The organ starts its low warning swell, and I finally walk away from Dante and the rest. My eyes scan one row after another for Lydia, but I still don’t see her anywhere. Anastasio catches my concerned gaze, and I tilt my head to ask without words.
He tilts his head in the direction of the confession booths, and I see that one of them has a closed door.
My chest relaxes, and I find myself letting out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
But as I take my first step towards the confession booths, Father Valdoni intercepts me.
“Nicolas.” His voice is gentle but firm, like it always was whenever he caught me acting out of line at Sunday school. “Mass is about to start. You need to take your seat.”
“I need to get my wife,” I say. “It’s her first mass and it would be highly inappropriate for me to be there without her.”
“In that case, be quick about it.” Understanding slips into his voice. “I would prefer not to interrupt or delay the Rites for your sake.”
“I’ll make it quick, Father.”
I walk towards the secluded alcove where the confession booths stand in a row, and test the door to the one that I suspect she’s hiding in.
Through the sliver of space, the light touches her soft green eyes. I steal a glance back at the rest of the congregation and then step inside.
Lydia is sitting on the little wooden bench in the dark, and there’s a soft cream scarf draped over her bare shoulders. She doesn’t say anything as I close the door behind me. She doesn’t have to. The unmistakable hurt in her eyes tells me everything I need.
Anger wraps its fist around my heart when I see it, and my hand twitches towards the gun I always keep tucked in my jacket.
There’s no more fight in her voice when she speaks. “Will you always find new ways to humiliate me like this, Nico?”
I kneel down until we’re level with each other, and take her hand in mine. “Humiliate you?”
“Don’t lie to me, please.” Her voice is small and quiet. “You knew this dress was inappropriate for church, and yet you made me wear it anyway. Why?”
“You know why, Lydia,” I reply. “You knew the moment you asked the seamstresses to make it like this.”
Jaw tight, she looks away but keeps her hand in mine. “So youarehumiliating me.”
“No,piccola,” I say. “I wanted you to wear this dress because I saw the way you stared at yourself in it, even incomplete. Because I heard how your voice changed when you thought I was about to ruin it.”
My grip tightens around her hand, and I rest my thumb against her pulse.
“I wanted you to wear this dress because I knew you liked it.”
She takes a long trembling breath. “You could’ve told me about baring my shoulders. It would’ve made those wives hate me less.”
“Those wives will hate you even if you’re dressed like a fucking nun,” I tell her.
She shakes her head slightly. "I don’t belong here, Nico.”
"Yes you do,piccola."
"No, I don’t.” A shadow of the edge I’ve come to crave drips into her voice again. “I don’t know the rules of your world. I don’t know how any of this works. I’m drowning, Nico, and I can’t even tell you because half the time I don’t know if you’d care or if you’ll just use it to make my life even worse.”
The words come out of her in a rush, and then she stops like she's said too much.
I rise up a little higher and reach up to turn her face back towards me. But she still refuses to look at me. The dim light seeping into the confessional booth catches the wet shine in her eyes.
“If I didn’t care,piccola, I wouldn’t be here with you right now.” My hand brings hers up to my lips, and I plant a kiss on every fingertip. “And don’t youeverlet me hear you say that you don’t fucking belong here. I put a ring on your finger, and a crown on your head. I fuckingchoseyou.”
“Because you needed my silence,” she reminds me. “Not because you really wanted me.”
“What else do you fucking need me to do to prove that I want you?” I ask.
