Epilogue
COSIMO
I stood over the stove in a pair of boxer briefs and a denim apron, watching the polenta spit angrily in the pan. “I have a feeling we’re going to have to order in. This isn’t looking good.”
Fabiana came up beside me and peered into the pot. “You just need to add a bit more water.”
“How much?”
She shrugged. “Eyeball it.”
This woman. “If you allowed me to use measuring cups, this would be going better,” I grumbled as I moved to the sink. She insisted on making this far more difficult than it needed to be.
“Baking is all about precision, but cooking is an art, my darling.” Her arms slid around my waist from behind, and she pressed her lips to my bare back.
Just like that, the irritation drained out of me.
She’d developed an uncanny ability to dismantle my dark moods with one touch.
“It can be a great creative outlet. Trust me, you need one of those.”
I held a glass beneath the tap and reached behind me to smack her ass. “I already have one. You think making you come three times in a row doesn’t require creativity?”
A flush spread across her cheeks. “Okay, you might have a point.”
I grinned and returned to the stove and poured in what looked like a perfectly reasonable amount of water. The polenta hissed in protest.
Fabiana tsked. “Too much.”
“You said to eyeball it,” I complained.
“Yes, eyeball it. Not drown it.” She shot me an amused look. “That’s okay. It won’t ruin it if it’s a bit thin.”
“I’m waiting for the moment you demote me to chopping vegetables.”
That tended to happen.
Shortly after Nettle had agreed to marry me for real, we’d started a new tradition.
Every Friday night, we stayed home and made dinner together.
Most weeks, I was eventually relegated to preparing the salad while Fabiana handled anything that required intuition or the ability to follow useless instructions like “add a splash” or “mix until it looks right”.
I didn’t mind. It gave me an excuse to watch her move around the kitchen. And watching my wife had quickly become one of my favorite pastimes.
She tasted sauces straight from the spoon. She hummed under her breath whenever she forgot I was there. She left cabinet doors ajar and put utensils back wherever the hell she felt like it.
And she always tied her hair up before she began cooking, although tonight loose curls had escaped and framed her face.
I loved her hair. Loved twisting it around my fist. Loved finding strands of it clinging to my suits during meetings.
Loved waking every morning to see it spread across my pillow as proof that she was still there.
She’d long since moved into my bedroom, scattering traces of herself there and everywhere else in the house.
It wasn’t until the day she apologized for leaving glaze samples across the dining table that I realized I didn’t mind any of it.
Me, a man who had once prized order, precision, and austerity.
That was when I understood how much I’d changed since she came into my life—and how much more I liked this version of myself.
I wasn’t lonely.
“It’s almost ready,” she said, stirring the pot of braised beef she’d been working on.
“I’ll get the bowls.” I touched the small of her back as I passed. That constant need to touch her still caught me off guard sometimes. If she was within reach, my hand found her, as though some part of me needed continuous confirmation that she was mine and exactly where she belonged.
People had noticed. My brothers, her friends, even Rafaele. The last time I saw him, he’d asked whether we were already trying for children.
Apparently, we were giving off that impression.
The thought of a little girl with Nettle’s curls and my temper running through this house did something violent to my chest.
But I also wanted her to myself for a while longer.
Selfish? Absolutely.
I’d spent months fighting what I felt for her and had only just stopped being an idiot. I wasn’t ready to share her attention yet, even with someone who would have her eyes and my surname.
I opened the cupboard and took out two beige bowls painted with small black birds along the bottom. Like most of Nettle’s work, they were intentionally imperfect. One bird was slightly larger than the other, and the rim of my bowl dipped on one side.
“Your latest creations,” I said, setting them to the right of the stove, “might be my favorite.”
Fabiana shot me a warm look. “You say that every time.”
“Because you keep getting better.”
The plain black dishes I’d owned before she moved in had disappeared weeks ago. I’d told her to replace all of them with pieces she made herself. She’d stared at me as if I’d casually told her to burn down the house. Then, she told me it would take months.
