Chapter 35
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
GIOVANNI
Later that night, I knock on Bianca’s wall after the nonnas are asleep, and she tiptoes into my room and slides under the sheets next to me.
I hold her to me, her body cradled against mine, my chin on top of her head. “I just want to hold you tonight. Will you let me?”
She burrows in closer. “Okay, but don’t try talking to me about anything serious. I don’t want to worry about Miles or any hot love triangle involving my great-uncle. I’ve never seen him with a woman, and I don’t want to start imagining it now. He had three-inch-long ear hair.”
I laugh, or half laugh. It’s the most I can manage right now. I’m not feeling amused by the implication that my nonna might have cheated on my nonno.
If someone publishes an accusation like that, I know it would destroy Nonna Francesca, who says a rosary for her lost husband twice a day and kisses his photograph every night before she goes to sleep. But how can I hope to stop them?
I can leave Apple Ridge.
If I leave, they’ll have no reason to write about the apple fight or do any deep dives into the accident. The Murphys would be part of my past, not my present.
The thought brings me no peace.
“It’s not your fault, Giovanni. I’m the one who asked for this,” Bianca murmurs softly, as if she can hear the thoughts doing battle in my head.
“Not for this.”
She snuggles her head closer, her hair ticklish, her presence exactly the balm I need. “I asked for you, and you’re worth it.”
It’s then, with her in my arms, that I remember what Emily said to me earlier.
Sometimes you have the chance to control the map.
Maybe I’ve been coasting again, letting other people make the important decisions and playing nice so everyone can get along.
It’s time for me to control the map. I’ve already been talking to the apple pie judges, but that’s not enough. The situation has escalated.
“I’m not going to let anyone hurt you anymore,” I promise her, kissing the top of her head.
“I know you won’t,” she replies into my chest, her voice drowsy. “I’m not going to let anyone hurt you either.”
“Did you love Jake?” I ask after a moment. Not because I’m jealous, but because I want to know her whole story.
She heaves a deep sigh. “You’re really breaking my no-talking-about-anything-serious rule.”
“You make me feel serious.”
She looks up at me, her eyes big in the dark. “I loved him in a way, but I wasn’t in love with him. My first real relationship was with him. Kind of like you with Janine, except he wasn’t an asshole.”
That makes me smile for half a second. I run a hand over her hair. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
“I’ve lost a lot of people,” she says in a voice that’s soft yet strong. Within it, I can feel the power and pain of all of those losses. How each person who left her tugged on a different part of her heart, threatening to pull it to pieces.
As if anything could destroy a woman like her.
I take a deep breath and then admit the truth. “I’m in love with you, Bianca. I know we said we’d only do this for October, but I want more. I’m going to try to figure out a way for us to get it, if that’s what you want too. If you want me to leave, I will.”
Her eyes meet mine, and for a moment I think she’s going to get up and leave me. Maybe she’ll even climb out the window, down that tree, and run…
“It’s too early for you to know that,” she finally says, her voice quiet.
“I don’t think it is. We’ve known each other most of our lives, and my nonno always told me that when you know, you know. It was like that for my brother too.”
Her expression shifts, sadness gleaming through. “But your last videos were so successful. I know you’ll need to make some big changes for your career, and—"
“I can make those from anywhere, but I can’t leave my grandmother. You know why. That doesn’t mean I have to be by her side every moment, though. We could try long distance.”
Her mouth opens and then closes, and unshed tears glisten in her eyes. I trace my thumb beneath them.
“I don’t know, Giovanni,” she finally says. “It would feel a lot like the long goodbye.”
“You’ve never shrunk from it before,” I point out. “Half your friends are over eighty.”
She hesitates, her lips wobbling, then says, “It would feel different with you.”
Perhaps it’s a foolish time to feel hope, but I do. If she genuinely feels that way, she must want to give us a chance too. “Please don’t give up on us. Please.”
She buries her face into me again, speaking into my shirt, as if she’s trying to whisper directly into my heart.
For a long moment she says nothing. She only listens to my racing heartbeat. Finally, she says, “I love you too.”
“You do?”
Her smile is full of sadness as she says, “Don’t sound so surprised. You’re easy to love. I’m the one who’s hard to love.”
I scowl at that piece of nonsense. “Whoever made you think that is a stupid fool, and I’d like to kill them.”
She runs her fingers over my face as if she wants to memorize me. “Thank you for that. Giovanni…I need to take you somewhere.”
“Right now?” I ask, surprised.
“Right now.”
“Are we leaving through the front door?”
She tips her head toward the window. “Why bother, when we have a perfectly fine escape route right here?”
I wouldn’t deny Bianca any bit of fun, so I open the window and follow her out into the tree, then drop down into the leaves after her, remembering again that long-ago day when I tried to impress the Murphys with my unimpressive jump.
“What now, Bianca?” I ask.
She reaches down to help me up. I pull her to me instead, laughing as she falls into my arms. “I think I like this,” I say softly. “We could make leaf angels instead of snow angels.”
“We could,” she whispers into my ear, then kisses just beneath the lobe, “but there’s something I need to show you. First, we need to grab a flowerpot.”
