Page 87 of My Dark Fairy Tale
This was, quite possibly, heaven.
It could have been minutes or hours later that shade over my face roused me from my meditation. Crying had left me exhausted, but I didn’t want to sleep when I could be enjoying the sound of the waves and the demanding cry of seabirds, so I had let my mind float like the boat did on the sea.
Now I cracked open an eye and peered at Raffa above me.
His shirt was unbuttoned, revealing the tanned expanse of his tightly muscled torso, and his hair was alive with filaments of bronze, copper, and obsidian under the glaring sun. He was grinning down at me, more carefree than I had ever seen.
“The sea suits you,” I told him. “You look like a modern-day pirate.”
He laughed a little too hard at my quip, but I figured it was just the brightness of the day and the fact that we got to spend it together after barely any quality time since the Pitti Palace gala.
I moved over a bit so he could sit beside me on the blue-cushioned daybed built into the bow of the boat beneath the swollen sails.
“So you have a boat.”
“I have a boat,” he agreed, leaning back on his palms to tip his face into the sun the way I had.
“A very large, lovely boat namedSalacia,” I continued.
A minute Italianate shrug. “She was Neptune’s consort, goddess of the sea. Only fools name their vessels after him. Anyone who has ever spent any time on the ocean knows she is and could only be a woman.”
I laughed at his drollness. “This is my first time on the ocean, so I’ll take your word for it.”
“You seem very at ease for your first time,” he said and then rolled his eyes at my eyebrow wiggle and added, “First timeat sea.”
“Lake life,” I explained. “My parents have a boat, nothing like this, just a ski boat we keep on Gun Lake during the summers. It’s beautiful there. In fact, before I came to Italy, it was my happy place.”
He hummed, eyes closed, and my breath caught at how beautiful he was, sitting on the gently rocking boat with his throat bared and his hair falling back from his tipped forehead in perfect waves. I gave in to temptation and drew the line of his Roman nose with my fingertip and then pressed it into the divot above his lips. He shocked me into laughter by snapping his teeth at me.
“My happy place was Villa Romano,” he said without opening his eyes, and I froze, afraid that if I moved I would scare him into stopping. He revealed so little about his life that every kernel felt like gold. “I grew up running barefoot through the acres of trees, and each orchard was its own oasis. We playednascondino, like tag, in the olive grove because it had the best hiding places, andgioco delle bigliein the barn beside the vineyard. In the summer we were constantly trying to keep up with the ripening fruit, visiting every day to fill baskets and bowlswith plums, peaches, and apricots. Sometimes, we would lay under the trees and gorge ourselves until we were sick.” He made a face. “I did not eat apricots for two years after I turned twelve.”
My laugh was soft because I didn’t want him to stop talking.
“My mother was the ultimate host, and we always had people over for every meal. Sometimes, I was sure even she did not know where they came from. But it was fun as a boy to meet strangers from all over Italy and beyond.” He cracked a lid open. “Did I tell you that I speak German, Spanish, and Greek as well?”
“Show-off,” I muttered with faux bitterness.
His lids lowered, and he grinned again. When he lay down, he tugged me into his side, running his fingers idly through my hair.
“You speak about the villa like it isn’t your happy place anymore,” I noted, tracing the boxed muscles of his abs to watch the way his belly contracted at the ticklish sensation.
There was such a long pause, I thought he wouldn’t go on.
But then, “I did not have a father like you do who cared about my health and safety. If I was not his puppet, I could not be his son.”
I winced, both because the sentiment was horrible and because it underscored the fact that my dad, while controlling and specifically insensible about Italy, had only ever wanted me to be happy and healthy.
“What happened?” I asked, because there was more story there, buried in the bitter dregs of his tone.
Raffa sighed, eyes popping open to stare into the vast, cloudless sky above us. “I did much as you did with your father, only I did it a lot less politely.”
“You told him to fuck off,” I guessed.
His smile was broken at the ends. “Yes. I had a full ride to Oxford to study business. It was my dream to go there, and I could not give it up, even when I tried. I was cut off from the family, not allowed contact with my sisters or my mother, with no access to my inheritance.” He shrugged, but it was not something he could play off. “I moved towet, dreary England and pursued what made me happy at the cost of everything I had ever known.”
There were parallels there to my own situation that astonished me but also made me feel petty. My parents had refused to pay for my trip, which had seemed unfair when they had paid for all of Gemma’s, but the privilege of growing up as I did with enough money and more than enough love was glaringly obvious.
I would take my dad’s hugs and pep talks before every surgery and medical appointment above any palazzo. My mother’s homemade pasties and summer cherry pies, eaten with forks straight from the plate on the back deck of our lake house, above any Ferrari or designer dress.
