15. Carpe Diem
Chapter 15
Carpe Diem
“ O w ,” I mouthed when I went to sit up, my trembling hand not sure if it wanted to touch the sore spot or not. Even without feeling behind my head, though, I knew a knot had formed. It was tender and sore—my entire neck. And my skull ached so badly, it felt like my whole head had morphed into a throbbing pulse.
“Thankful” didn’t even come close to the feeling I had that all the lights were turned out in the room, and my eyes didn’t have to strain against the light or try to bring anything into focus. That would have been just too much pressure. I would have vomited if I did anything but lay in this hospital bed. My stomach was already on edge, along with my entire body.
I forced myself to take slow, deep breaths to quell the trembling inside of me, focusing on one breath at a time to get me through each minute. After a few of them, I felt slightly better, but I was on edge.
Firstly , the ghost had showed up for me.
Secondly , I got caught in a terrible storm where it seemed like lightning was coming down just to claim things with its electrical fingers and shock them for fun.
Thirdly , someone had tried to impale my skull with a real silver candelabra.
What.
The.
Hell?
I thought back and remembered. It was right after Rosaria Caffi’s voice floated through the villa, chilling it.
There was no way she had done that. That silver was heavy, heavy enough that an echo of the weight of it was still felt in the soreness of my biceps and forearms when I’d lugged it around. And I had muscles to use. It was hard to believe a ghost could summon enough rage to throw that thing.
Taking Rosaria out of the equation, that meant someone else on the island had been watching me.
Was it the owner of the villa? Maybe I had scared her? I didn’t think a man would throw something like that at me.
Fourthly , Fifthly , and all the lys …the man/beast/ghost had showed up for me! He looked like an avenging angel in the storm. That must have meant he had been following me. Just like the night before.
Or…was it the night before? Time felt like a theory, not even real at this point.
Sighing, I tapped my fingers against the blanket over my legs. I pulled it up higher when I realized how cold I was.
When I thought about where I was, the smell of antiseptics trigged a fear inside of me that I was not prepared to face alone.
That was when I felt it. I wasn’t alone. Maybe the other person in the room realized I was awake.
A throat cleared from the corner. I squinted against the figure but couldn’t make out any features. All I knew was the voice sounded like it was male.
“I am Uncle Tito,” the man whispered. “I am also Dr. Sala, even if I do not practice medicine any longer.”
“Thank you for whispering, Uncle Tito,” I whispered back. “My head is killing me. ”
“You have a concussion.”
I touched my head and winced. “I figured as much.”
“Candelabras were not designed to come in contact with skulls.”
I wasn’t sure why, but I laughed quietly at that. “If there is someone I could speak to about this, point me in the right direction. I can attest to how right you are.”
He didn’t laugh, but I sensed his smile.
“Why are you here?” I closed my eyes and sighed. It felt nice not to be alone in the darkness of the unfamiliar room in the hospital. “You said you don’t practice medicine anymore.”
“My nephew,” he said. “He will not rest.”
“Your nephew,” I repeated. “The…man who came to my rescue?”
“Your knight,” he said.
Oooh , I really liked that. It made me almost sigh because it was true. I hesitated before I asked this question.
“What’s his name?” I whispered.
He cleared his throat again, and his voice had changed. It was more…hoarse, ragged. “Rocco Piero Fausti.”
Rocco Piero Fausti.
Once his name entered…some stream inside of me, it was like the current took it and swirled it around repeatedly, removing the sand from my memory and recovering the name.
Rocco Piero Fausti was the ghost in the window.
The lion’s heart giver.
The damsel saver.
“I’d like to thank him for saving me,” I said. “I had no idea I wasn’t alone in that villa.”
“I am sure he will take great pleasure in that, Aria Bella.” His voice was like a comfortable blanket tucking me in and covering me up. But in the background, my heart was still overacting, and I wondered if he was close.
Rocco Piero Fausti.
I made a contented noise, like mmm , recalling the second when I felt his arms around me and his eyes on mine. That addictive rush of warmth. His masculine scent, maybe minus the hint of blood. It was the most surreal thought, but I could have literally died in his arms and been happy that I had a second with him. That was how magnetic he felt. Like he was constantly pulling at me, and I had no control over which direction I went. Like I was a petal from a dandelion, and he was the wind.
