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He halted with one foot on the stoop and the other on the ground, equalizing their heights. It made looking her in the eye easier physically, though the uncertainty and insecurity he saw there squeezed at his heart. “You’re not pulling any punches these days, are you?”
She lifted one corner of her mouth into a lopsided smile. “It shouldn’t be that hard a question. I can tell you why I love you—because you’re fair, dedicated, loyal, faithful, selfless, and dependable. You’re honest. Sweet. Considerate.”
“All very nice adjectives.” Not caring to have this conversation on the street where any passer-by could listen in, he tugged her over to the bench placed beside her mother’s small garden plot. Vegetables rioted in various stages of growth: arugula and rapini, Melrose peppers and tomatoes, onions and zucchini and eggplant. Most wouldn’t be ripe until later in the summer. Would their relationship ripen again with them? “Yet by your own admission, you fell in love with someone else.”
Sabina sank to the bench with a sigh. “I thought you didn’t want me. That you were just too good to break it off. I thought—why did you choose me, Enzo? Over the Church?”
He took the hard seat next to her, keeping his eyes on her face. “I didn’t choose you over the Church. I chose both. I chose to serve God through loving you, raising a family with you.” Yet her hand felt unfamiliar in his, and disbelief shadowed her eyes. “I haven’t done a very good job of that. Yet. But I will, Bean. I promise you. I love you.”
She stared at the ground for a moment before regaining herself and sending him a smile that fell a few degrees shy of sincere. “You didn’t answer me about that.”
Lorenzo emptied his lungs and rubbed his thumb over the smooth skin of her hand. “Why do I love you?” She nodded. He looked long and deep into her depthless eyes, trying to find words for what had always just been. “I love you because you give until you have nothing left, and then you find more. I love you because you see the good in people who have only a sliver of it. I love you because…because you’re air to me. Necessary for every basic function. Because without you I feel like I’m going to suffocate.”
“And yet you barely saw me the last three years.”
“Because I was afraid. Sabina.” He stretched his hand out under hers, until their fingers aligned, until the frisson of desire ran through him. “I’m not so unlike all the other men in our families. The other mafiosi. You’re so beautiful. So beautiful. When I kissed you, I…” He had to squeeze his eyes shut. “I didn’t know how strong I could be, if I did it more often.”
Silence pulsed for a long moment. Then she whispered, “You mean it wasn’t because you didn’t want me—it was because you wanted me too much?”
He nodded, wishing from his very soul that he’d been stronger. Wiser. That he’d just suggested they marry right away, never mind how difficult it would have been to support themselves while he was still in school. Wishing, because then he would have spared her so much pain he hadn’t realized he was causing. He wouldn’t have made her think that if she wanted love, she had to find it in the arms of another man. “Can you forgive me? For making you ever doubt your own worth? For…for practically forcing you to him?”
Her fingers shifted over his palm, curling into the spaces between his, right where they belonged. “I forgive you.” Yet the pain still underscored the words.
Of course it did. It still underscored his too, when he said, “And I forgive you.”
Another beat of silence, another deep breath drawn into his lungs. Another low whisper from her rosebud lips. “That doesn’t erase it, does it? For either of us.”
He shook his head and scooted just a little closer, until their arms were pressed together. “Brother Judah said once—I don’t remember when, but it stuck with me—that forgiveness isn’t a ticket you buy, a one-time thing bought and paid for. Forgiveness is the train you choose to ride through life’s journey. You have to stay on it, even though sometimes you don’t know where it’s taking you. You have to trust it to protect you from the elements that rage outside—and inside.”
Her eyes slid shut. Behind her, the sun dipped below the top of a building. Shadows sprang to life, one seeming to hunch over her, curling its fingers over her shoulders.
Lorenzo fought back a shudder. For a few months when he was twelve, before he realized that a life with Sabina was all he really wanted, he had indeed planned to join the Church and thought that he would be called to something truly spectacular—like exorcism. He’d read all he could find about angels and demons, on how the godly battled forces they couldn’t see.
Then he decided that he didn’t need to be spectacular. But it had opened his eyes. He started looking at his world in a new way. He had begun to see that his father, his godfather—they didn’t just deal in violence and sin. They dealt in darkness they didn’t fully understand. He didn’t fully understand it either. But he knew enough to fear it—what it could do to a man’s heart, his soul, his family.
How many times had he seen his mother go to the kitchen and sing at the top of her lungs to keep from crying when Father came home injured or drunk or smelling of a bordello? How many times had he seen spatters of red on the cuff of a relative and known it meant someone out there was tortured or dead? How many times had he clung to his rosary or fallen to his knees in the empty sanctuary of Holy Guardian Angel and prayed for new warriors to fight in the battle for his family’s souls?
Somehow, he’d never thought it would touch Sabina, though. Val, Tony, Joey, G, even Mama and Rosa—he’d known to pray for them. But he’d assumed that since he would get out, he would take her with him, and she would be safe.
What a fool he’d been. The Mafia wasn’t the only thing that preyed on people. Satan had a gang of his own, always prowling the world, ready to devour. Sabina, with her gentle heart, would be a prime target. And he’d just left her there, alone inside a house where the devil already held sway, to fight off the ravenous jowls of despair and doubt by herself.
He transferred her hand to his other one so he could slide his near arm around her shoulders and tuck her against his side. He pressed a kiss to the top of her Brilliantine-scented hair. “We’re on this journey together, Bean. We are. Every day, we’ll forgive each other again. Every day, we’ll pray for each other. Every day, we’ll fight for this. For us.”
She nodded, turned her face into his shoulder, and seemed content to rest there, against him. But she didn’t say anything.
Had he lost too much ground already? What would he do if she didn’t actually get on that train with him, if she didn’t find her way back to joy and faith? What would he do if she realized in another week or month or year that his arms just didn’t make her feel like O’Reilly’s had?
What would he do if their paths didn’t lead to each other?
