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I shook my head. “I don’t think that will matter anytime soon. Lis Antoni respects integrity. He’ll wait for me to come to him.”
Lea didn’t look so sure. “You promise.”
I smoothed back her hair from her face so I could see her clearly. “On my honor. Which you know belongs to you.”
Her grin about split my chest in two. “Because you love me?”
I nodded. “And because you love me.”
Then I kissed her again, and this time, I didn’t stop for a good long while.
Sometime later, we finally broke apart, and Lea looked me up and down with lust in her slightly open mouth and love in her eyes.
“We need to find you an apartment,” she said emphatically. “There is no way Nonno is going to let me work at the garage anymore without him around.”
I chuckled, even though she was undoubtedly right. Last night was only the beginning for us, and I wanted to do a hell of a lot more than kiss Lea right now.
But not here. Her grandfather was inviting me into his house, and her grandmother had just called me family, but that didn’t mean we were totally in the clear. I had a long way to go to earn the man’s trust. To my surprise, I was looking forward to the process. It was something to aspire to. Something I really wanted.
“I’ll get a room somewhere close by,” I told her. “But honestly, it doesn’t matter where I live, Tess.”
Lea frowned. “Why do you say that?”
I smiled. “Because no matter what, you’ll always be home to me.”
EPILOGUE
DON’T MAKE ME CRY…OR MAYBE DO
February 2002
Lea
“I now pronounce you husband and wife.”
A cheer rose in the little chapel of Our Redeemer, rising through the arches over the nave and aisles while Michael and I took our first kiss as a married couple. It was almost appropriate for a church.
Almost.
Married. Holy crap.
Everyone outside the Zola household had said we were crazy. My friends couldn’t believe that at nineteen, only halfway through my first year of college at Fordham, I was already someone’s wife. I wouldn’t have believed it myself, except for the fact that it was literally the only thing I had wanted with this man since nearly the moment I’d met him.
Inside the house, I had a sneaking suspicion that by the end of the year, my grandparents wanted nothing more than for Michael to put a ring on my finger and make an honest woman out of me. We hadn’t taken advantage of their home again, but my grandparents weren’t stupid. After all, they themselves got married even younger for probably the exact same reasons.
My only regret was that we hadn’t done it sooner. I would have liked my nonno to walk me down the aisle instead of my brother. Instead, we had lost him four months earlier. When he was diagnosed with cancer, the doctors gave him two months to live. He made it six. But the last few were particularly hard.
Michael, however, was there the whole time. After moving into a shared apartment a few blocks south, he took on a more active role at the shop, stepping in to help with the books and eventually taking over all of the driving business once Nonno got too sick to be behind the wheel. All the while, he insisted I stay in college instead of taking a year off like I suggested. When I was awarded a full academic scholarship to Fordham, Michael was the one who hooted like the wolf and shouted it out the window so the whole neighborhood knew.
I couldn’t waste an opportunity like that, he insisted. Whatever I needed, he would be there, whether that meant sitting up with me to finish papers when I was too overcome with grief to focus or taking care of my sisters here and there so I could have extra time to study.
My man proved that he was really and truly a part of the family, again and again. Which was why, I supposed, when we told everyone we wanted to get married, we barely heard an argument. It was just making official what we already knew to be true. Michael’s last name was Scarrone, but he’d always be a Zola.
* * *
It wasn’t a big reception. Just a little party at Tino’s restaurant, which my grandfather’s best friend had offered to us to celebrate, complete with homemade pasta on the house for the forty or so friends and family who came and, of course, my favorite tiramisu. Nonno’s picture hung next to us at our table, a hole we’d never be able to fill, but no one would want to anyway.
There were toasts and cheers, and even a few envelopes of cash slid in our direction. But at the end of the night, Michael and I found ourselves wrapped in each other’s arms in the corner, completely wrapped up in each other as Frank Sinatra crooned “All the Way” over the speakers. I admired the little diamond ring I discovered that Michael had put on layaway the week after he first said, “I love you.” Michael just admired me and whispered sweet and decidedly naughty ideas of what he wanted to do to his wife in my ear.
