Chapter 24 Aurora
Aurora
“It’s time to wake up.”
I open my eyes to find Curse standing over me. He’s fully dressed in fresh clothes, and there’s a plate of food in his hand. The windows are pink with dawn. Though it’s early, Paulo must have already been here.
Groggily, I sit up, rubbing at my eyes. “Good morning.”
It feels strange to say it. Such a mundane sort of greeting.
But it also feels…good.
“Morning.” He puts the plate of food in my lap. “Have something to eat.”
“Have you eaten?” I ask. “What about water?”
At the word “water” he produces the same bottle as yesterday, filled and sparkling, and pours it into two cups.
“I ate,” he says simply. “Now you.” He sips his water, watching me over the rim of the glass to make sure that I do it.
He doesn’t need to tell me twice. I’m ravenous after not eating much in the past twenty-four hours.
I devour the bread with its sweet preserves.
When I’m finished, Curse holds out his hand to me, helping me rise off the bench.
I’m sore from the night spent on the wood, but I revel in the stiffness of my muscles.
Because it means something. Proves I was here with him all night after all. That this hasn’t been a dream.
That he really loves me.
Curse doesn’t let go of my hand as we leave the church.
“Where’s Paulo?” I ask, expecting to see the older man out here among the gravestones.
“He came this morning. Brought me new clothes and the food. But he’s taking the rest of the week off. He said he’s going to visit his daughter and grandchildren in Palermo.”
“That’s not a euphemism, is it?” I ask, suddenly worried that Curse has done something.
“You worried I’ve made him disappear?” A slight smirk touches his lips. “Well, I didn’t. I did pay him an obscene amount of money, though. He’s just making use of it.”
Relief is so big and so sudden inside me that it escapes my throat in a laugh. Curse raises his brows at me, as if I’ve lost my mind, but I don’t care. He said he loves me. He’s stuck with me now. I throw my arms around his waist and squeeze.
And there, among the graves, standing on the bones of our buried past, he hugs me back.
I ask Curse where we’re going when we get into the car – a weird, tiny, old one that I don’t recognize.
“Toronto,” he replies. “But there’s one other place I want to go first.”
The other place, it turns out, is the beach.
The beach. That little private cove by the house papà stayed in. The house is empty now, no cars in the driveway, no movement behind the windows. When we make our way down to the sandy shore, there is no one there.
No one but us.
And it’s just the same; just the same.
How can it be? How can it be, when Curse and I are now so different? I don’t know if it’s comforting or disconcerting that this place can be so untouched, can remain just as it was, when we can’t.
But, for the first time in my fucking life, I don’t want things to be the way they were before. Standing with Curse on this sand, watching the bright aqua of the water shift beneath the sun, I want nothing but to be here with him, now, just as we are.
I trail along the beach slowly, keeping hold of Curse’s hand, memory blinking in and out. Those are the rock pools where Curse and I stirred the water with sticks, and I secretly pretended I was making a love potion. This is the place we crouched and watched the tiny crabs.
This is the boulder he laid his soaked clothes on, after pulling me from the water.
It’s so surreal, to see him standing beside it now, a man.
“I can’t believe we’re here,” I say, casting my gaze out over the water, the sky. With Curse, Taormina was heaven to me. Without him, it became hell. Now, it’s something in between. A place with beauty and wounds of its own.
Just like us.
“I can’t believe you’re the one who suggested it,” Curse says. “I heard you. When I was in the car. I heard you tell Alessandro to bring you here.” He cups my face. “How could you possibly think I wouldn’t follow you?”
“I…I wanted to protect you,” I whisper. “I didn’t know you heard me.”
“I did,” he says. Then, something like agony in his eyes. “And I heard the other thing you said. That if Alessandro killed me, you’d kill yourself.”
I don’t say anything. I feel no need to defend myself. I simply nod.
But that doesn’t appease him. His grip hardens at my jaw.
“Don’t ever make a threat like that again,” he says.
“Don’t even fucking think it. My life will never be worth yours, Aurora.
” He lowers his face, his words a breathy touch against my mouth.
“I refuse to walk, crawl, or worm my way through any world that doesn’t have you in it.
Do you hear me? I will not fucking do it. Don’t ever ask it of me.”
“I hear you.”
I understand. That’s precisely why I made that threat in the first place.
Because I didn’t understand how I could possibly live without him.
“I don’t want the divorce,” I say abruptly, only then realizing we’ve never discussed it. “I don’t want to leave you. I-”
Curse silences me with a bruising kiss. It tells me everything his voice can’t.
That he will never let me go.
His hands clamp on my waist, clutching tight.
I gasp into his mouth, need racing through my bloodstream.
He’s already panting, his breath ripping out of him, when he spins me by the hips so that my back is to him.
By the time I’ve caught myself, leaning forward and steadying myself by placing my palms on the boulder, Curse has ripped down my leggings and panties.
I whimper in time with his groan, when I feel him, already hot and hard against me.
“You’re not getting the fucking divorce,” he growls, one hand gripping my ass, the other dragging its fingers through my folds until he finds my clit, rubbing hard. “You’re not getting anything but me. For the rest of your goddamn life.”
I cry out, pleasure shaking me, like my bones are the rafters of a building in an earthquake.
But the earthquake is Curse, pressing his hard cock inside me, a glorious burn.
He grunts and thrusts hard, working himself deeper, further, forcing my torso and hipbones against the unyielding surface of the boulder.
His body against and inside mine is just as unforgiving.
Just as relentless, just as eternal as the rock.
He fucks me fast now, and we both need it, both moan, both shudder with desperation, rocked by each other, by the past, by this moment that’s more perfect than either of us could deserve.
This moment that’s more real than anything else has ever been in my life.
When climax comes, it comes for us both, a breaking wave. I clench on him, all around him, feel him explode, feel him behind me, in me, feel him loving me the best way that he knows how.
Ahead of us, the ocean moves to meet the sand.
Just as it always did before.