Not quite the whole of herself. There had been a very significant part of herself she’d kept hidden from him out of fear. He’d touched it anyway. Dante had slipped his hand into her chest without her even noticing and claimed her heart for his own.
She jumped to her feet without any thought from her brain. “Georgia, I’m sorry, but I need to go.”
Something in her tone must have warned Georgia that something was off because alarm rang in her voice. “Are you okay?”
“No. No, I’m not. But I think…” Dante’s face floated into her mind, not the cold dismissal that had been on his features when she’d last gazed into his eyes but the hunger and passion and tenderness she saw whenever he made love to her. “I think I know a way I can be. Do you have Dante’s phone number?”
“Yes… Aren’t you with him?”
“No. Long story. But I need it. Please forward it to me. I need to speak to him.”
“Oh my God,” Georgia whispered. “Not you too?”
But she could barely comprehend it to herself. “I’ll call you later. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Callie rammed her phone into her bag and then lifted her case and carried it out of the heaving café.
The street was even busier than it had been barely thirty minutes earlier, but she was oblivious to the scores of people bustling around her. The only thing on her mind was Dante.
She’d fallen in love with him. As incredible and terrifying as it was to contemplate, she’d fallen in love with him.
Her phone buzzed in the bag slung over her shoulder, and she pressed herself against the café wall, dropped her case and pulled it out. Georgia had messaged Dante’s number. Callie pressed the number.
She could barely hear the rings through the blood whooshing in her head. Her heart seemed to physically drop when it cut off without even going to voicemail.
Her legs set off without any conscious thought from her brain, getting her in step with the hordes of people climbing upwards. Oblivious to the excited chatter surrounding her, not a thought for the case she’d left by the café wall, Callie pressed the number a second time and prayed harder than she’d ever prayed before for him to answer.
She tried again a third time.Please, Dante. Answer. I need to hear your voice.
Something hard slammed into her thigh. A picnic hamper. An apology lost in the noise of people, lost to Callie too as she pressed the number a fourth time. This time, it was answered after one ring. The voice of the man she’d fallen in love with spoke in terse but rapid Italian before disconnecting the call.
Her legs weakened and lost all connection with her brain, refusing to take another step. As people jostled into her and around her, and muttered and shouted Italian oaths at her, a tear rolled down her cheek. Dante had just given her the Italian equivalent of ‘fuck off.’
She was shaking so hard she could hardly get her fingers to write two little words in a messageto him.
It’s Callie.
Somehow, she managed to force her legs to start working again and join back in with the throng making their way to the church.
She would place herself strategically outside the church, the part of her brain capable of coherent thought decided even as a different part of her brain willed Dante to read the message and not discard it out of hand.
But what if he did read it, she thought in a sudden burst of panic. What if he read it and discarded it? Worse, what if he’d known all along that she’d been the person calling him?
Her legs still keeping pace with the throng, she composed another message.
I’m so sorry. I’m not going to tell Niccolo. You…
Her phone rang in her hand before she could finish her message.
It was his number.
She nearly dropped the phone in her desperation to answer it. “Dante?” she whispered.
“Callie?” He sounded strained. “Is that you?”
“Yes. Dante, I –”
