Page 88 of My Dark Fairy Tale
It made me ache for Raffa. I had the absurd thought that I wanted to fuse my heart with his so that he would know, even long after I left, that he would never be alone so long as my heart still beat.
“How long?” I asked instead.
“Until he died four years ago. I lived apart from my home for nine years.”
Nine years.
“Oh, Raffa,” I murmured, unable to stop myself from moving so I could lay my body flat against his, as if I could imprint myself on his skin. “I’m so sorry.”
He wouldn’t meet my eyes, but one hand continued to play through my hair, tangling in the wind-blown strands.
“Carlotta married her high school sweetheart and had three children. Stacci married a stranger I had never met and had two of her own. Delfina took over the vines I had loved to help my mother’s brother tend as a boy, and my best friend, Leo, took over the business from my father.”
The words lay unsaid in the air after he spoke:They all moved on without me.
“Why did you come back?”
“Why does anyone do anything? For love. I had missed them every day, and when I could return, I did.” Something in his tone said he was holding back, a lingering bitterness I couldn’t make sense of.
But he had shared a massive piece of his painful history with me, and I was not going to linger over the details. Not when I only had three weeks left to bring this man enough joy to last him for the rest of his life.
Not when I could spend the last of our time together loving him enough to fill the abyss that nine years without love must have left in his chest.
And there was no doubt then, the two of us pressed chest to chest under the wide Italian sky on the Ligurian Sea, that I loved Raffa.
The kind of all-consuming, life-ruining love that had plagued Dante and Petrarch and Botticelli. An undying love that would never be returned.
It didn’t matter, I told myself as I cupped Raffa’s face and dragged myself farther up his torso so I could kiss his mouth, soft, feathering brushes like a healing touch on a wound. It didn’t matter if he never wanted this gift I’d made of my heart. It would always be his.
What I had told my father was true. I felt called to Italy, and I had since I was a girl lying awake and terrified in the hospital, pretending not to hear my parents weep.
And now I knew what had been calling my name.
Him.
“I hate that you’ve suffered to get to the man you are today, but the man you are? He’s spectacular,” I said against his mouth. “And I hope you know that you have left an indelible mark on my life. It feels like everything I wanted to be was just below the surface of my skin, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t shed my old skin to find it. You helped me do that. You make me feel like every version of myself is a gift, when before, I thought I would never be good enough. And I might not be good in the traditional sense I always thought was soimportant, but maybe I am my own version of perfect. Your version. Flaws and all.”
“There is no maybe about it,” he told me, finally shifting his gaze to mine, eyes fierce with conviction and a yearning that made my teeth ache. “I know you believe you are unlucky.Sei nata sotto una stella sfortunata.Born under the wrong star. But to me,sei la stella cadente che illumina la mia vita.”
But to me, you are the shooting star that lights up my life.
He cupped my face then, so we were a closed circuit, something I was too scared to call love ebbing and flowing between us. Then he kissed me, a warm, open-mouthed kiss that made my toes curl.
And I wondered clearly for the first time if this moment and this man were enough to make me give up everything I had ever known.
We spent the day anchored off the shore of a public beach with no land access, a tiny strip of U-shaped sand surrounded by craggy rocks on either side of the cove so that the water within was as clear and steady as lake water without wind.
I had a diving competition with Martina and, of all people, Renzo, who actually ended up being voted the winner by the others through their sheer incredulity that he could make his enormous body slip beneath the water with hardly a splash.
Carmine produced a packet of Italian playing cards that went to forty instead of fifty-two and taught me the rules of tresette, which was a surprisingly complicated game played in partners. Luckily Raffa was mine, and he was a shark, because I definitely needed more practice.
I got the start of a sunburn across my nose, and Raffa insisted on lathering me in sun cream even though I’d already reapplied.
We had lunch together at the back of the boat, and Raffa handed me a liter jug of filtered water instead of a glass of wine, which oddly made me want to cry.
Because he was taking care of me in a way that did not seem overbearing or make me feel like a child. Just giving me silent, observant care, like bringing my meds to me from my bag in the cabin after the meal.
Yes, I loved him.
