Chapter Twenty-Nine
Valentina
I expect to see Matteo at Firenze the following day, but he isn’t there. I check my phone to see if he’s texted, but aside from a missed call from Thiago, I have no other notifications.
I look for him the following day, and the next, but he remains conspicuously absent. I’m not surprised that he’s busy—the club rumbles with fear and rumors in the wake of Rocco’s murder. Turns out, you can’t kill a Don ’s heir without the ground shaking in the aftermath.
What I am surprised by is how much I miss him. How lonely and alone I suddenly feel in his absence, especially as it stretches to over a week.
With stubborn, painstaking tenacity, Matteo worked his way into every aspect of my life, from my work to the hours I spend away from Firenze . Unexpectedly, there’s such an obvious Matteo-shaped hole overnight that I find I’m not sure what to do with myself.
What did I do with all my time before I met him?
Were there this many empty hours in the day back then? Because I could swear the days feel far longer now.
It’s concerning. He should be able to lift right out of my life without me missing him because one day that’s exactly what he’s going to do. So I resolve to see his disappearance and radio silence as good things.
Practice for the near future.
It’s unfortunately not that easy. His absence also reveals just how much of my grief he single-handedly keeps at bay. I’ve always thought of him as a distraction, but I never once considered that he could be equally shielding me from the crushing weight of loss. Without him, the sadness seeps back in. Instead of running away from it, I decide to face it. To embrace it. To take a moment to honor Adri.
I pack a bag full of necessities and head to our spot.
‘Our spot’ isn’t anything special, nor is it actually ours. It’s a very old tree in a quiet corner of Hyde Park where we used to go when we had a brief reprieve from the rain. We’d sit and talk, eat, listen to music from back home, and participate in our favorite activity—people watching.
When the tree comes into view, I stop in my tracks, overcome. I haven’t been back since Adriana disappeared. It’s yet another thing I stopped doing after she was gone. In a way, two lives came to a screeching halt that night.
It looks exactly the same. Same broad, solid trunk, same lush grass, same secluded spot. Adri and I are just a blip in the thousand year old history of this tree, so I don’t know why I thought it might have changed. Maybe because I expect everything and everyone that came into contact with her to reflect the same level of devastation in the wake of her loss as I do. Standing in front of it now, I find comfort in the sameness of it all.
Once my blanket is laid out on the grass, I sit and start pulling items out of my bag.
“Hummus, carrots, and cheddar sticks,” I speak out loud as if Adri is sitting next to me. “Because I really wasn’t lying about how good those are.” I smile to myself imagining her rolling her eyes at me. “ Aguardiente , of course, because Thiago would kick our asses if we drank anything else.” I place the bottle on the blanket beside me. “And last but not least, arepas boyacense .” I look up at the sky, holding the tupperware tightly in both hands. “I hope you’re not mad at me for eating these without you. It didn’t feel right to come here without them. If you are mad, you can yell at me when I make my way up to where you are. I hope you’re scoping out all the cool things we’ll do when I get there.”
If anyone is walking through this part of the park, I’m sure they’re choosing to give the crazy lady talking out loud to herself a wide berth. Not that I can blame them.
I peel the lid off the tupperware and grab an arepa . The second the flavors hit my tongue, memories come flooding back with them.
“Dios mio,” Adri groans, an arepa in each hand. “You need to be very careful with these.”
I laugh. “Why?”
“If you ever let a man try them, he’ll never let you go. He might wife you on the spot and keep you chained to the kitchen, making these on demand for him.”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“I’m serious. These are husband catchers. Mark my words here.”
“Well then maybe I should start distributing them. We both know my love life has been nothing short of tragic.”
Adri takes a bite of one arepa, then the other, nodding with her mouth comically full. “You do tend to like them unavailable.”
“I do not like them unavailable,” I gasp, shoving her shoulder. “The unavailable like me , it’s a completely different thing. They conveniently forget they already have a girlfriend and I get to find that out later.”
Tears sting the backs of my eyes. I wonder what Adri would think of Matteo. I know she’d like the person he is and how protective of me he is, but in my short—although incredibly consistent—dating history he's the most unavailable man of them all. The only difference is he’s been honest about it from the beginning.
