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But everything that’s happened in the last few weeks has only made me feel worse.
It’s hard to focus on the vows.Love. Cherish. Protect.I believe Alessio will try to protect me. Butlove?Cherish?While there must be some form of love there, for him to do this—or maybe just obligation—it’s hard to believe that he’llcherishme.
But maybe most of the time, in this world that I was born into, the vows said here are lies. Thelovepart almost certainly always is.
Maybe I was foolish to hope for anything else.
I manage to say my own part of the vows, repeating the words numbly. When Alessio slides a thin rose-gold band encrusted with small diamonds onto my finger, all I can think is,how did he know I prefer that?Most of my jewelry is from my mother, who favored white gold or platinum. It’s what I would have picked for myself if I’d chosen a wedding band.
He picked out his own, he told me, when he’d bought mine. I had thought of giving him my father’s wedding band, tucked away in my mother’s jewelry box after it was given to me, but something about it didn’t feel quite right. My parents had a marriage that they cherished, an unusual kind of marriage for a man of my father’s status and power, and it felt wrong to use that ring to symbolize a marriage that would, in many ways, be one of nothing but convenience.
So I kept it tucked away and brought the band Alessio chose with me to the church instead.
I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may—
My heart stutters in my chest when Alessio’s fingers go to the edge of my lace veil. My lashes are still damp, although, at some point, the tears faded in the struggle to simply focus enough to repeat my vows. My eyes flick down to his full lips, and I know he’s going to have to kiss me. Hehasto. It’s a part of the ceremony.
Will this be the only time he ever does?
His lips haven’t touched mine since that clumsy, hard kiss that I gave him in the pool. This one couldn’t be more different. His hand touches my waist lightly as he draws back my veil with the other, so lightly that I almost don’t even feel the pressure of his fingers. When he bends down, my heart trips in my chest, fluttering with nervous anticipation—but the kiss is every bit as light. The barest brush of his lips over mine, a ghost of a kiss, skimming over my mouth.
I wonder if he can see the disappointment in my eyes when he pulls back. I feel sure that he can—it’s too hard to hide it, but nothing changes on his carefully blank face.
I wait for him to say something, anything as we’re announced, but instead, his fingers carefully slip through mine, still only barely holding my hand, as we turn to walk down the aisle as husband and wife.
Wife.I’m married now.Mrs.Mancini, which is even stranger, because my name won’t change. Alessio will take it as his last name again as a means of preserving my father’s legacy—one last slap in the face of tradition from a man who never had much respect for it.
My gaze sweeps towards the steps in front of the altar for one brief second as Alessio and I turn away, my chest tightening as I remember that only two months ago, I was in this church for a different reason, wearing black instead of white, looking at a coffin instead of my hands clasped with someone else’s. Grief instead of joy—except it’s not really joy that I’m feeling today.
All I can feel is that same fear I felt before—the fear of what’s to come.
—
The reception, although I had no hand in planning it—and I suspect, neither did Alessio—is beautiful. It’s held back at the mansion in the grand ballroom that was reserved for my father’s biggest parties and events—rarely held after my mother’s death—the room choked with flowers and satin-draped tables, finished off with a string quartet serenading the guests from the other side of the wooden dance floor. I don’t recognize very many of the people who come to give their well-wishes, but I recognize the names—many of them the parents of the young men who were originally paraded in front of me to marry. If any of them are resentful that Alessio ended up claiming the right to marry me after all, none of them show it—probably all assuming that it’s more prudent not to.
The Leone family, pointedly, does not show up.
The catering looks delicious—a trio of tender lamb chop, scallops, and braised quail arranged with roasted potatoes and root vegetables—but I can barely eat. I catch Alessio’s gaze on me as I push the food around the china plate with my fork, feeling my stomach turn when I try to taste a sliver of the perfectly seasoned quail, the blueberry reduction it was basted in bursting over my tongue in a flavor that I barely notice. I know he wants me to eat more, buthow? How am I supposed to do that when day after day, week after week, my life feels as if it refuses to return to anything even approaching normalcy? My appetite has been gone for a long time now, and I notice as I stab a carrot and watch it slide off of my fork that the sapphire bracelet I’m wearing fits even more loosely than before, the sharp bones of my wrist standing out in relief against the white gold and gems.
“Try to eat your dinner.” Alessio’s voice is taut, as if the evening is a strain on him, too. His wine glass is untouched, and I catch a reproving expression on his face when I refill mine from the decanter between us. “You shouldn’t drink so much wine on an empty stomach.”
“And you shouldn’t marry a woman you don’t want to fuck.” I feel my face heat as I say it, my teeth biting at my lips as if to take it back the moment the words are out. It feels vulgar on my tongue, but a part of mewantsto shock Alessio, to upset him. I shouldn’t be the only one feeling this way on my wedding day.
“Are you already drunk?” Alessio’s mouth thins for a moment, and I glare at him.
“No.” I keep my voice low, refusing to cause a scene on my wedding day, on top of everything else. “I don’t think I’ve ever been drunk, Alessio. But you have to agree, this is all a little ridiculous. You can’t blame me for having a glass of wine when I’m going to go to bed alone tonight.”
Alessio’s jaw tightens, and he says nothing. He finishes his dinner before getting up from our table, likely planning to make the rounds of the guests. I stay put, rooted to my spot, still pushing my food around my plate until the vegetables turn mushy in the sauce and the meat has gone cold.
He doesn’t come back until it’s time for our dance. The cake-cutting has been skipped altogether in favor of a dessert table—probably the planner’s idea, or maybe Alessio just didn’t like the idea of feeding me cake. The thought of his fingers against my lips, sweet with icing, makes me tremble a little, and as much as I hate to admit it, he might have had the right idea if so. If his aim is to stay out of my bed, then those sorts of intimacies are best avoided.
But even so, I can’t get the image of his icing-laced fingertips brushing against my lower lip out of my head, the thought of closing my lips around them, licking off the thick white frosting as I sucked his fingers deeper into my mouth—
“Gianna?” Alessio frowns at me, his hand lightly on my waist again as he leads me out to the dance floor. “Are you alright? You look a little flushed. If this is all too much—”
It’s the first real concern he’s shown for me all night—in a while, really, considering his attempts to sequester himself away from me after our engagement—and I bite back the resentful comment I want to make in favor of something kinder. Something that will, possibly, smooth over the ragged edges of the evening.
“I’m fine. Maybe it is the wine.” It’s a lie, of course—I’ve only had two glasses—but it’s better than hinting at the fantasy that filled my head.
