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“Sure, if you want to be mistaken for a hooker. Wear the black pants with the beaded top. That makes you look slimmer.”
Maddie woke with a start, a heavy sense of disorientation and panic making her push up into a sitting position. Her body was covered in a fine film of perspiration and it had nothing to do with the naked man beside her.
He was asleep. She stared at him, her heart pounding against her throat, her stomach swirling with acid and anxiety.
Holy crap.
Holy crap.
Fragments of his words came back to her, words she hadn’t thought of in a long time, words that had ceased to matter after they’d been spoken, puncturing her reality with sharp necessity. Nico Montebello.
Holy crap.
Holy crap.
She’d slept with one of Michael’s best friends. Michael: the man she’d spent six months hiding out from, the man she wanted to avoid seeing with her every last breath, and she’d found her way into the home of someone who could, with one phone call, ruin the safe cocoon she’d made for herself. Crap, crap, crap.
Nausea rose in her belly. She shot another look towards the window. It had stopped raining. She pushed up quickly but quietly, looking around the room in a panic. When she’d left Michael, fight or flight instincts had pushed her straight out the door and she’d never looked back. It had been an easy decision. Her life had been at stake, she had no doubt of that.
Except Nico wasn’t like that. The idea of leaving him like this was anathema.
But it had to be done. He was a connection to Michael, and she couldn’t risk that. God. How foolish she’d been to let her guard down so completely!
And with this man, of all people! Why hadn’t she realised sooner? Because the conversation had been brief, early on in their relationship. She hadn’t thought of it again since; she’d had no need to. Even when Nico had introduced himself fully, it hadn’t really registered. She’d been too caught up in what they were doing to give his last name any conscious thought. Even if it had been Rumpelstiltskin, his name wouldn’t have sparked her curiosity, in that moment.
But once it was over, her subconscious had done what brains are so good at doing, and thrown the details in her path so she couldn’t fail but remember.
A shiver ran down her spine as she thought of Michael now, and she wanted to scream and shout, to grab something and hurl it across the room. How dare he find a way to spill himself into this? The first thing she’d done since walking out on him, a gift to herself, an expression of her own femininity and freedom, and it was tarnished by Nico’s connection to Michael. Oh, God. What if he realised who she was and told Michael she was in Ondechiara? This place that had become a sanctuary to her would be ruined!
She tiptoed through the house, into the laundry, and pulled her wet clothes from the machine, stuffing them in a plastic bag she found in a drawer. A quick glance through the window showed that it still wasn’t raining, though the sky was leaden. She was so far from La Villetta, but not that far from town. If she hurried, she’d get there before sunset, and be able to get a cab to her place.
Hating herself and hating life’s twists and turns even more so, she pulled on a coat of Nico’s – it fell to her ankles and was far too big. She cinched it around the waist and moved quickly to the door. It was heavy. She remembered it slamming when she’d arrived in the midst of the storm so now she took great care to ease it closed softly behind her.
Panic filled her, speeding her steps. She walked carefully down to the beach, picking her way over the steps. Once her feet connected with the sand, she began to run, and she ran and she ran as though Michael were behind her, his ghost was, indeed, at the front of her mind. Panic, anger and outrage subsumed any satisfaction she’d enjoyed that afternoon so all she could feel as she reached town and hailed a cab was remorse.
What an absolute mistake. Not sleeping with Nico. Despite his connection to Michael, she couldn’t quite bring herself to regret that. But the risk she’d run in trustin
g a stranger with that intimacy. He knew her name, for goodness sake! All it would take was one phone conversation with Michael…
Except…
By the time the taxi pulled up in front of La Villetta, sanity had begun to settle around Maddie. Michael and Nico hadn’t spoken in a long time, so far as she knew. A fragment of another conversation came to her, from around the time he’d first lifted his hand and struck her. No one from school calls me anymore. They’re all too high and mighty for me. He’d been drunk, and he was a mean drunk, so Maddie had dismissed his statement as sour grapes. Except she’d been a big part of Michael’s life. She knew who he spoke to and who he didn’t, and Nico wasn’t someone he ever mentioned. Besides that one time, he didn’t discuss the Montebellos. What were the chances that Nico was going to call Michael out of the blue? Or vice versa? Being old friends didn’t make them confidantes. And even if they did speak, was it even remotely likely that Nico would volunteer the fact he’d slept with a woman named Maddie Gray to Michael? Of course not.
She breathed a little easier as she stepped out of the taxi and swiped her phone to pay. She locked the door to La Villetta behind her out of habit and pressed her back to it, breathing in deeply, closing her eyes and repeating her mantra. I’m safe. I’m safe. I’m safe. It helped to calm her racing heart but not the fire in her veins, a fire that had been sparked by Nico and which seemed to burn all the brighter with every moment that passed. Her skin smelled of Nico Montebello.
She stripped out of his jacket – she was naked beneath – and moved into the bathroom. She ignored the shower, turning the bath taps on instead. Michael had forbidden baths. It was a stupid rule, one of the insipid, ridiculous ways he exercised control over her. Now, free from him, she wondered at her obedience, at her supplication, at the gradual erosion of her free will. She wondered at the ways in which she’d subjugated her own wishes simply to keep the peace with him; appeasing him had been a full time job. Now? She revelled in all the activities he’d seen as indulgent or ‘bad’. She defied him mentally at every opportunity, though it was less about him and more about reclaiming the parts of herself she’d let fall away, the simple pleasures she’d taken for granted before she met Michael which she now understood the importance of.
There was an organic body lotion on the edge of the bath. She tipped a tablespoon in and swirled it with her hand until bubbles formed, then stepped into the bath and lay there, water lapping at flesh that was sensitive from Nico’s ministrations.
She forced her mind to be blank. She didn’t want to think about Michael. She didn’t even want to think about Nico. She needed to focus on the fact she was safe, that she was strong – so much stronger than she’d given herself credit for in the beginning. She’d felt afraid for so long and not known how to act, but now she was free and she knew that was a credit to her courage. She’d saved herself from a bad relationship that had been going to an even worse place.
She’d saved herself.
The fight or flight instincts were kicking in again now, and a part of her wanted to run. To pack her bag and leave Ondechiara. But that would be wrong. It would be like giving up baths or chocolate or champagne – subjugating a part of herself out of fear of Michael. She wouldn’t do that again.
By the time she stepped out of the bath, rain had begun to fall once more, softly now, though the night was warm and muggy. She dressed in a simple t-shirt and maxi skirt, poured herself a glass of wine and made her way to the little deck at the back of the house. It had views of rolling Tuscan hills, like something from a guide book, and as she sat there with her knees pulled to her chest, resting her chin on them, she watched the rain cut through the evening, the dark, inky sky blotting out the moonlight completely.
She heard the motorbike’s engine cut out only a few seconds before the knock at the door, and she knew who it would be. Shame curdled her belly – shame at having left Nico without a note, an explanation. But what could she have said? What would she say now?
