Chapter 35
Vivi
LUCA WAS QUIET. Through our shower and each sudsy stroke of my hands along his body, he watched me with a careful eye.
It’d been a difficult night, and I understood the scrutiny, but I wasn’t going to fall apart.
He was. I asked too much of him. The final act—erasing the memory of another man’s hands—hurt him as much as it cleansed my soul.
He’d groaned his release into the curve of my neck and held me until our breathing slowed.
While the first rays of the morning sun lit the kitchen, he carried me to the shower, turned it on high, and allowed the steam and his hands to cleanse it some more.
He did it all with trembling fingers that restrained me with just the right amount of pressure, as if I’d slip away if his grip eased.
But he was already a million miles in the opposite direction.
Little by little, cut by bleeding cut, I kissed and washed him, putting Luca back together again.
After that, I took his hand and pulled him onto the tile dripping wet, so I could pat him dry with a towel.
Then I wrapped another around his waist and led him to our bed, where he sat at the edge.
I escaped his attention long enough to dress and grab a first aid kit from under the sink, along with the bag Francesca had brought me from the city.
Francesca.
An ache boomeranged through the hollow in my chest.
Her betrayal caught my breath, but I swallowed down the pain to focus on Luca, who needed me as much as I had needed him.
He stared at nothing, in such deep thought he didn’t acknowledge me as I stepped between his parted knees.
But his hands found my waist above my panties and below my cropped T-shirt as I dabbed at his brow with a washcloth and a grimace.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be, uccello. It doesn’t hurt.”
I doubted that. I knew what a gash felt like, and this was an inch long, begging for stitches. Butterfly bandages and a soft touch were all I had.
“Where did you go just now?” I asked.
He blinked up at me. My heart stuttered. The deep blue shards in his eyes were vibrant in the natural light, but the color blurred into black. My fingers trembled as I touched his cheek. “Luca,” I whispered, fear quivering in my voice. “Something’s wrong.”
“What’s that?”
“Your eyes,” I said, holding his chin and tipping his head as panic ballooned in my chest. “Can you see straight? Does your head hurt? We need to go to the hospital.” I broke from his grip to search for pants.
“Vivi,” he said, coming up behind me as I reached the dresser. “Bird.”
I tugged open a drawer and said, “Your eyes.”
“I’m fine.”
I spun around with a pair of joggers in my hand and cried, “No, you’re not. That… whatever’s happening is not normal.”
“They’re contacts.”
My heart stopped.
Black bled into the edges of my vision.
“Vivi, breathe,” he insisted, rubbing my shoulders. Then he kissed my forehead as if my world hadn’t just exploded. “Everything is fine.”
“But I don’t understand,” I whispered, falling into him where the tempo of his heartbeat thundered under my cheek.
“An accident overseas in the military. Just an explosion—”
“An explosion! Mio Dio, Luca.” My nails sank into his skin to prove that he was really flesh and blood and not the ghost the men used to joke about. “Are you talking about an IED?”
He brushed a hand through my hair, calming my pulse with each stroke. “Sì. It wasn’t a direct hit obviously, but my vision suffered. The fix was permanent lenses that have a tint to protect my eyes from UV rays. Kind of like they do for someone with cataracts.”
The rev of the air conditioner whirred into a cycle, yet the walls seemed too close.
My lungs grew tight. I’d known this man for five years.
We’d been through so much in the last five weeks, and still I didn’t know everything about him.
I sighed and held him tighter. In some ways, Luca was a total stranger.
A stranger with eyes twinkling like the midnight sky—a total illusion.
Something real and uncomfortable boiled beneath my skin. I should have demanded he tell me everything right then and there, because the fairy tale I’d been living was about to take an even darker turn. I could feel it in the blood bubbling through my veins.
It was about to boil over.
“What color are they?”
“Blue. I promise,” he rushed, holding me tighter. “The contacts are just a shade darker to help filter the light. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you; I just don’t talk about my time in the service.”
“But why? It’s just me, and I tell you everything.”
His lips found my hair, his whisper moving the strands. “Because my brother died.”
The fire in my veins went ice-cold, and I pulled away to look at him. “You had a brother?”
