Chapter 6 #2
When he draws back, I breathe him in once more. “Let me walk you.”
The silk kimono waits draped over the chair—cream with a scatter of painted cranes.
I slide my arms through, tie the belt over a belly that has outgrown denial.
Seven months and every step reminds me I’m carrying a world inside my body.
He watches me knot the sash, something like pride moving beneath the iron in his gaze.
He takes my hand as we leave the suite. Marble cools the soles of my feet.
The villa sighs around us—lanterns dimmed for morning, a maid’s cart ghosting past a corridor, the scent of espresso whispering from the kitchen.
On the terrace, bougainvillea throws fuchsia shadows across the stone.
The path to the helipad slices through citrus trees heavy with fruit.
He turns there, at the angle where I always stop, and he always assesses distance with a soldier’s eye.
I place a hand on his arm, suddenly not wanting him to leave.
“Be careful,” I whisper.
“Always. I’ll be back before you count too many sunsets,” he says, and the line should make me roll my eyes. It doesn’t. It lands and settles like a pebble tossed into a still pool, ripples spreading.
My hand lifts without thinking. I wave. He hesitates, then does the thing that undoes me.
A small, private smile meant only for me.
One last look, and he’s walking—dark suit cutting through green, shoulders squared for leaving.
Rotor blades begin their slow thunder. Wind tears the scent of him from the air and flings my hair across my face.
I hold the kimono closed and stand there until the helicopter shrinks to a black insect and then to nothing at all.
The villa is too quiet when I come back inside. Silence folds around me like a heavy robe. Loneliness pricks and sparks into restlessness fast.
A shower first. Maybe heat can rinse want from skin.
Steam fogs the mirrors. Water thunders against travertine, a bright white noise that drowns thought.
I brace one hand on the wall and let the other map the territory that used to be only mine—the curve of belly, the slope of hip, the place where my pulse beats faster under my own touch.
A sigh slips out before I can catch it. Closing my eyes makes it worse.
He is everywhere when I shut out the world.
The weight of his palm on my stomach at midnight, the rasp of his morning stubble against the nape of my neck, the inaudible murmur of bella mia when he thinks I’m asleep.
Fingers slide lower. Heat flares. I chase relief the way drowning lungs chase air—greedy, grateful, unpretty. The rhythm builds quickly in the shower’s rush, tightens, crests. Pleasure spills through me in soft, shaking waves, water carrying the sound from my mouth away before it can embarrass me.
Afterward, I lean my forehead against the cool tile and breathe until my heart remembers a calmer beat. It isn’t enough. It never is when the wanting is a man and not a moment .
Clothes, then movement. A walk might unknot what the water didn’t.
I choose a soft dress that forgives the swell, sandals that won’t argue with stairs, a straw hat to shade what the sun has started to love too hard.
The guard at the gatehouse nods without intruding as I slip down the stone steps that spill toward the sea.
The path is fragrant with rosemary and thyme, the scent that makes recipes whisper in the back of my brain even though the chef sends up meals before I can think to ask.
Gulls wheel. The horizon pulls and pulls until I give in and stop.
The sea is an animal breathing. It throws light like jewels in rough hands. Waves cuff the rocks and foam in lace that never repeats itself. Far below, the private dock rocks gently under the tethered kiss of a black Riva with chrome teeth.
Seven months. Two more until the world tilts on its axis and never tips back.
My palm rides the rise and fall of my belly.
“What do we do, piccola ?” I ask the wind because it’s the only thing here that answers without words.
“Do we marry your father because it’s easier and safer and something in me has started to want the thing I swore I wouldn’t?
Or do we run again because freedom is a religion I don’t know how to stop worshipping? ”
A lemon drops somewhere up the slope with a soft thud, as if the island itself throws its hands up. I laugh once—small, surprised, not unhappy.
One life sits behind me in a villa made of stone and power and a man who holds me like home and like possession. Another life waits beyond the line where sky kisses water and boats vanish into possibility.
The past curls its fingers, the future cocks its head, and the present balances on my rib cage with the weight of a sleeping child.
For now, I stand between them and let the view take me.
The choice can wait until the baby arrives, until my body is mine again or his again or something holy and complicated that belongs to all three of us.
For now, the sun warms my shoulders, the sea answers in blue, and the island breathes with me as if we share lungs.
“ Andiamo, amore, ” I whisper to the tiny life inside. “Let’s walk.”