What was even odder…I might have just heard his name, but it was like I had been saying it my entire life. It was comfortable. It fit.
He fit.
He was the automatic click I had always craved, wanted, needed in my life. Anything less wouldn’t do. He was the reason I had held out all those years for a feeling that was greater than…just two people being together.
The train of thought I was having wasn’t all that cognitive, but…it didn’t feel like lies to me, or something my mind was conjuring up because it had been hit and was still reverberating, but the truth. A powerful truth that satisfied me, made me feel whole, content, like a missing piece that felt like it had been gone for much too long, and the first time I spotted it, touched it, brought it close to my heart, an ancient sigh released from the depths of my soul before it whispered… there you are, missing piece of mine. Nothing can hurt us now. We’re together.
Something had hurt him though.
His eyes. I sniffed, tears streaming down my cheeks at the look in them. Even if they were voids, there was something there—pain. It was like he was dying a thousand painful deaths on repeat.
Who had turned that beast of a man into a ghost?
A warm, bony hand came out of the darkness and took mine. The old doctor. Beyond him telling me he was a retired doctor, I knew he was older because of how paper-thin his hands were. Nonna’s had become the same way, as if the sands of time had slowly thinned her.
“It will be okay,” the doctor whispered. “You are here now. ”
You are here now.
Those words could have been taken two ways.
One: I was at the hospital, surrounded by people who were taking good care of me, including the retired doctor. I had nothing to be afraid of. I was there and safe.
Or…
Two: I was here, and I would take the void from his eyes, and together, we would find our way back to life.
There was no doubt I’d been brought to this island for a reason, and my heart and soul chose for me: we were going the second way.
After two days of being monitored in the hospital, I was finally going home. I’d had a nice shower, even if every so often it felt like my brain would separate and then clap back together, and I dressed in clean clothes Scarlett had brought me from my apartment. I hadn’t seen Rocco since the storm, but I knew he was close. My heart switched to a special rhythm when he was around. Like I could close my eyes and pick him out of a crowd just by the cadence of my heart alone.
My heart had created that special melody the entire time I’d been in the hospital. He must have been close for that long.
I wrapped my fingers around the necklace as I left the room, Uncle Tito and Scarlett behind me. Uncle Tito was a slight man with a humungous presence. I loved him the moment our eyes met, and I was thankful he invited me to call him uncle. He had that way about him—he was everyone’s uncle.
I took slow steps so there was less of a chance my skull would high-five my brain, but it didn’t matter if I decided to run at this point.
The air left my lungs in a whoosh, and it felt impossible to fully catch it .
Rocco Piero Fausti waited outside of my hospital door, back against the wall, arms and legs crossed, head down.
He was a lot bigger than I remembered. He was a lot more…everything than I remembered.
Or imagined.
My eyes took in all (over) six feet of him when he stood to his full height. Wide shoulders. Narrow waist. Long, strong legs. I was willing to bet he hardly had an ounce of fat on him. He was all rippling muscle, but he wasn’t overdone. It seemed so natural. Like he had been molded out of the most beautiful marble Italy had to offer and then carved into this stunning art by the hand of God.
My eyes rose even higher. He had a strong chin, a pronounced jaw, and an extremely angular face. His skin was taut over every strong bone, giving his face so much dimension. He had a prominent nasal bridge, but his nose was narrow and sharp. He had dark, heavy eyebrows over those hypnotizing sea green eyes. The color seemed like it was taken straight from the Mediterranean, maybe a sample color God had been trying out on the water before He decided to use it. As if to keep the wildness of the sea contained, black rings encircled Rocco’s irises. His lids drooped slightly. His eyelashes were black and full. His skin was that beautiful olive color—undertones of green and gold that complimented the color of his eyes. His hair was black—the color of the night sky—but it seemed like it was made from the finest silk and silver. A few streaks of the latter color mixed in around his temples.
The overall effect of him was masculine and intense and passionate.
He was perfect.
Perfect, but with faults, which made him even more stunning in my opinion.
