Left Waiting While My Husband Chose My Best Friend

Chapter 1 Too Certain of Forever

SERAFINA

The shutter bangs against the wall just as I finally get Rafael's arm where I want it, around me instead of flung across his pillow.

Then Rafael's side of the bed shifts, and I realize he's already moving, already up, crossing the room in nothing but the pajama pants he fell asleep in.

The shutters on the far window are rattling, the left one working loose from its latch the way it does every time the March wind comes down from the hills.

"Stay there." He catches the shutter before it can slam again, his voice rough with sleep. "The catch is stuck."

I don't stay there. I never stay there when he tells me to, and after knowing me most of his life, he should probably stop trying.

The tile is cold under my feet as I pad across the room, and I catch him just as he's wrestling with the iron latch, one hand braced against the frame to keep the shutter from swinging wide.

Outside, the sky is that particular shade of pre-dawn gray that means the sun is coming but hasn't committed yet, and the wind carries the first green smell of the season, sharp and clean and full of promise.

Below our window, a few early blossoms have opened in the groves of Tenuta degli Aranci, not the full wave that will come later this month, but enough to thread sweetness through the morning air.

"I told you to stay in bed." He doesn't look at me, but I can hear the smile in his voice. That's the thing about growing up with someone. You learn to read them with your ears as much as your eyes.

"You tell me a lot of things." I slide in beside him, fitting myself into the space between his arm and the window frame. "Hand me the latch. I can feel where it's catching."

"Serafina." He keeps his arm across the opening, leaving me room to reach the catch but not lean out.

"Rafael." I copy his warning tone. He really should know better than to use it on me.

He sighs, but it's the good kind, the familiar kind, the sound he's been making at me since we were children and I followed him into the irrigation channels even though he said I'd ruin my dress.

I did ruin my dress. I also found the turtle he'd been looking for all summer, so I consider it a fair trade.

"Fine." He shifts to make room, and his hand brushes mine as I reach for the iron latch. "But if it swings open and takes you with it, I'm telling your mother you didn't listen."

"You're a grown man and you're still threatening to tell my mother on me?" I find the catch with my fingertips, feeling where the old iron has warped just slightly out of true.

"It's the only threat that works." He braces the wood while I try the catch, trusting my hands despite the argument.

I laugh, and for a moment the effort of the last few weeks drops away. I said yes to this man in the grove where we used to hide from our parents, with orange blossom petals caught in my hair and his hands shaking around a ring.

We were so certain. I miss feeling that certain.

The latch gives under my fingers, the mechanism old but familiar, and I guide the shutter closed properly, securing it with the little twist the warped fitting needs. Rafael watches me do it, his shoulder warm against mine in the cool morning air.

"You're the only person in this house who knows how to work that thing." He tests the shutter, then lets go when it holds.

"That's because I pay attention to the details everyone else ignores.

" I turn to face him, and the gray light catches the planes of his face, the dark stubble along his jaw, the slight crease between his brows that's been there more often than not these past months.

"Also because the latch at my parents' house is the same design. I grew up fighting with it."

"I remember." His mouth curves. "I remember you complaining about it every time I came to your window."

"You threw pebbles at my shutters like we were in some old movie.

" The memory surfaces warm and whole, Rafael standing in my family's garden in the dark, tossing stones at my bedroom window until I opened it and leaned out to tell him he was going to wake my father.

"You were terrible at it. Half the time you hit the wall instead. "

"My aim improved." He sounds offended enough that I have to bite back another laugh.

"Your aim was never the problem. Your timing was the problem." I tug the sleeve of my nightgown down over my cold hand. "You always showed up right when I'd finally fallen asleep."

"You always opened the window anyway." He eases my hand out of the sleeve and folds it between both of his.

I did. I always opened the window, even when I was tired, even when I had lessons early the next morning, even when my father would have had strong opinions about a Visconti boy calling on his daughter at midnight. Some things don't change.

"Come back to bed." I keep hold of his hand when he tries to release it. "Just for a little while. The sun's not even up yet."