I’d said, I didn’t care.
She’d asked me if I was sure. Not everything would match. Some of it might not even be practical.
She still hadn’t understood. Even after everything, she still expected me to only tolerate her in careful doses.
I wanted all of her. Every piece she’d give me and more.
And I wanted to give her the world, but the one thing I would never give her was permission to make herself smaller for me or anyone else.
If it took the rest of my life to break that instinct in her, then that was how long I’d spend doing it.
So I’d told her I knew exactly what I wanted and that she could stop trying to negotiate me out of it.
A few weeks later, she finally began to relax into the house. Into us.
And somewhere along the way, pottery became more than a hobby. I’d noticed it before she had, because I noticed everything about her. She came home from the studio energized, even when she was exhausted.
She loved making things.
When she’d mentioned offhand that she was considering opening a ceramics shop one day, I secured a space for her in SoHo the following week. It was in a building we owned and it had been sitting empty, but I knew it would be perfect for her.
“It was only an idea,” she’d said when I handed her the keys, her expression slightly panicked.
“Now it can be real. Go get it, Nettle. No excuses.”
She’d accused me of being insane, but she kept the space. The store had consumed most of her attention over the last few weeks. Tonight, drawings of the proposed interior covered the kitchen island.
“The contractor needs an answer about the display shelving by Monday,” she said as she spooned polenta and the beef into the bowls.
“Is that a problem?” She’d said it like it was.
“I’m reconsidering the layout.” She handed me one of the bowls. The smell made my mouth water.
I leaned back against the counter. “What’s wrong with what we reviewed two nights ago?”
“I was thinking I might use the front half of the store to feature work from other ceramicists.”
I frowned. “Why?”
She grabbed a bottle of wine from the rack. “It would give customers more variety. And I’m not sure I’ll have enough inventory of my own by the opening. What if people don’t like my work? Having other artists’ pieces there would—”
I pressed a finger to her lips. “You’re not opening a gallery to show off other people’s work, Nettle.”
“It isn’t a gallery. It’s a ceramics store.”
“Then fill it with your ceramics.”
She gave me an exasperated look. “I just told you I might not have enough.”
“So delay the opening. You’re the boss.”
“Cosimo—”
“If you need it, take another month. Or three.” I stepped closer, bracing one hand on the counter beside her. “But I’m not going to watch you build something for yourself and then hide behind other people the second it becomes real. You need to stop being afraid of being seen.”
Her lips parted, and a wry smile appeared on her lips. “When did you get so good at knowing what I need?”
I bent and kissed her. “Probably around the time you got so good at getting me to tell you anything you want to know.”
She loved asking questions. Sometimes I wondered whether her fascination with me matched mine with her, but I doubted that was possible.
I did tell her everything. The issues with some of the capos that came with the position. The progress Dominic and I were making on the development. Even the thoughts about Vita that still surfaced when my mind had time to wander.
I’d exiled her to one of our properties in California. Once the truth about what she’d convinced Dad to do all those years ago spread through the family, people had turned cold toward her. Without their loyalty, she’d lost the soft power she had spent decades collecting.
She was neutralized. For now.
I kept her under close surveillance, because I wasn’t stupid enough to assume a woman like Vita would surrender simply because she’d played her cards and lost. Sometimes I wondered whether she would let go of her hunger for power or become like Dominic’s mother—far away yet hungry for revenge.
A part of me wished she would give me a reason to take more permanent measures.
But for now, I was happy to keep her far away from the life I’d managed to build. Life with an extraordinary woman who I trusted and loved.
“Grab the wine glasses,” Fabiana told me. I watched her ass sway as she walked out of the kitchen, then took two glasses from the shelf and followed her.
We carried our food into the living room and settled on the rug beside the fireplace, placing the bowls on the coffee table. Beyond the windows, snow drifted down, covering the grounds in white.
January was the coldest month of the year, but the house felt warm.
And that had nothing to do with the fire, and everything to do with her.
Thank you so much for reading Marry Me Not!