He shook his head. “Not by blood but by honor and service. I trained day and night with these men for years. Dami is one of them. So was Justin. In the last mission I told you about, where my face…” He made a slashing motion down his cheek, and my pulse stuttered.
“Justin died during that ambush, and none of us were the same again. The team disbanded, and that’s when Dami and I returned to New York. ”
“To my family.”
“Eventually, yes,” he confessed. “Justin’s death tore us apart. It tore me apart, which is not easy to say.” His voice caught on the last word, and I pulled him against me.
“I’m so sorry, amore mio,” I whispered into his warm skin.
His lips pressed into my hair, and we just held on, living through a peaceful moment amid the chaos.
I was sure a thousand secrets surrounded us.
But I was also convinced we’d lived a thousand lives as husband and wife, and this was just the latest one.
Our souls were magic. Like fairy dust sprinkled in the wind that always found its way back together to make something beautiful.
“Someday I’ll tell you about the millions of seconds that’ve passed in my lifetime,” he rasped, his fingers sliding down and digging into the soft flesh of my ass.
“But there’s really only one truth that you need to know.
I’ve fought a hundred battles to be here with you, uccello, and you’re worth every sacrifice. ”
I blinked past tears that would never fall and looked up into the blue. His vision had cleared, as if clouds had evaporated to show the twinkling stars, and he was my Luca again. My rock and confidant. My lover and best friend. He was everything.
“You’re so real.”
A half smile curled his lips. “Definitely not a ghost.”
“No, I mean…” I swallowed, needing time to place my tumbling thoughts into context. “You’re more than an answered prayer and not just my savior. Luca…,” I breathed, then broke away from him to collect the gift I had Francesca pick up in the city.
He turned, and I met him in the middle of our room with a tiny box in the palm of my hand. “You are my only future.”
“Vivi.”
“Open it,” I insisted, lifting my hand a little higher. When he did, heat warmed my cheeks. “I wanted something different and special because that’s what we feel like. Mio Dio, I’m being silly.” I slapped my forehead to stop myself from rambling. “Go ahead, read the inscription on the band.”
He pulled out the ring and stared, his face going pale. His body way too still.
My heart thumped hard against my rib cage while I read the script from memory. “To my king. For now, and in every lifetime hereafter.”
Seconds passed with my pulse thudding in my ears and Luca frozen like a Michelangelo statue. The ache in my chest blossomed. I got it wrong, so, so wrong. He didn’t want a symbol to wear, showing everyone he was taken.
“It’s too much. How much I love you is too much. It scares me sometimes too, so I… I understand.”
I dropped my hand.
He caught my wrist.
A rough sound rumbled through his chest, and he cupped my cheeks with his palms. “Oh, my little bird. My fierce, beautiful wife—forgive my silence. No one has ever given me so much.” His lips brushed against mine but didn’t move, so his eyes and his breath were on me when he spoke.
“I will love you until the fields are barren and the sun sets on its last day, until humanity dies, and the stars burn into darkness. Ring or no ring, I’ll always be your husband, but it is my honor to become your king. ”
He captured my mouth with his, pushing me back until we fell onto the bed, and he pressed between my thighs.
We kissed deep and long, needy for touch and feeling.
At some point the band found his finger, and then it was all he wore.
Our mission was more than pleasure. Our purpose was passion so bright that it split us in two and healed us together as one.
Nothing could tear us apart. But as I fell asleep tangled in Luca, my blood simmered hot beneath my skin.
Like the dark turn was coming, and nothing could stop my fairy tale from having a terrible ending.
?
OVER THE NEXT TWENTY-FOUR hours Francesca’s deceit haunted me.
I dreamed of shiny badges and polyester uniforms storming my door and cuffing my husband.
They took him away, never to be seen again.
Every waking minute panic simmered just under my skin.
Luca’s body and countless orgasms were the only remedies holding the dark forewarning at bay.
But on Monday morning, still breathless from Luca burying his head between my legs, he got a call that sent a shiver down my spine.
“I’ll be right there,” he said into the phone and then rolled out of bed.
I grabbed the sheet to my breasts and kneeled, following his bare ass with my eyes as he walked into the bathroom. “Where are you going?” I called.
Water ran; his toothbrush whirred. A minute later, he replied, “To your father’s office.”