For a few reckless seconds, I forget there’s been a break at all.
Unanswered questions vanish.
Careful phone calls and lonely nights spent staring at my phone—they all fall behind the velvet curtain of this kiss.
This is Nico—myhusband—the man who still looks at me like I’m his best-kept secret, like I’m oxygen.
When we finally part, the corridor’s marble floors shine underfoot, and his forehead rests against mine, breath mingling.
“I was expecting you in an hour,” he whispers.
“I left early,” I say lightly, even though my heart is hammering, even though the truth is I rushed out because I wanted to see him. “Alba is already here. Toni is on her way.”
He smiles, a slow curve that softens the sharp planes of his face. “You’re all welcome to stay here.”
I can’t help a little laugh. “Please. Alba’s apartment has a private cinema—and a popcorn machine. You can’t beat that.”
He laughs, too, low and genuine, and the sound bounces off frescoed arches. “No, I can’t. But I’m very happy to have you sleep with me tonight…and every night if possible.”
I blush as his words bloom hope and love inside of me.
I’m in love with my husband. Madly. Deeply. Irretrievably.
Nico takes hold of my suitcase and steps aside. I cross the threshold and step intohisspace for the first time.
His apartment feels nothing like the warm woods and soft linens of my home in Pietra Alta.
The walls are the color of storm clouds, hung with massive abstract canvases—stark black slashes, violentflashes of crimson, shapes that feel more like screams than pictures.
Sculptures of dark metal rise from the floor like silent sentinels. The furniture is a study in angle and edge—polished steel frames, unyielding leather, glass surfaces that catch the light in cold glints.
It’s beautiful, and…severe.
This space looks exactly like the man Nico used to be. But he’s changed. I‘ve seen that transformation for myself.
“You hate it.” He misreads my stillness.
“I don’t.” It’s the truth.
“Really?”
I smile. “Really.” My fingers brushing the back of a leather sofa, tracing its unbroken line. “It’s…intense.”
He hums, amused. “That’s polite.”
I turn fully to take it in—the stark ceiling-to-floor windows, the high-contrast palette, the sense that everything here was chosen to provoke a reaction. “Do you think my house is too soft?”
He pauses, then answers slowly, “Before? I probably would have.”
My heart skips. “Before?”
His gaze holds mine, steady. “Beforeyoufilled my life with your warmth and generosity.”
Everything inside of me, and I mean everything, sings with pleasure. How did I, plain old Alessia getthisman to say such things to me?
He steps closer and brushes his lips against mine.
“I mistook hardness for strength, minimalism for depth. I thought this”—he looks around his living room—"was what I liked.” He pushes my hair off my face, and his eyes tell me so much about how he feels, even if I’m too afraid to believe what I can see. “But, now, I know what I like and that is walking into your home and feeling held.”
