Chapter 7: Wedding Night

Fio's text was still lit on my phone: Friday, black tie, sit beside Vincenzo.

Dario was throwing a welcome-home dinner for a woman who was not coming home, and he wanted me at the head of it.

Vincenzo read it over my shoulder and went still.

"We'll go," he said. "Not tonight."

The bedroom over the restaurant had one lamp and one window and a bed that was too small for him.

Vincenzo stood in the doorway taking his jacket off one-handed, and I watched the muscle in his jaw jump.

"You should lie down," I said.

"I'm fine."

"You stood at city hall for forty minutes bleeding through your shirt."

"I wasn't bleeding."

"You were a little bit bleeding."

I crossed the room and unbuttoned his shirt myself.

His eyes never left my face.

The bandage underneath was clean, with only a faint pink edge.

I pressed my palm flat over it and felt him breathe in.

"Mara. You don't owe me tonight because of a ring."

"I know I don't."

"Then why?"

I thought of the lines, of the word stand-in, and of the way he had said my name in front of the whole table.

"Because for three years you came home when I called," I said. "And I never once wondered if you wanted to."

I pushed the shirt off his shoulders.

"So I'm asking. Do you want to?"

His hands came up and framed my face.

They were not steady.

"I have wanted to every single night," he said roughly. "I just never thought I was allowed to say so."

I kissed him then, and he kissed me back hungrily, with a hand at the back of my neck.

He tasted of coffee and of the salt in his own skin.

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