There was no doubt that even the most skilled artist couldn’t replicate that type of…masculinity, handsomeness, fineness, passion, beauty…in any kind of medium. Paint on canv as wouldn’t do. Words wouldn’t do. Clay or marble wouldn’t do. It almost seemed like God wanted to remind artists that none of them could replicate His hand, and Rocco Piero Fausti was that reminder. Even out of all the Fausti men I’d seen on this island, none of them had anything on him, and that was saying something, since I hadn’t seen an unattractive one yet.
My eyes needed more time to feast on him. I was sure forever wouldn’t do. He would never get old to me. But I was determined to seize this moment, carpe diem , in case this was the last time I’d ever see him.
Why that thought made a deep blue feeling encase me inside of it, a fear like I’d never known at the core of it, I wasn’t sure, but the thought literally hurt. It made my chest ache, like just the thought of walking away from him or him walking away from me would tear my heart out. Because my soul, my soul , was sighing, whispering between relieved breaths, There you are, missing piece of mine. Nothing can hurt us now. We’re together.
My eyes stilled on his chest, imagining the beat of his heart underneath his expensive suit. I clutched the pendant even harder, wishing it had the magic to mimic the beat of his right in that moment, confirmation that his was beating as wildly as mine was.
All that stunning physical beauty, and even though I hadn’t spoken to him before or spent any real time with him, my feelings were telling me his heart was the most stunning thing about him. I held his heart in my hand, a physical representation of it, and I needed to know all there was about it so I could create a map. Every direction of every vein and vessel and where they led more than I needed to know my own.
I blinked and realized he was staring at me too.
It didn’t even feel uncomfortable. It felt like I was finally home.
His eyes flicked to my hand, the way I was holding the lion’s heart protectively in it, and stilled. It was as if the sight of it had hooked him. He set his hand over his heart. I didn’t think it was a conscious reaction, judging by how entranced his eyes seemed, but he did.
Rocco Piero Fausti might have had one foot in the grave, but he wasn’t dead, and I was going to prove it to him by pulling him back to life with me.
Once he was able to tear his eyes away from the way my hand held the pendant, they stilled on my eyes.
“Tell me you are okay.” His voice was deep and melodic, but it had a rough edge to it, like he had been roaring and his throat was sore.
“Yeah.” I whispered. “My Nonna always said I was hardheaded. Lucky for me she was right.”
We stared at each other for another few seconds.
Scarlett walked ahead, going to meet Brando, who I didn’t realize was standing further down the hallway, standing like Rocco had been—back to the wall, arms and legs crossed. When Scarlett started toward him, though, he stood taller and met her more than halfway, his hand going straight to her lower back, like she was his center. Uncle Tito went to follow her, but Rocco took him by the shoulder and stopped him. The old man slapped at him and snapped something at him in Italian. Rocco didn’t seem to care.
I grinned. “Thank you for this.” I lifted the pendant. “I…love it and will…take care of it forever.”
His hand went back to his heart again, and he said in gruff Italian, “You misplaced it.”
My initial reaction was to say, no, I’d never had one like it , but I read more into his simple comment. And the way he’d said the words, like the gift of his heart was so inconsequential, someone could just lose it. It made my heart break in a way that I couldn’t even put into words.
How could anyone hurt this man? Or make him feel like any part of him was insignificant? It was like telling the Mediterranean it should have never been named—it wasn’t worth that right.
“No,” I said. “I didn’t. I would never. I love it too much. It might have been created for me by some artist who had me in mind, but I had to find where he left it first, which was exactly what happened. I found it dangling on the handlebar of the Vespa. You had given it to me. If I could have ordered a custom one just like it—I would have, years and years ago. Maybe before I was born, my grandmother would have, thinking of a future generation. That’s how perfect it is for me. Grazie mille , Rocco. I’ll always wear it so I can keep it safe.”
Maybe to the rest of the world, it seemed like he only nodded to accept my words and move on, but what I felt deep inside…he was too overwhelmed by the truth in my words to speak. He cleared his throat, and as if he had touched my back, we started to move, Uncle Tito leading us out of the hospital.
My eyes squinted against the sun. I almost wanted to hiss like Pisolino. Rocco offered me my crossbody, and I dug inside of it, pulling out my sunglasses. The same sunglasses I’d been wearing when the sense got knocked out of me. The frames still smelled of coconut and mango suntan lotion and salt. I looked at Rocco from beneath the shades. I didn’t believe he had left the hospital, so someone had to have gone back for them.
