Page 55 of Broken Trust

I decide the pace. Slow and deep, then faster, then slow again, just to watch him fight for control. The sunlight pours over us, warm on my back. The old bed creaks and groans and bangs against the wall, and for once there's no small person across the hall to wake, so I don't have to swallow a single sound. I let myself be loud. I let him hear what he does to me.

He sits up, one arm locked around me to hold me tight against him, and buries his face in my neck. We move together like that, chest to chest, skin slick with sweat, his breath hot against my throat, my fingers knotted in his hair. It's messy and breathless and nothing like the careful, polite lovemaking that slowly strangled our first marriage. This is something new. Something we built ourselves.

“Tell me,” he gasps against my ear.

“I'm yours,” I whisper. “I've always been yours, you idiot.”

He laughs, a cracked, desperate sound, and then he kisses me hard and rolls us over, pressing me down into the mattress, and he stops teasing and stops holding back. I cling to him and let the wave lift me higher and higher until it breaks, and I cry out his name loud enough to rattle the windows, and a moment later he follows me with mine, buried deep, shaking, his forehead pressed to my shoulder.

For a long time afterward, neither of us moves.

The sun has shifted across the floor by the time I finally stir. Dante is sprawled on his back with one arm flung over his eyes, breathing like he's just sprinted up the mountain. I prop myself up on one elbow and look down at him, and something warm and golden fills my whole chest until it aches.

He grins, hauls me into his arms, and kisses the top of my head. His heart is still pounding under my ear. I spread my left hand over it and watch the light catch the thin gold band on my fourth finger.

He gave it back to me in June, beside that same pond, with Rosa hopping up and down holding the tiny velvet box and shouting that it was a secret. It's the ring he slipped on my finger on our wedding day. I'd taken it off the night I fled to the cabin and kept it wrapped in one of Nonna's handkerchiefs ever since. In May he asked if he could borrow it, and he wouldn't tell me why. He had it cleaned and polished and waited for the right moment.

The divorce papers are gone too. I burned them myself in the bread oven downstairs. Dante stood behind me with his arms around my waist and didn't say anything. He didn't need to.

Mia never came back from Paris. The money ran out before the spring, Nella heard, and the last anyone saw of her she was standing behind the perfume counter at Galeries Lafayette, spritzing tourists with orange blossom. I don't say her name anymore. Some days I almost manage not to think about it.

The same way, I don’t know what secret Pa has on Mama, but I’ll find out one day. Secrets always have a way of coming out in the open.

The good thing is that I got a new head chef, and Matteo left to work in some restaurant, which I hear is having troubles. He seems to have that effect on restaurants. When I told the other staff he had left, they were happy. They said if he hadn’t left, then they would have walked out. Apparently, when I wasn’t around, he was an ass. How could I have been so blind?

“What do you want to do today?” he murmurs into my hair.

“Nothing.”

I trail my fingers down his stomach, lazy, meaningful. “Except maybe that again. After breakfast.”

“I'm making breakfast?”

“You're always making breakfast now. That's the deal.”

“I don't remember agreeing to that.”

“You did.”

He laughs, and it rumbles under my cheek, and I close my eyes and listen to it.

Beside the bed, my phone buzzes. I groan and fumble for it without lifting my head, expecting a supplier, or a staff emergency, or Signora Bianchi wanting to know if there are any muffins left.

It's Nella.

Are you awake? Can I come over later? I need to talk to you about something.

A second message arrives before I can answer.

It's big, Gia. I've been thinking about it for months and I haven't told anyone. It's about a baby.

I sit up so fast the sheet goes flying.

“What?” Dante says, alarmed. “What is it? Is Rosa okay?”

“Rosa's fine.” I stare at the screen, and a strange little chill runs down my spine, the kind Nonna used to call a goose walking over your grave. “It's Nella.”

I read the message again, and then again, and somewhere far off in the back of my mind, a door I thought was closed forever creaks quietly open.

“Tell her to come for lunch,” Dante says, sitting up behind me and pulling me close. He kisses my shoulder. “I'll make carbonara.”

I lean back against his warm, solid chest and type out my answer with fingers that aren't quite steady.

Come at one. Whatever it is, we're here.

Then I put the phone face down, turn around in Dante's arms, and let him kiss me until I forget about everything else for just a little while longer.