Epilogue #2
Max disappears into his office for another call with Nico, handling whatever crisis the morning meeting didn’t resolve. I settle into my own office, the room that used to be Nonna’s sewing room, now filled with books and the laptop where I’ve written three novels since Tori was born.
The new one is almost finished. Another story about love and trust and forgiveness and the terrifying leap of choosing someone even when you’re not sure they deserve it.
I’m sensing a theme.
My phone buzzes. A text from my editor.
Three more interview requests. Entertainment Weekly, the Times, and someone from a podcast with two million subscribers. They’re all willing to do audio only, silhouette only, whatever you want. Please just consider it.
I type back: Still no. But I appreciate the creative problem-solving.
Cat. The mystery is driving people insane. Your sales would triple if you did one interview.
My sales are already obscene. I’m good.
You’re impossible.
And yet you keep me around.
Because you’re a genius and your books make me cry. But you’re still impossible.
I set down the phone and pull up my manuscript, but I can’t focus. Through the window, I can see Enzo in the yard with Tori, showing her something in the garden. Cannoli is stationed nearby, her neck stretched tall, watching the perimeter like she’s expecting an invasion.
The dedication in the new book is simpler than the last one. Just: For my daughter, who made me brave enough to believe in happy endings again.
But the previous dedication, the one that’s been analyzed and dissected by readers around the world, that one still makes me smile.
To M., who read every one. Even the ones about him. His chapter is still the worst thing I own, and I’m keeping it forever.
Somewhere in my desk, in a locked drawer, there’s that single sheet of paper, his attempt at romance writing, requested during one of our reconciliation conversations at the farm.
The one with the bedroom dimensions and the tactical approach and the kiss that was ‘strategically deployed and mutually satisfactory.’
The worst piece of writing I have ever encountered.
The most precious thing I own.
He never stopped trying. That’s the thing about Max, once he commits to something, he commits completely. Even when the something is learning to be a person instead of just a don.
The music starts around one.
I’m deep in revisions, my heroine is finally confronting the thing she’s been avoiding for three hundred pages, when I hear it drifting in from the kitchen. ABBA. “Dancing Queen.”
The song that started everything, in a way. The song I was dancing to when he walked in and laughed and I fell off the couch and somehow, impossibly, that clumsy moment became the beginning of us.
I save my document and head into the kitchen.
Max is in the kitchen, leaning against the counter, watching the doorway. Waiting for me.
“You’re playing ABBA,” I say.
“Seemed appropriate.”
“For what?”
“For this.” He holds out his hand. “Dance with me, Caterina.”
“You can’t dance. You have the rhythm of a sedated elephant.”
“I’ve been practicing.”
“Practicing? With who?”
“YouTube tutorials. Very serious ones. There’s a whole channel dedicated to teaching hopeless men how to not embarrass themselves at weddings.”
He says it with total gravity, this terrifying man who researched joy like a hostile acquisition.
“And you watched these tutorials.”
“Several times. I took notes.”
“You took notes on how to dance.”
“I take notes on everything. It’s how I learn.” His hand is still extended. “Come on. I want a do-over. The first time I watched you dance, I laughed like an idiot and you fell off the couch. The second time, your water broke before the chorus. I’d like to make it to the end of one song.”
“The property damage was minimal both times. Just my dignity and one dance floor.”
“Your dignity recovered. I’ve seen it in action.”
“It took time. And several chess victories.”
“Still. Do-over. Please.”
He says please like it costs him something, even now. Like asking for things is a skill he’s still learning, even after all this time.
I take his hand.
He pulls me in, one hand on my waist, the other holding mine. The music swells, and we move, not well, but together.
“You’re still stepping on my feet,” I inform him.
“The tutorials didn’t cover foot placement.”
“What did they cover?”
“Mostly attitude. Apparently confidence is more important than technique.”
“Is that why you’re holding me like you’re trying to intimidate a business rival?”
He pulls me an inch closer, absolutely unrepentant, and steps on my foot again.
“I’m holding you like I love you.”
“You’re holding me like you’re about to propose a hostile takeover.”
“Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive in my experience.”
I laugh, and he spins me, too fast, too clumsy, and catches me before I can crash into the refrigerator. His arms wrap around me from behind, both of us breathing hard, the music still playing.
“Better than last time?” he asks against my hair.
“Last time I ended up in labor.”
“So the bar was low.”
“The bar was underground. But the time before that led to you actually talking to me, so I can’t complain.”
