69. CHAPTER SEVENTY
CHAPTER SEVENTY
The celebration dwindled in increments—a song cut short by laughter, a candle snuffed by a gust from the open door, a plate scraped clean and set aside.
For hours, the world at the edge of the river had pulsed with music and stories and the oversized life of people who’d survived together, but slowly, the night was ceding to hush and retreat.
The last scattered cheers from the wedding tent sounded distant, already fogged by memory and the press of the dark.
Most of the guests had migrated into gentle gossip and the slow unspooling of stories too sharp to tell before the liquor, yet out here, beyond the reach of lanterns and fairy lights, there was only the hush of water and the subtle pulse of crickets.
Alina hadn’t wanted a grand exit. There was no bouquet toss, no parade of clinking glasses, no send-off engineered by the well-meaning or the sentimental.
Instead, she and Dante had slipped away while no one was looking, their absence as deliberate as the ring on her finger.
She didn’t need witnesses. The point of this night was that, for the first time, her presence was enough.
They walked along the river, shoes in their hands, grass cool and damp beneath her bare feet.
The hem of her dress picked up dew and flecks of earth; she liked the evidence, the imprint of place and hour.
The bank curved gently, a living memory of every late-night walk she’d taken alone to cool down, to calm, to steady—but now she was anchored by
the hand that held hers. She glanced back once at the cluster of lanterns and voices, and the sight of it—their friends, their makeshift family, the improbable peace—made her feel light and gravity at once.
Dante’s suit jacket had long since been abandoned, tie loosened to an afterthought.
There was a smear of cake at the edge of his shirt cuff, a remnant of the ritual they’d sworn they’d skip, then caved to in the face of Jess’s ferocious matchmaking.
She’d never seen him so at ease in public, so absolutely himself: his laugh loud and unguarded, his eyes homeward whenever they met hers.
She wondered, again, how she’d ever misjudged him—how the man she’d once feared most fiercely had become her only true constant.
The further they walked, the more the noise receded, until it was only the symphony of night: frogs, wind, river, and the slow percussion of her heart.
Alina leaned into him, her body surrendered to the warmth of his side, but her mind was a tangle of images, everything she’d refused to feel until it was safe to do so.
She tried to catalogue every detail—her best friend’s off-key serenade, the way Mara’s lipstick had smeared from hugging everyone, the sound of Luca’s laughter, raw and wrecked, as if he’d only learned how to do it tonight.
She wanted to remember the way Dante had looked at her during the vows, eyes so full of quiet certainty it made her knees weak.
She wondered if this was what relief felt like: not the absence of pain, but the dizzying rush at realizing pain was not the only thing left.
Dante slowed, pulling them to a stop at a bend in the river where the bank flattened out, and the water reflected the reception lights in trembling lines.
The world seemed smaller here, bound by the edge of night and the limits of what she could hold in her memory.
He let go of her hand only to brush a strand of hair from her face, fingers trailing along
her cheek with a gentleness he reserved for her alone. His thumb lingered at her jaw; the look in his eyes was both question and answer.
“You’re quiet,” he said, voice pitched low against the hush. It was not an accusation, just an observation, and the warmth in it swept through her.
Alina didn’t answer immediately. She let her head fall against his shoulder, eyes closed, letting the air between them fill with what was too big to name.
It took her a moment to find words that felt true.
“I keep thinking it’ll feel real in the morning,” she said, voice soft.
“That someone—maybe me—is going to wake up and take it all back.”
The words hung there, tasting of salt and hope. Dante pulled her closer, his arms circling her with a certainty that grounded rather than confined. His lips were at her temple when he spoke.
“You’re here,” he said. “You’re not dreaming.”
She turned into him, pressing her face into the crook of his neck, breathing him in—early summer, aftershave, sweat, and the faint ghost of smoke from the fire pit.
It was a scent she’d learned before she’d ever let herself want it.
He was the only thing that had ever felt more permanent than her fear.
They stood like that for a long time, letting the river and the stars bear witness.
Behind them, the celebration was a lullaby in another room, a world away from the two people who had once been targets and now, impossibly, were not.
The future had always been a moving target for her, but here, in this place, she allowed herself to picture something still and solid. She allowed herself to want.
Dante’s hands moved to her hips, holding her as if anchoring her to the earth, as if he could tether her to this life by touch alone. “You know what I remember about tonight?” he asked, voice warm against her ear.
She shook her head, the movement minute.
“The way you looked at me,” he said. “Like you knew something no one else did.”
“I do,” she whispered, barely louder than the river. “I know who you are, not just what you do.”
He was silent, but she felt the shudder in his chest, the exhale that meant he was letting go of something he’d carried too long.
She wondered if anyone else would have noticed it—the way the world shifted now because she was part of his gravity.
She wondered if they’d ever know what it cost both of them to get here, and if it mattered.
Alina tilted her head back to see his face, illuminated only by moonlight and the faint gold haze from the party. She traced his jaw with a single finger and tried to memorize him as he was: unguarded, loved, and—finally—free.
“I think I’m allowed to be happy,” she said, the words half a question.
He smiled, a real smile, the kind she’d once believed he was incapable of. “You’re required to be. You’ve earned it.”
She tried to laugh, but it came out as a choked sound, half-cry, and she buried it in his shirt. It was enough. It was everything.
They stayed by the river until her breath evened, until the silk of her dress was cold and the lights behind them became faint as distant stars. Only then did they turn back, retracing their steps through the grass, their hands still linked.
Alina could hear, faintly, the sound of Mara laughing at something Luca said—a sound so unburdened it threatened to undo her composure all over again. She squeezed Dante’s hand, signaling that she was ready, and he squeezed back, a subtle code that meant he would never let her walk alone.
He pressed a kiss to her forehead, slow and deliberate, and whispered, “I love you.”