This man…he cared about the small details.
A fast-looking convertible car that could fit on the narrow streets was waiting, still running. It was black with chrome details, and it had a small Italian flag on the back, whipping in the wind. After I said goodbye to Scarlett, Brando, and Uncle Tito, Rocco opened my door and I slid in, holding the crossbody close to my chest. He almost seemed too big for the car, but then again, I wasn’t sure if anything could not fit him if he wanted it to.
Usually, my eyes were on the island as I traveled it, always something new to discover, but the only view I couldn’t pry my eyes away from was him. His eyes kept coming to me, too, and it seemed like the entire ride, we couldn’t tear our eyes away from each other.
When he pulled in front of the apartment, I almost started to cry. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to him yet. He parked, though, and opened my door. He gave me his hand and I took it, my heart sighing before it melted. His hand engulfed mine. My bones were so much smaller than his. Even the swollen veins, running from his hands to his forearms, seemed triple the size of mine.
He unlocked the door for me and kept one hand on me as I climbed up the steps before him. Once inside the apartment, it didn’t seem like either of us knew what to say. Or maybe the tension between us was so thick, neither of us could speak.
Then I remembered the bread I’d made for him.
Turning, I poked at it. It was as hard as a rock. I sighed, kind of dramatically.
“Tell me,” he said.
Turning back to face him, I shrugged. “I made you some focaccia for giving me the pendant. I wanted to feed you, you know. Nonna always said feeding someone was one of the nicest things you could do—showing them that you cared enough to take care of them. No one should go hungry. And…I’d left it out on the counter before I went to the beach the day of the storm, the day I got knocked upside the head with a candelabra. It was a candelabra, right?”
It was like the temperature dropped, and the pressure in the room had thickened. He seemed to visibly grow harder. Taller. It was like he was swelling like the veins in his hands.
“I will take care of this,” he said, like he was vowing it.
“Do you know who did it?”
He shrugged, like that was answer enough, and went for the counter. He picked up the pan and was about to tear into the stale bread. I don’t know what came over me then, but I pulled it out of his hand with a strangled, “No, you can’t eat it!” I was holding it to my chest like I could hide it behind the clothes I wore.
My reaction, though, had stumped him. I could see it in his eyes—it was like he was trying to come up with the reason before I gave it to him, but for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why. I’d made the bread for him, but I refused to allow him to eat said bread. I would have laughed, but the reason why I refused to let him sample the focaccia art felt so serious to me.
“It is mine,” he said. “You made it for me.”
I took a step back, keeping the pan close to my chest and snatching the other one. “I know,” I said. “But they turned stale. Stale focaccia can’t compare to fresh focaccia.”
“You made it,” he repeated. “For me.”
My back hit the counter, and it wasn’t until then that I realized he was crowding me in. Sighing, I closed my eyes. “It’s not good enough for you,” I whispered. “You deserve better than stale.”
I kept my eyes closed, but I could feel his eyes on my face. He was waiting me out. Finally, I forced my eyes open. They popped instead of doing a sexy slow rise.
“ Thank God ,” I mouthed when I remembered the counter was at my back. I needed to feel something solid press up against me, to remind me that this was reality and this…Rocco Piero Fausti was REAL. His face had morphed into…a physical representation of intensity, that was the only way I could describe it.
Look at me, being all writerly with that description!
My book.
The romance story!
The ghost had a name, Rocco Piero Fausti, and I was certain that nothing I could ever write would be good enough to capture him. The book seemed lame in comparison to reality. But no matter how much my skills lacked, I would continue to write it. Rocco deserved to be immortalized in the pages—for centuries to come, just as the knights of olden days were. We knew of the knights because someone, someday, sometime had felt inspired enough to set them inside of the page and allow them to live there forever.
This man deserved that same honor.
His hand came up, like he was going to touch my hair, but then it dropped. “Aria Amora Bella,” he whispered, his tongue caressing my name with his beautiful accent, his tone gruff .
“You can call me Ari,” I whispered. “Most people do.”