“Adri,” I say, speaking to the sky once more. “Send me a sign if you like Matteo.”
A massive, ear-splitting crack of thunder meets my words.
Clouds blanket the horizon, turning it dark grey, and a drop hits my upturned cheek. One drop turns to two, then the skies open up with an ominous roar and it starts to pour.
I laugh.
“You’re giving me mixed signals here, hermana ,” I call. On the one hand, it is a sign. On the other, rain had no bigger enemy than Adriana when she was still alive, so I can hardly consider this an endorsement of him.
I keep laughing, my shoulders convulsing, until my laughter turns into silent sobs.
Drawing my legs up to my chest, I close my eyes, rest my head on my forearms, and continue to cry silently. Crying is good. It means that I’m no longer empty, no longer numb.
I’m drenched within seconds.
I didn’t check the weather before I left, even though I should have guessed that it would rain because it always fucking rains. My shirt sticks to my back, icy cold rain running in rivulets down my spine. Water beads at the points of my hair and drips down onto my chest. Thick drops run the length of my face and mix with my tears until I’m not sure which is which, but both continue on past my jaw.
I’m shivering, my teeth chattering loudly, but I don’t move. Closing my eyes, I take the much-deserved beating from the elements and sit there in my misery.
After a while, my skin starts to go numb from the cold. I hear the pelting of raindrops on my body, but I hardly feel them anymore.
Until the rain abruptly stops.
At first, I think the storm has simply passed. Then, another crack of thunder booms overhead, as if to boast its presence.
The muffled pattering of drops on grass tells me the downpour continues.
A raising of the hairs along the back of my neck alerts me to movement nearby. The unmistakable presence of a large, warm body appears next to me.
Lifting my head and opening my eyes, I find Matteo settled beside me on the blanket, his arm extended above him, his gaze fixed stoically off into the distance.
An unnamed emotion knots my windpipe seeing him. I trace over his handsome profile, pausing on the stubble lining his perfect jaw. He hasn’t shaved in a few days and it gives him a more rugged appearance than his usual GQ cover model look. If the pang in my lower belly is anything to go by, I like this rougher version of him.
My gaze tracks his extended arm and journeys upwards. My heart clenches violently in my chest when my eyes find the canopy of the umbrella he holds open above my head.
The wind catches the soft edges and rustles the fabric as I stare, but Matteo’s grip remains unyielding. None of the rain reaches me any longer.
He doesn’t use the umbrella to shield anything other than me. He sits off to the side of the covered perimeter, the rain continuing to beat down on his face and body, soaking his dark grey suit through in seconds. He doesn’t acknowledge the cold he must undoubtedly feel; he sits there, unflinching, almost arrogant in his resolve, facing the storm’s assault while actively protecting me from it.
All I want is to crawl into his lap, curl into his body, and rest my head against his chest.
“How did you know where I was?” I ask. A raindrop hangs precariously off the tip of his nose. I wipe it away before it can fall.
Matteo turns his face to the side. Rain runs down his temples in rivulets. It plasters his hair to his forehead in unruly curls that highlight the sharpness of his cheekbones and the strong, solid line of his jaw. He’s all soft looks and hard edges, so dangerously handsome he’s almost painful to look at.
Drops gather on his dark lashes as his gaze rakes unhurriedly down my body, his nostrils flaring in obvious appreciation. My skin prickles everywhere his eyes touch. He manages to make me feel like the most beautiful and seductive woman in the world even when I must look like a drowned rat.
“I followed you.”
Why?
I don’t ask the question even though his eyes dare me to. I’m not brave enough to find out the answer.
“Can’t make a habit of that,” I murmur instead, attempting humor and failing. My voice comes out hollow and sad rather than teasing. I watch the rain.
Matteo is silent. He listens to the tearful hiccup I can’t swallow, he watches me sweep a tear off my cheek, he stares at me with a look so intimate it sears straight through to my soul.
“How long does it take to form a habit?” he finally asks.
My forehead creases. “I think I read somewhere that it’s twenty-one days.”
He hums thoughtfully, dragging his gaze away from me and back out into the rain in quiet contemplation.
“Too late then,” he whispers, as if to himself.