His hand finds my waist, and he pulls me closer, pressing his mouth to my temple in a kiss that feels unhurried for the first time in longer than I want to count.

Then he's guiding me back toward the bed, and I let myself be guided, let myself sink into the warmth of him when he pulls me down against his chest.

"Your feet are freezing," he says, and before I can respond, he's tucking them between his calves, sharing his heat the way he used to when we were young and would fall asleep talking in the treehouse, wrapped in the same blanket because neither of us wanted to be the first to go home.

The treehouse. I haven't thought about it in months.

It fell during the bad storms a few years back, and neither of us has had the heart to clear the wreckage. It sits in the grove halfway between our families' lands, a pile of weathered boards that used to be the center of our world.

"Better?" Rafael's voice is low, his hand moving slowly up and down my back.

"Better." I press my cheek against his chest, listening to his heartbeat. "Though I preferred it before your shutter tried to take the wall down."

"My shutter? It's yours when you fix it and mine when it wakes you?" His chin settles against my hair. "You've been cold since you were eight years old and fell into the irrigation channel."

"You pushed me into the irrigation channel." I lift my head so he can see that I have not forgotten this offense.

"I did not push you. You lost your balance." He attempts an innocent expression. I knew that face long before I married it.

"Because you startled me." I poke his chest through the blanket. "You shouted right in my ear."

"Because you were trying to steal my fishing spot." He catches my finger before I can poke him again and kisses the tip, which is cheating, frankly.

I'm laughing again, and the sound loosens something in my chest that I didn't know was tight.

This is us. This is who we are underneath everything else, the boy who knew me before I knew myself and the girl who followed him everywhere and the adults we became who sometimes forget we were ever that young.

He holds me like he has time to hold me, and I let myself believe it.

The gray light outside is slowly warming toward gold, and I know the morning is coming, the obligations and the phone calls and the crisis that's been eating our lives for months.

But right now, in this small window between sleep and waking, we're just us.

"I want to show you something," I say, the words coming before I've fully decided to say them. "In my workshop. A blend I've been working on."

"What do you need for it?" His thumb traces a lazy pattern against my spine. "I can have someone pick up supplies when they go into town."

"I don't need supplies." I tilt my head back to look at him. "I want to show you the work. I want you to smell what I've made and tell me what you think. It matters to me."

"Of course." He says it easily, the way you say something when you're not quite listening. "Whenever you want."

"Rafael." I wait until his eyes focus on mine. "I'm not asking you to buy me something. I'm asking you to spend time with me. In my workshop. Smelling things and giving me your honest opinion, even though you'll probably say it all smells like flowers."

Something shifts in his expression, a flicker of attention that feels like waking up. "I don't think everything smells like flowers."

"You think most things smell like flowers." I remember a leather accord he once declared an excellent rose. I have never let him forget it.

"That's because most things you make do smell like flowers." But he's smiling now, really smiling. "All right. Show me your mysterious blend. But if I accidentally insult it, you have to promise not to hold it against me."

"I promise nothing." I try to keep a straight face, but his wary look defeats me.

"Harsh but fair." He kisses my forehead, then my nose, then the corner of my mouth. "When?"

"Later today. After your morning things." I keep my voice light. "I know you have calls. I just want an hour. That's all."

"An hour," he repeats, like he's writing it down somewhere in his mind. "I can do an hour."

I want to believe him. I want to believe that when the crisis calms down, when the estate stops demanding every waking moment, we'll find our way back to the easy rhythm we used to have.

Mornings and evenings that belong to us.

Conversations that aren't interrupted. Time that isn't borrowed from something more urgent.

Three weeks until our anniversary. I've been planning something, though I haven't told him yet.

A dinner at home, the kind we used to make together before the world got so loud.

The foods we ate on our wedding night, the wine from the year we were married.

I thought maybe if I could remind him of who we were, we could find our way back to who we're supposed to be.

For now, this is enough. This moment, his arms around me, the sound of his breathing and the warmth slowly returning to my feet.

"You can stop warming my feet now." I try to draw one knee up, only for him to trap my ankle gently beneath his.