She flexes her fingers, before sliding her hands beneath her thighs to keep from fiddling with them more. I stay silent, waiting to hear more about this living nightmare.
“This went on for weeks. We thought we got them all, would think it was clear, but I kept dreaming about it, these damn dreams,” she mutters. “So I would wake up and look some place else. Every night for weeks, I was picking apart rooms in the house looking for these fucking bombs. They’re weapons thatwe imported here.”
“Did you find more?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper.
“Mostly no.” She bites her lower lip and I’m overwhelmed with how very beautiful she is. Happy or anguished, laughing or fighting, she is so beautiful it makes me ache. “Twice I did, though, and that was worse.”
I put my palm on her knee.
“I know there aren’t any here, like,I know, but I woke up and you weren’t here and I couldn’t help thinking about what if, you know?”
My stomach twists imagining her anguish. How long has she been at this? Her mind racing over possibilities she knew weren’t probable but not able to let up on them?
She squeezes her eyes shut. “I think something is really wrong with me.”
“Why?” I ask, fighting my impulse to pull her to me and mutter assurances that she’s perfect as she is. She very well may be perfect as she is, to me this is true, but this is a rare moment when she’s so freely speaking these hidden parts of her mind I crave to know, and I’m desperate for her to continue.
She releases her lower lip from between her teeth. “My thoughts get so loud. Like even if I know they’re absurd or disturbing, I can’t ignore them. Logically I know there are no bombs here, but then I think what if there are? And if I didn’t look and they went off when you or Sasha or Elise was in here, that would bemyfault for not warning you and not looking, and maybe I should’ve listened to this anxiety.” Marianna’s shoulders slump further and she rubs her forehead. “I don’t know. I’m just. . . It makes me so tired.”
She is the most capable creature I’ve encountered. Marianna is so strong and relentless, it doesn’t matter how small she is, she demands respect in every room she enters.The Morelli Shadow. I watched her take out a man two times her size and kill someone who threatened her family without flinching.
And here she is, quietly confessing to me the hauntings of her heart, the chaos in her mind. She is so, unbearably wonderful. All of her broken pieces held together by sheer will and her unending love for her family.
And she’s mine.
“I’ll look with you, if you’d like,” I say, and her gaze jumps from the ground to mine. “Only tonight, to show you that we’re safe here. Sasha would help too, if we call him.”
Marianna’s eyes well with tears and she squeezes them tight before they can spill over. She shakes her head.
“Thank you, but let’s just—” She takes a shuddering breath. “Can we try something else?”
“Anything.”
She steels herself a moment longer, then moves her legs, my hand sliding down her calf as she maneuvers to kneeling next to me. After a few more adjustments, she’s right next to me, her face a breath away from mine.
I don’t stop myself from brushing the stray tear that spills onto her cheek.
“Close your eyes,” she says, and I do. She could ask anything of me and I would do it.
Her lips brush over mine, so light, but I feel it like a shock.
I keep completely still until her lips return, this time firm as they press against mine, and I’m there to meet her. She deepens the kiss and a breath escapes me, my hands moving on their own accord to pull her across my lap as her hands hold my face so tight while she kisses and kisses me.
I don’t know if there are words in English or Russian that can describe the feeling of her hot lips against mine, her heavy breath in my mouth, her fingers sliding through my hair. Maybe in Italian she has the right phrase or word for this, or a different language neither of us know. I only hope the memory of this feeling courses through me as I die, like my life flashing before my eyes, but instead justthis. Kissing Mariannathrough every nerve ending.
I will keep my hair long if she promises to always run her fingers through it like she does now, I’ll never leave her side if it means she might kiss me likethisagain.
Marianna, Marianna, Marianna.
She slides her knee over my lap until she’s straddling my waist. The space is too short to extend my legs out straight, and the bend in them forces her closer to my chest.
My hand slides beneath the sweater she wears, and her soft skin is searing against my palm. I trail up her body, fingers roaming up the bumps of her spine, her ribs, stopping at the star-like scar on her back where the bullet tore through her skin.
I hold the back of her neck and pull her closer, as close as she can possibly be and still be kissing me.
My heart aches thinking of her alone searching her family’s home and garage for little bombs, searching our kitchen because I wasn’t here to hold her, or help her look. She has so much care in that heart, that big, walled-off heart she pretends is hard.
Marianna breaks our kiss, her lower lip lightly caught between my teeth. When I open my eyes, her lips are slightly swollen, her chin and the skin around her mouth red, scratched from my stubble.
