ita had drugged Rocco and they had…there was a possibility she and I would be pregnant at the same time.
Acid rose in my throat, and I gagged. Rocco’s eyes snapped to the female doctor who was accompanying us. I shook my head at him. “It’s the rocking of the train,” I said, which was a half-truth.
The doctor ordered me some crackers and ginger ale. I felt better after, but my eyes felt so heavy. My head fell on my husband’s shoulder, and he wrapped me in his arms, even though his lips never met my skin, and he wasn’t looking at me.
He stared out the window, his face as cold as the scene outside of the pane.
Once we arrived, all I had a chance to see was endless miles of pristine snow, the outlines of rugged mountains in the distance, and hundreds, if not thousands, of specks of tiny lights.
The air felt frozen, and I cuddled up next to my husband as close as possible.
I breathed him in and my heart…it finally caught up to my bravado.
It felt like it was breaking inside of my chest at the thought my husband might have fathered another child while he was out of it.
Crying wasn’t even part of the battle. No. This felt much worse. It felt like all my feelings were wet and became frozen inside of me, sticking to all my tender organs and making it hard to breathe. I forced my eyes to stay closed. I wanted to sleep. Sleep and rage and cry and rejoice and…sleep.
Sleep all the confusing emotions away.
I wanted to run to my husband. Find safety and peace in his arms. For him to tell me it all wasn’t true. He remembered exactly what had happened.
I wanted to run away from my husband and find solace in my own company, so I could think without his cologne wafting in the air and his warmth keeping the cold at bay.
By the time we entered the chalet, and he set me in the bed, I kicked my boots off and fell into a deep sleep where, even there, I couldn’t escape the hurt that felt frozen to my heart.
I wasn’t sure what time it was when I woke up, but I still felt frozen, even with the blankets that covered me. I was a bit disoriented at first, not sure where I was.
For the first time since I’d met Rocco, since our time on Aria Island, I longed for the security of something familiar to me. The house in the Quarter, the scent of my grandmother, the smell of food cooking in her kitchen, and the warm sound of her laughter.
My hand went to the cross around my neck. I’d never known my great-aunt, but I could feel…her touch through the gold. She’d touched the cross before, hopefully finding strength and purpose through it.
My husband’s hand seemed to come out of the dead of night, his touch warm but cold at the same time. His thumb dried the tears clinging to my cheeks. “You are killing me,” he whispered. “I deserve to die.”
“Rocco.” I closed my eyes. I was prepared to say not now.
This is a break in the story of our life.
Asterisks signifying a second part to the chapter would soon begin, but different.
It would be connected, but the story was headed in a different direction.
I couldn’t say the words to him, though.
His voice reflected his pain. So, instead of keeping him in hell, I gave him all the truth I could.
“I meant what I said. You and me. Forever. It’s not your fault what happened. I know the truth down to my soul.”
“It is my fault.”
“How?” I whispered.
He sat up in the bed, turning his back to me, putting his head in his hands.
“I am a man,” he said. “I am your man. I take care of you. My body should not have responded. It should turn away from all others. I have failed you.”
I sat up, and getting to my knees, sat behind him. I set my hands on his shoulders. His muscles trembled.
“There’s something else going on under the surface,” I whispered. “Now’s not the time to keep quiet, Rocco. You don’t need permission to speak to me. To get mad. To say whatever the fuck you’re feeling!”
He stood up so fast, my hands flew down and slapped my thighs. He paced the room.
“You are not killing me.”
“Killing…you?”
“Sì. Your guilt is, but your hands are not.”
“Are you saying I’m trying to make you feel guilty?”
“You do not have to try. I do!” he roared. “This is not what I am speaking of.”
I watched as he paced, trying to figure out…oh, oh, oh!
“You think I should be trying to hurt you—physically.”
“Sì!” He stopped abruptly and looked at me. “You do not care.”
“I don’t care?!” I shouted. “I want to strangle you right now, even though I don’t blame you!
So, let’s get one thing straight. If you just cheated on me, being sound of mind, body, soul…
you wouldn’t be pacing this room right now, Rocco Fausti.
I would’ve already choked the life out of you!
But me blaming you for what happened would be like you blaming me for a man—”
His humongous hand wrapped around my mouth, hard enough he stopped my next words.
“Do not fucking say it,” he said.
My eyes moved frantically back and forth with his. I nodded. He removed his hand.
I had a feeling he was close to losing it, but so was I—we were holding on for each other.
I cleared my throat. “Question still stands, Rocco. Would you blame me?”