I glance over at him. He might as well have reached into my chest and wrapped his fingers around my heart for the way it stalls at his words.
Instead, his arm stays upright, the umbrella continuing to steadily shield me from the rain.
“You’ve been gone,” I murmur, unable to muffle the slight accusatory note in my tone.
Matteo shakes his head. “I wasn’t far, cara mia .”
“What does that mean?”
He looks back at me, holding my gaze the length of three clumsy heartbeats. I know because my heart crashes repeatedly into the walls of my chest, counting off each one.
One.
Two.
Three—
“Just because I wasn’t by your side doesn’t mean I haven’t had eyes on you every second since we last saw each other.”
I wrap my arms around myself and look back out into the rain. It’s really pouring now, thick strands of water that look like pieces of rope cut from the cloth of the sky.
When did I come to think of the moments without Matteo by my side as uncommon and unwanted, and not the other way around?
“You’re not asking me why I’m sitting in the rain.”
“You’ll tell me when you’re ready,” Matteo says. “Pretend I’m not here and keep crying if you need to, but stay dry. Or stay as wet as you already are.”
I’m embarrassed to be crying in front of him again, but he doesn’t flinch, he doesn’t falter. He accepts the raw emotion like it’s his to carry.
He doesn't ask me to trust him again.
Not in so many words.
Not with words at all.
His body language screams it at me. It’s in the tightness of his jaw, the tension in his shoulders, the lethal grip of his hand on the umbrella, his knuckles white from the pressure. It’s in the unbending determination in his gaze, the way his thigh presses into me, lending me his warmth. The way he orients his body towards me, providing support without a word, without forcing it on me but just by letting me know it’s there instead.
I so badly want to tell him everything—who I am, where I’m from, who my family is—but I can’t bear the thought of him hating me.
I can’t bear the thought of losing him.
He doesn’t twitch when a clap of lightning brightens the dark sky above us, he doesn’t move as ten more minutes tick by, he just sits there, still as a statue, until my tears have dried.
I’m starting to think he intends to spend the night sitting there beside me, until I cough.
And then his entire demeanor changes.
Matteo’s head whips around so quickly, he startles me. He jerks abruptly to his feet, moving his big body with surprising speed.
“I’m taking you home.”
His voice brooks no discussion. He gathers everything back into the bag, then reaches down and grabs my hand, using it to tug me to my feet.
“And I’m holding your hand,” he announces, eyes daring me to disagree. “Don’t argue with me.”
Looking down at where our hands are joined, I slowly intertwine our fingers together. “Okay,” I say.
Matteo’s eyes follow mine. He makes a quiet noise of pure male satisfaction and squeezes my hand in his much larger palm. He takes me to his car, a G wagon and not the Maserati I was expecting, opens the door for me, wraps his hands around my waist and lifts me into the passenger seat. Then he walks to the back of the car, leaving my door open.
Knowing how he’s reacted every other time I’ve made an attempt at touching my door, I don’t try to close it myself.
He’s back less than ten seconds later, carrying a large cotton t-shirt and a fluffy looking blanket. Matteo looks over his left shoulder, then his right, scouring every inch of our surroundings before reaching for my drenched shirt and ripping it off me. He covers me with his large body, shielding my half naked torso from potentially prying eyes, even as his own reveal every inappropriate, uncivilized thing he wants to do to me. My legs quiver and my pussy throbs the harder he stares.
He doesn’t let his obvious arousal take control, his concern for me coming out the winner in that battle. He drops the fresh shirt over my head and helps me push my arms through the short sleeves. He reaches beneath the fabric and skilled fingers dance up my spine to unhook the band of my bra. He draws the straps down my arms and removes the equally drenched lingerie from me.
When I sneeze, his eyes stroke over my face. “Where’s your umbrella?” he questions, his jaw flexing.
I give him a sheepish look. “I forgot to check the weather.”
A harsh scowl twists his features. He wraps the blanket around my shoulders, closing it tightly over my chest.
“What?” I ask.
“Now you have me wanting to fistfight the rain for getting you sick.”
With that, he closes the door and walks around to the other side. He’s reaching for my hand again before he’s even settled into the driver’s seat.
When he said he was taking me home, I expected him to drive me to my place.
Instead, he takes me to his.