The look in his eyes said, I am not most people , and I wondered…in time, if he would just call me mine . My heart was in total agreement with this. But even though I could tell he was feeling the same intense emotions as I was, there was something frigid, like ice, coming in between us. It was stopping him from getting too close to me.
There was a tense second between us that I had no clue what he was going to do. Then he pushed away from me like someone had shoved him. I couldn’t imagine anyone or anything shoving this man except for the beast that seemed to live inside of him.
A flash of him in the doorway of that villa came back to me—the way the light had lit him up, the rain coming down behind him in sheets. It was as if the power inside of him had physically manifested the storm outside of his body.
I recognized the beast in him right away, but something he would learn about me in time. I wasn’t afraid of much, either, especially not the cold. I had been soaking up the rays of the sun since I’d set foot on this island, storing them. I took a step into his space. He looked down at my feet, and something passed between us when he met my eyes again—understanding. He understood why I had done it. Taken that step. I was warm enough—hot, even, when he was this close, and in no danger of becoming chilled.
He shook his head, like he was shaking out of a dream, and headed for the door. He opened it a crack, and Pisolino flew in, flying past his legs, coming to rub against mine. He purred like he hadn’t seen me in years. Goes to teach him. Never leave things unsaid, even if he left because he was mad at me for allowing Dr. Accolti and his staff to trap him for his own good. He could have given me a more loving look before he left, even if he was pissed.
I bent down to pick him up, but got dizzy on the way back up. Before I could even reach for the counter, Rocco was at my side, holding me like I might disappear. The worry in his eyes almost made me panicky .
“I’m okay,” I said, doing my best to reassure him. “Uncle Tito said this would be normal for a while.”
He nodded, but it almost seemed automatic, programmed. He picked me up, surprising me, and brought me over to the sofa.
For those few seconds in his strong arms, I had floated.
Pisolino jumped up next to me, curling in a ball against my side, all forgiven between us. I scratched him behind the ear.
Rocco fixed his suit and headed toward the door again. He stopped and turned to me. He recited everywhere I’d been on the island since I’d arrived.
“How do you know all that?” I whispered. I had asked the question because it seemed like the most obvious one, but I already knew the answer—I just wanted him to admit it to me.
“I know everything,” he said, as if he was the king and the entire world was his kingdom.
I could believe that.
Closing my eyes, I yawned. “I thought the island was safe.” I mean, until I get whacked in the head by a candelabra that may or may not have been thrown by a raging ghost.
“ Amora, ” he said, his voice as fierce as I’d ever heard it. It was as strong as a vow. As steady as if he were repeating a verse from the Bible he knew by heart. “No place is safe enough for you.”
My eyes slowly opened, and I found him watching me with the same intensity as in his voice, and silence stretched between us. In it, what I felt he didn’t say could be heard.
No place is safe enough for you without me standing behind you.
Behind me at the trattoria —when he was the one who had made those boys and the doctor scatter like mice in the face of a lion.
All I could do was nod. The feeling was so overwhelming, it almost hurt; it felt so good, I closed my eyes to it, like a woman would do with a kiss that carried her away from her body and to her lover’s. When I opened my eyes, I knew he was already gone by the feel of my heart, but Uncle Tito and a woman who I assumed was his wife were entering my apartment. Scarlett was right behind them, two other women following behind her. Aunt Lola, as she had instructed me to call her, was Uncle Tito’s wife. Mia was Scarlett and Brando’s daughter. Then there was Stella, who was married to Matteo, who was Scarlett and Brando’s firstborn son, but who was younger than Mia.
Sitting up some, I watched as the group made themselves at home. Scarlett went to the kitchen, starting dinner, while Aunt Lola took a seat and propped her feet up. Uncle Tito explained that he and Aunt Lola would be staying next door until my symptoms passed. Mia and Stella just wanted to meet me. Brando, along with Matteo and Saverio, who was Mia’s husband, arrived a few minutes later.
Pisolino watched everyone with fascination as he kept purring at my touch. I was so tired, the head injury , but I felt exhilarated at the same time. Rocco’s cologne lingered in the room, and it kept zapping my senses awake. I closed my eyes, though, drowning out all the noise, and continued writing our story in my head.
I was so full of inspiration, I feared I might burst.