His answer came quick and fast. “No, I would blame me.”
“Should I blame myself then?”
“This is not what I meant.” He punched his chest. “As a man, as your husband, as your protector, my responsibilities are different from yours. You are mine to shield with my own body.”
“I know,” I whispered. “And you are mine to shield with my heart and soul.”
Our eyes locked, but neither of us reached out. It was killing me inside.
“I trust you,” I whispered. “I know she’s lying.”
His eyes said he agreed, but that didn’t mean what she claimed happened didn’t.
She could, very well, be pregnant with my husband’s child.
I couldn’t keep thinking about it, but I couldn’t stop.
I needed to run, while at the same time, I needed to sleep—find sleep so deeply, nothing could penetrate my thoughts.
Sighing, I sat on my ass and stared out the floor-to-ceiling glass window. A view like I’d never seen before spread out before me like a peaceful scene in a winter wonderland movie. Snow twirled in front of the pane, almost putting on a ballet.
“Tell me now, my wife,” he said. “If my lack of action has caused you to turn from me, to be indifferent about me and other women…tell me now if I shall die. I was once cut in this town. I will reopen the wound and take my last breath in your arms in this same town.”
“No,” I whispered, stepping off the bed, taking small steps toward him.
“No,” I repeated, looking up into his sea-green eyes that had turned stormy with the black and silver mood of the room.
“If you shall die, I shall die, and I love you too much to let that happen. Not now, when we have so much worth fighting for.” I touched my stomach.
“The physical proof of our love. Our truth in physical form.”
He picked me up, brought me back to bed, setting me down gently.
He stared down at my face, and when I nodded, he began to undress me, slowly, reverently, as he had done on our wedding night.
I did the same for him. My eyes absorbing his body, every valley and peak, scar, my heart through my fingertips attempting to get to what lay beneath his flesh.
My mind kept reminding me of all the words…what she had accused my husband of, and what my father-in-law said thereafter, but I forced the accusations and the possibility out of my mind.
Only my husband and I would be in this moment—a moment made whole by the truth in the covenant we shared.
The truth.
It would set us free.
And in that moment, it did.
We were as ravenous for each other as we were the first time, but…
there was an ease between us, a comfort in knowing without a doubt that we were made for each other.
This—what lived and breathed between us—was the reason I refused anyone less than Rocco Piero Fausti.
I would have never been able to allow anyone else to touch me this way, do all the things he was doing to me with his hands, his tongue, his cock.
If it didn’t feel completely right in my soul, I would have shriveled, drawn into myself, like a flower that was meant for tepid climates, but all I received was the burning sun in summer or the frigid cold in winter.
There were plenty of times my husband and I were starved for each other, and we were wild with want, only able to breathe when his mouth was on mine, mine on his, but these times, when our love moved slow, like candle wax sliding gently down the candle, each slide of the wax making an impression that could only change, but never be fully made like it was at the start…
This.
What existed between us.
The love.
The feeling that we were complete only in each other.
“A threefold cord is not quickly broken…”
This was what it was all about. The gift after the suffering we had both endured waiting for each other.
He was starved.
I was starved.
Together, we were made whole, as only a husband and his wife can be.
He was my husband in every sense of the word.
I was his wife in every sense of the word.
His tongue searched my mouth as if he were on a journey to my soul.
Then, as his mouth ventured further down, he whispered his vows to me, only pausing when he moved over my heart—the beat of it controlled by his promises, his love.
I breathed out my vows in response to his…the same promises we’d spoken to each other in front of God and our family and friends.
Our bodies together this way….skin on skin.
Our hearts pounding against each other’s…creating a melody only we could dance to.
The words coming from our mouths…a private language between the two of us.
Our bodies joining and becoming one…
My husband’s head tilted back in pure ecstasy. My breaths were hard to catch, my lungs burning, but the pleasure…it surpassed the pain. The pressure that was coming from how big he was and how much love was being held in my chest for this man.
He moved inside of me, parting my thighs as far as they could go, going as deep as he’d ever gone. And then he would slide out, I’d whimper at the loss, and our eyes would meet, before mine turned down, watching what he did to me…
We made love.
A reminder that what we had was steady and unbreakable, even if the world around us felt shaky and made of glass.
Our love was the lead around the mosaic, keeping us together, the scene that would live on forevermore, us, together, this way, for then and for always…
The morning light shined through the windows, our bodies still clinging, holding on, still one…and the warmth chased away any trace of the chilled shadows of doubt.