“Oh, are we gardening in the middle of the night?”
“You read my mind,” she says.
I help her up, and no shit, she slips into the shed positioned against the back of the house and reemerges with a couple of flowerpots and a trowel.
“You’re a woman of mystery, Bianca Murphy.”
“I’m a woman with a plan.”
“And I’m but your humble servant,” I say, which earns me an eye roll.
She drives us downtown, where we park, and then she leads me to Gallagher Park. A few college-age kids are gathered in the lower section of the park on blankets and beach towels, and they watch us warily as Bianca leads me past them, both of us carrying pots and trowels.
“Don’t worry, kids,” I say, aiming for a smile from my girl. “You’ll learn all about midnight gardening when you’re older.”
Bianca’s laughter trails behind us as we climb to the top of the hill, the gravel crunching beneath our shoes, the air smelling of leaves and apples and sweet rot. We make our way to the old bench that sits at the pinnacle.
Time should have worn away this bench too, as it has the Murphy house and Apple Ridge itself, but it still looks deceptively new.
“Will you sit with me?” she asks, arching her head up to look at me.
“Gladly,” I say, and I lower down next to her on the bench.
“Do you know any of the stories about the bench?” she asks.
“I’ve heard rumors that people like to sit on it.”
Smiling, she reaches for me, and points to the ground below us with our joined hands.
The lamps on the trail are dim, and it’s dark enough that I can’t see what she’s indicating. Until I do. Several green shoots are mixed in with the soil, bricks, and grass around the bench.
“That’s weird.” I frown. “You don’t usually see much growing at this time of year.”
She lifts my hand and kisses it softly. “They say that if you throw seeds from this bench with a wish in your heart, and the seeds grow, it means your wish has come true.”
I shift to get a better look at her, her eyes almost luminescent in the night. “You threw those seeds…”
“You’re right, I did. I came here to ask Kitty for something good, something that would bring my family together, and that very night you showed up.”
My heart swells with the thought, with the significance of Bianca telling me this. Because my girl is not superstitious. She never has been, even when we were kids and Miles and I used to push around the planchette on the Ouija board.
“You think she sent me to you?” I ask, my voice gruff.
“I know it here,” she says, tapping her chest. “And we’re going to dig up some of these seedlings together, because I’ve decided I want them to live. I know everything dies eventually, but I want them to survive a little longer. As long as possible.”
I take her hand and kiss it, then kiss the corner of her mouth and her lips and the lines of tears down her cheeks. I want to kiss every inch of her. Worship every inch of her. I want to show her how much I want her dream to be true.
“I’m going to learn how to be the best fucking gardener in the world, then, Bianca. I’ll do anything to keep your hope alive.”
She laughs and kisses me while she’s laughing, and then we repot as many of the seedlings as we can. By the time we finish, we’re dirty and tired but happy.
“Take me home, Giovanni,” she says. “Take me home and make love to me.”
“I’m going to speed,” I announce.
Inside, I’m thinking: This is my home. This is where I belong.
I was always meant to be here with her.
I still have my obligation to my nonna, the promise I made to my grandfather before the last breaths of life left him, but I have to find a way to do my duty to both of them—my nonna and the woman I love.
Nothing is more important.
Once we’re back in the farmhouse, we shower together in her bathroom, and it feels like a sacrament as we wash each other’s bodies and then dry ourselves with her fluffy white towels.
“I want you,” she whispers to me. “I want you inside me.”
“I don’t have anything—”
“It’s okay. I’m on birth control. Make love to me, Giovanni.”
I pick her up in my arms, not really thinking about anything other than what she said—make love to me—yes, please—and carry her to her bed, where I set her down.
She looks like a goddess lying in a pool of her own hair, her gaze taking me in.
“Let me worship you,” I beg.
She laughs, but I shake my head. “I’m not joking. I want to kiss every inch of you. Let me. I’m begging you.”
“Okay,” she says, her voice shaking, and I know no one else has asked for that honor before.
I kiss my way down her body and back up again, settling between her legs so I can taste her and make her squirm.
She only lets me savor her taste for a few minutes, squirming and making beautiful noises, before she pulls me up gently by my hair. “Please. I need you inside of me.”
My woman doesn’t need to beg me for my cock. It’s hers.
I claim her mouth as I push inside of her slowly, reverently, wanting to bury myself in her. The feeling of being with Bianca without any barriers is a pleasure like nothing I’ve ever experienced.
We stare into each other’s eyes as I sink into her again and again, moving slowly so each sensation is drawn out. I’d like to lose myself in her for hours, forever, but then she grips my butt and begs me, “Harder. Faster.”
Fuck, all right. She doesn’t need to tell me twice.
I pick up the pace, gasping into her mouth, beside myself.
“Oh my God. I’m going to come,” she says. “I’m going to—”
“Come for me,” I murmur. “Come for me, please.”
I can see the look of ecstasy in her eyes as she pulses around my cock. I tumble into it after her, with her, staring in wonder at this woman who looks at me and sees magic.
“I love you,” I say against her lips, still buried inside her. “Cuoure mio.”
My heart.
She smiles against my lips. “I love you too.”