19. Mel
— ? —
Mel
He holds me until I lose track of time.
The storm dies to a murmur around us, rain gentling from assault to whisper, and still we stay there. Kneeling on the kitchen floor, my face pressed against his wet shirt, his arms wrapped around me like he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he lets go.
I don’t want him to let go.
That’s the terrifying part. The way my body has decided, without consulting my brain, that this is where it wants to be. That two years of running and three years of hurt can be set aside for the simple fact of his arms around me.
Eventually I pull back. Just enough to see his face.
“Cuddle with me,” I whisper.
His whole body goes still.
“I’m not forgiving you yet.” I need him to understand this. Need him to know where the lines are. “But I could really use a cuddle.”
He doesn’t say anything. Just watches me with those dark eyes, waiting.
“And if you don’t want to-” I manage, trying for levity, “-I could totally find someone else to-”
I don’t get to finish the sentence.
One second I’m on the floor, and the next I’m over his shoulder, and I’m muffling a shriek against his back as he carries me toward the stairs.
“Santino!”
“You said cuddle.”
“I didn’t say kidnap me!”
“Consider it efficient transportation.” He’s taking the stairs two at a time, like I weigh nothing, like carrying a grown woman in a fireman’s hold is his daily routine. “Which room?”
“End of the hall. But-”
He finds it. Kicks the door open gently, mindful of the twins sleeping below, and deposits me on the bed with more care than I probably deserve.
“You’re soaked,” I say, looking at the wet patches already forming on my quilt.
“I’ll change.”
“Into what?”
He looks around. Spots the pile of clean laundry I haven’t put away yet. Grabs one of my oversized sleep shirts, a faded thing with a sunflower on it, three sizes too big for me.
“This.”
“That’s my shirt.”
“I’ll bring it back.”
Before I can argue, he’s pulling his wet shirt over his head, and -
Oh.
Oh God.
I knew he’d changed. I’d seen glimpses of it, the forearms, the shoulders, the way he fills out his clothes differently now. But this is different. This is all of it at once, the full scope of what two years of grief and gym rage have done to him.
His chest is broader. His shoulders are massive. His abs are carved into his stomach like someone sculpted them there. The tattoos climb up his torso, dark ink across his ribs, his chest, disappearing into the waistband of his pants.
He catches me staring.
“Eyes up here, cara mia,” he says, and the bastard has the audacity to sound amused.
“I wasn’t looking.”
“Your eyes have been below my collarbone for a full minute.”
“I’m assessing. It’s different.”
“Assessing what?” He folds his arms, which does nothing to help.
“Whether you could fit through my doorway.”
He laughs, that raw, surprised sound I’m collecting like problems, and pulls my sunflower shirt over his head. It stretches across his shoulders in a way that should be ridiculous and is instead deeply unfair.
His pants come off next. I look away, but not before I catch a glimpse of dark boxer briefs and thighs that could probably crush a watermelon.
Don’t think about his thighs. Don’t think about his thighs. Don’t -
The bed dips as he climbs in beside me.
“Come here,” he says.
I go.
His arm comes around me, heavy as a beam, warm despite the chill still clinging to his skin, and pulls me against his side. My head finds the hollow of his shoulder. My hand settles on his chest.
He’s still wearing my shirt. I can feel the sunflower print against my palm.
“This okay?” he asks quietly.
“Yeah.” My voice comes out thick. “This is okay.”
“Sleep if you want. I’m not going anywhere.”
“I know.”
And the terrifying thing is, I believe him.
I fall asleep in approximately ninety seconds.
***
Morning comes through the curtains.
I wake slowly, awareness filtering in pieces, warmth, safety, the weight of an arm across my waist. For one perfect, suspended moment, I don’t remember any of it. I’m just a woman in a warm bed with a solid presence beside her.
Then I remember.
I open my eyes.
His side of the bed is empty.
One heartbeat of the old fear, sharp and immediate, clawing at my chest. He left. He’s gone. It was all a dream, or a lie, or another thing I was stupid enough to believe -
Then I hear it.
Voices. From downstairs. One deep, one high, one higher.
I follow the sound down the stairs, my heart hammering, and stop in the kitchen doorway.
Santino is at the counter, wearing my sunflower shirt that strains across his shoulders, holding a bottle in one hand.
Leo is in his high chair, happily accepting spoonfuls of mush.
Junie is in hers, watching Santino with her serious green eyes, but she has her cracker in her fist, and she’s not pulling away when he gets close.
“Good morning,” Santino says, glancing up at me like this is nothing. Like feeding twins in my kitchen is his daily routine.
“You-” My voice catches. “You got them up?”
