Page 54 of Broken Trust

We don't answer her straight away. We're still gazing at one another, Gia's hand in mine on the cracked old leather, and for the first time since that night in the dark when I said the wrong name, I'm not afraid of what she'll see when she looks at me.

EPILOGUE

Gia

One Year Later

The smell of coffee wakes me up.

For a moment I lie there with my eyes closed, listening to the Monday quiet. No clatter of pans from the kitchen downstairs, no delivery van grumbling in the square, no small feet thundering down the hall demanding pancakes. Rosa's at Nella and Angelo's for the night, probably still asleep in a nest of blankets on their couch with Garibaldi draped across her legs like a fur stole. My sister married him at the town hall in April, a big, quiet paramedic she met across a stretcher in the ER, and I've never seen her so happy. The restaurant is closed. The whole long, lazy day stretches out ahead of me, and there isn't a single thing I have to do.

The mattress dips beside me.

“I know you're awake,” Dante says. “Your nose twitches when you're pretending.”

“Does it?”

“Yep!”

I crack one eye open. He's sitting on the edge of the bed in nothing but a pair of gray sweatpants slung low on his hips, holding out a cup of coffee, and the late autumn sun pouring through the window is doing unfair things to his back. He's put a little weight back on this year. Not much, just enough, the hollows gone from his cheeks and his shoulders filled out again from hauling crates of tomatoes up from the cellar every morning. There's flour on his forearm from something he was up to downstairs before I woke. His hair is a mess. He hasn't shaved.

I have never wanted anyone more in my life.

“Is that for me?” I ask, sitting up and letting the sheet slide down to my waist.

His eyes drop, and stay there, and he forgets to answer.

“Dante. Coffee.”

“Hmm?” He blinks. “Right. Yes. Coffee.” He hands it over, and his fingers linger on mine around the warm cup. “Black. Two sugars. Just how you like it when you're about to be difficult.”

“I'm never difficult.”

“You threw a wooden spoon at the fish supplier last Tuesday.”

“He sold me cod that had been dead since the Renaissance.”

He laughs, then leans in to kiss my bare shoulder while I drink. His mouth is soft. His stubble scratches. He works his way slowly along my collarbone to the hollow of my throat, and my pulse jumps up to meet his lips, and suddenly I'm not thinking about coffee at all.

I set the cup aside. Then I hook my fingers into the waistband of his sweatpants and tug.

“Come here,” I tell him.

He crawls over me slowly, and then he braces himself on his forearms and kisses me properly, deep and unhurried, tasting of espresso and sugar and something sweeter underneath.

There was a time, not so long ago, when I would have lain here while he did all the work. When I would have worried about the light, and the softness of my stomach, and what he saw when he looked at me. That woman seems like a stranger now. She spent so many years making herself smaller for everyone else.

I plant my hand in the middle of his chest and push, and he goes over onto his back with a surprised laugh, and I swing my leg across and settle on top of him in the bright morning light, the sheet falling away completely.

His laughter dies. He looks up at me like I'm the first sunrise he's ever seen.

“Gia,” he breathes. He reaches for my hips, then slides his palms slowly up my sides, my ribs, my breasts, like he's memorizing me. “God. Look at you.”

“I'm aware,” I reply. “Now hush. I'm busy.”

I take my time. I have all day, and I intend to use every minute. I kiss him slowly, then less slowly, rolling my hips against him until his head drops back on the pillow and his grip tightens on my thighs and he's cursing softly in two languages. I push his sweatpants down and out of the way. I tease him until he's begging, until his stomach is trembling and he's saying my name like a prayer, and only then do I sink down onto him, inch by inch, watching his face the whole time.

He groans, low and broken, and grips my hips so hard I'll have bruises later. I don't care. I want them.