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He opened his legs on either side of me and sat directly behind me, his arms locking around my waist. “I’m here to listen if you change your mind.”
I continued to breathe erratically, my heart racing a million miles an hour. I was still warm and sweaty. I did my best to hide my anxiety, but there was no way he couldn’t feel it as he held me against him.
“Bellissima?”
“Hmm?”
“Talk to me. You’ll feel better.”
“I just… I’m scared.”
He rested his face against the back of my neck.
“I don’t want to go. After being here for a month, it makes me understand just how terrible it really is. You’ve been so good to me, have become such a friend to me. I’ll miss you…”
He took a deep breath. “I’ll miss you too.”
“I only have a few days left… Time went by so quickly.”
“It did.”
“I’m trying to stay calm, but I can’t. I feel like I can’t breathe.”
“You know what I do when I’m scared?”
“I thought you said you’re never scared?”
“Well, I lied,” he whispered. “I just think about something else, something that makes me happy or makes me laugh. When I think about it long enough, I stop thinking about the thing that makes me upset.”
“When was the last time you did this?”
“When I nearly killed Pearl… Crow wouldn’t speak to me. I thought I’d lost my brother forever. The idea of not having him in my life anymore hurt so much. It would make me panic. It would make me lose sleep. So I just tried to think about something else, something positive. It usually got me through the night.”
I nodded.
“You like working at the winery, right?”
“Yeah…”
“What do you like about working there?”
“The view,” I said. “It’s so beautiful all the time. The grape leaves smell so good. I love the wine, I love the people. It’s a great atmosphere. And the cheese… I could eat the cheese all day.”
“What else?”
I told him about this old couple that had come to Italy now that they were retired. They put their kids through college and decided to spend something on themselves for once. They did the wine tasting and bought five bottles before they left.
“That sounds nice.”
“Yeah…”
He pulled me against his chest and turned my face toward him. He rubbed his nose against mine before he gave me a gentle kiss on the lips.
Just like that, my troubles melted away like soft butter. I didn’t think about my doom, my hour of death. I didn’t think about how the final minutes of my life would be. I didn’t think about the way Tristan would hurt me.
I just thought about Cane.
* * *
We’d finished an afternoon wine tasting, and now Pearl and I were cleaning up. We didn’t speak to each other much because we were busy attending to the tables inside the warehouse. Most of the customers asked us what it was like to live in such a beautiful place. Pearl had better responses than I did. I’d only been there for about a month and had done limited sight-seeing.
But I was grateful I got to do any sight-seeing at all—thanks to Cane.
Pearl corked the leftover wine and put the bottles in the fridge.
I wondered what her life would be like after I was gone. Would she keep working here? Would she have a family to raise? “Pearl?”
“Yeah, honey?” She scooped up the leftover wineglasses on the counter and set them in the sink.
I approached the bar and leaned the broom against the counter. “Are you and Crow going to have kids anytime soon?”
“Soon?” she asked. “No. Definitely not soon.”
“But you guys are going to have them someday?”
She rinsed the glasses with soap and water, her eyes on her hands. “I would like to. Crow is open to the idea but not in love with it.”
“He’s not a family kind of guy?” I’d always wanted a family of my own. I wanted to have three children. I didn’t care if they were girls or boys, as long as they were healthy. I wanted to have a house near the ocean so I could take my kids to the beach every day.
“He doesn’t think he is. But he definitely is.” She set the glasses on the counter beside her and dried them with the towel. “He and Cane are so close, and he’s never gotten over losing Vanessa.”
“Who’s Vanessa?”
“Their sister.” She eyed me as she gently cleaned the glass. “You don’t know about Vanessa?”
“I think Cane mentioned her once…”
“Well…the man that took me captive…he’s the one who killed her. He kept her as a prisoner, and before Cane and Crow could rescue her, he shot her. Both of them have never really gotten over it.”
My heart broke for the woman I never knew, for the woman who shared the same fate I was about to accept. Cane possessed a particular darkness that had nothing to do with his criminal preferences.