“I’ll take inches.” He turns me in his arms, his forehead dropping to mine. “Where’s Enzo?”
“Outside with Tori. They were building something in the garden. I think Cannoli was supervising.”
“So we have time.”
“We have twenty minutes and a goose on sentry duty.”
His mouth finds mine, slow, thorough, the kind of kiss that makes my knees forget how to work. When he pulls back, his eyes are dark with intent.
“I want to take you upstairs,” he says.
“Then take me upstairs.”
“The pasta-”
“Is not on the stove. Nice try.”
He’s already reaching for the dish towel, already abandoning lunch, and I feel absurdly smug about it.
“I was going to say the pasta can wait.”
“You were going to use pasta as an excuse to be responsible.”
“I was going to use pasta as foreplay, but if you’re not interested-”
I grab his hand and pull him toward the hallway bathroom, the one with the old claw-foot tub and the door that locks.
“Not upstairs?”
“Too far.”
We barely clear the threshold before I throw the lock.
Max’s mouth finds my neck before the click finishes echoing. Married-life energy: efficient, filthy, timed around a toddler and an uncle in the garden. Enzo has Tori outside. Cannoli is supervising. We have minutes that feel like stolen treasure.
“Kitchen counter was right there,” he murmurs against my throat.
“Kitchen has windows. Bathroom has a lock and a tub I’ve already corrupted once. Priorities.”
“God, I love your operational mind.”
He boosts me onto the sink counter with both hands under my thighs, then immediately cups my belly, smaller now than the pregnant months, soft postpartum proof of Tori, before remembering she isn’t here, we aren’t careful for a bump today, we’re careful for time. His grin turns wicked.
“No belly logistics. Just us. Filthy and fast.”
“Filthy and fast,” I agree, yanking his belt open. “Don’t you dare be tender unless tender fits in ninety seconds.”
“I can multitask.”
My skirt is already around my waist. I wore it for exactly this opportunistic reason, and he shoves my underwear aside, sinks two fingers into me, and finds me wet enough that his eyebrows climb.
“Been thinking about this since pasta,” he says.
“Been wet since you said foreplay. Less commentary. More fingers.”
He curls them. I bite his shoulder through his shirt to stay quiet enough that Enzo won’t hear from the garden. He opens me up fast and filthy, thumb rough on my clit, until I’m dripping on porcelain and yanking at his waistband.
“In. Now. Married quickie protocol.”
“Yes, wife.”
He frees his cock, notches, and thrusts home in one smooth shove that knocks a toothbrush cup into the sink.
We both glance at it. We both ignore it.
He fucks me in short hard strokes timed to the urgency of a one-year-old’s attention span, one hand braced on the mirror behind me, the other rubbing my clit like he’s got a stopwatch running in his head.
“Missed daytime you,” he pants. “Missed bending you over between meetings. Missed-”
“You saw me two hours ago.”
“Saw. Didn’t bury my cock in. Different category.”
I laugh and moan and hook my ankles at his back.
The mirror fogs. My shoulders bump the glass.
He hits a spot that makes my vision white out and I come with a bitten-off cry, clenching around him while he praises me in broken filth, that’s it, take it, fucking love you, look at you using me in the bathroom like we don’t own a bed…
“Come on,” I demand, still pulsing. “Fill me. Then we pretend we were fixing a faucet.”
He laughs into my mouth and follows orders, hips stuttering as he finishes hard, groaning low against my cheek.
For three heartbeats we stay locked together, sweaty and married and ridiculous.
Then Tori’s distant shriek of laughter filters through the window glass from the garden and reality taps the door with a tiny fist made of time.
He pulls out carefully. I hop down on wobbly legs. We clean up with the speed of people who have practiced this exact crime. He rights my skirt; I zip his pants; we both look in the fogged mirror and look like people who definitely were not fixing a faucet.
“Later,” he says, kissing my temple, “I’m taking you upstairs properly.”
“Later you can. Right now you can help me boil water like an innocent man.”
“Innocent is a stretch.”
“So were my legs. Move, Moretti.”
He unlocks the door, checks the hall like a tactical rom-com lead, and we slip back toward the kitchen smelling like soap and sex and the particular joy of a life where quickies have to fit between pasta and a toddler’s garden project.
My body hums. His hand brushes the small of my back once, secret, claiming, and then we’re respectable again, or close enough for Enzo’s comments at dinner.