“They were starting to fuss. I wanted to let you sleep.” He shrugs, turning back to Leo. “So I came and got them. Warmed your milk. Started the routine.”
I have to blink hard at the ceiling.
“Open wide,” Santino tells Leo, who opens his mouth like a baby bird. “Good boy. Just like that.”
“Santi good,” Leo announces through his mouthful.
“Thank you, Leo. I appreciate that.”
I watch them for a moment. This man who missed two years, who is trying so hard to catch up, who heard the twins wake and chose to let me sleep.
“The harvest festival is tonight,” I say, before I’ve decided to.
Santino looks up.
“I was wondering-” I stop. Start again. “Would you want to go? With me?”
His face works through three things at once. Hope, carefully contained. Joy, fighting to get out.
“Yes,” he says. Then, steadier: “Yes. I’d like that very much.”
“Okay.” I’m smiling. When did I start smiling? “It starts at six. And maybe you could - if you wanted - stay until then? Help me with the day? Keep an eye out for, um. Footprints.”
“Footprints?”
“The raccoon war has begun. I don’t trust him.”
Santino’s lips twitch. “I’ll maintain a vigilant watch.”
“My hero.”
“I’ve been demoted from husband to raccoon security. I’ll take it.”
We stand there, grinning at each other like idiots, until Leo throws his spoon on the floor and breaks the moment.
***
By six o’clock, I’m nervous.
Actually nervous. Like it’s a first date. Like I haven’t known this man for five years, haven’t married him, haven’t had his children.
Chiara appears in my doorway with a knowing smile. “You look nice.”
“I look like I always look.”
“You brushed your hair.”
“I brush my hair sometimes.”
“You’re wearing the earrings I gave you five years ago.”
I touch my ear reflexively. She’s right, the small gold hoops she bought me for my first Italian Christmas. I put them on without thinking.
“The twins are already asleep,” she continues. “I’ll keep an eye on them. Go have fun.”
“It’s just the harvest festival,” I say, and even I don’t believe me.
Chiara raises one eyebrow to its full, devastating height. “It’s a date, and you put on the earrings, and you know it.” She grins before I can argue. “He’s downstairs, by the way. Showered and everything. He looks very handsome.”
“Chiara.”
“What? I’m just observing.”
I head downstairs before she can make any more observations.
He’s waiting by the front door. Showered, like Chiara said. Hair still damp, curling slightly at his temples. Wearing a dark button-down that fits him like a second skin and jeans that -
Don’t look at the jeans. Don’t look at the jeans.
“Ready?” he asks.
“Lead the way.”
***
The festival is everything.
Stalls line the town square, selling apple cider and pumpkin bread and crafts made by people I’ve come to know over the past two years. A fiddle band plays on the central platform, the music bright and fast, and the whole place smells like cinnamon and woodsmoke and autumn.
Santino stays close but not crowding. Carries my bags without being asked. Buys me a cup of hot cider that warms my hands through the paper.
The town clocks us immediately. I see Dolores elbow Martha, see the mayor do a double-take, see at least three people I don’t recognize start whispering. But nobody says anything directly. Not yet.
A pigeon lands on the cider stand three feet from my head, and I flinch so hard I slosh hot cider over my knuckles. Santino doesn’t even look, just steps smoothly between me and the bird, shoos it off with his hat, and resettles his hand at the small of my back like it never happened.
“Still?” he murmurs, fighting a smile. “After all this time?”
“They started it,” I mutter. “Five years ago. On a gravel path. I’m holding a grudge.”
“I know. I was there. It’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“Mel Jordan.” A voice cuts in from the cider line, warm, easy, Texan.
It’s Tucker Boone, who runs the feed co-op and once spent an entire growing season not-so-subtly asking Hattie whether I was seeing anyone.
He’s good-looking in an uncomplicated, cornfed way, and he’s grinning at me like Santino isn’t standing eight inches to my left.
“Was hoping you’d be here. You still owe me a dance from the spring social - you bailed on me. ”
“I had a teething toddler, Tucker.”
“Excuses.” He winks. “Save me one tonight? You clean up real nice.”
And I feel it before I see it, the temperature drop beside me.
Santino doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t puff up, doesn’t stake a claim, doesn’t do a single thing a lesser man would do.
He just goes very, very still, and when I glance up his jaw has gone to granite and his eyes are fixed on Tucker with the flat, patient attention of a man cataloguing exits.
“She’s spoken for tonight,” Santino says. Pleasant. Absolutely arctic. “But I’ll pass along the message.”
Tucker looks him up and down, all six-foot-plenty, forty pounds of orchard muscle and visible ink of him, and wisely remembers somewhere else to be. “Right. Y’all have a good one.”