He rolls and gathers me in. We fit in a way my good sense and dizzy heart would like to write poems about. A sensation I thankfully resist. Then he tucks a strand of hair behind my ear like he’s done it a thousand times, with smooth familiarity that draws a lump to my throat.
Maybe he has, in some parallel life where no one ever said the word Goldstein and no one had to make difficult choices that broke hearts and lives.
“Sleep,” he says, because he is occasionally kind when I expect him to be cruel. “We’re landing soon.”
I mumble something about Nonna Rosaria and truffles and Vespa helmets, and he laughs into my hair, the sound a low promise I could lie on like a heating pad. And I drift, luxury-soft and sore in the right ways, the scent of him on my skin, the taste of him still at the back of my throat like the last of the champagne, sweeter because I didn’t mean to keep it.
Somewhere in the blur between awake and out, the thought I’ve been avoiding sneaks up and sits on my chest: I do want to ask him how many. How many women. How many nights. How many confetti moments he refused and how many he didn’t. It shouldn’t matter. It shouldn’t belong to me. It does. I push it out of the room like a rude guest and shut the door with a firm click.
The next thing I know, the lights lift a shade. The jet angles, seatbelt signs ping—a polite suggestion in a private world. Vasso’s hand flexes on my hip, not waking me so much as reminding me he’s there.
“Naomi,” he says, voice rough with sleep and something smugger. “Welcome to Tuscany.”
I blink up at him, dazed, then at the window.
The horizon is a watercolor smear over darker hills; ribbons of mist pool between rows of cypress. I feel deliciously wrecked and alarmingly content, which is a combination I do not trust.
“Ready?”
“Oh yes, Vecchio and Nonna and whoever else is on that itinerary are going to love me,” I say, stretching like a cat and then wincing at the honesty of my muscles. “I’m very… teachable.”
His mouth does that dangerous thing. “I’ve noticed.”
“Don’t,” I warn, pointing a stern finger at him, even as my heart sings at the easier air between us. Great sex is apparentlythe remedy to all rows and angst. Who knew? Not me. “I have self-respect.”
“You also have a Vespa in your near future and a very inquisitive octogenarian who will ask if we slept at all.”
I groan. “And what will you tell him?”
“The truth,” he says, kissing my fingertip like he wants to start trouble at customs. “That I made very poor choices and would like to make them again.”
I shove his shoulder because it’s that or climb him like a tree. And Vasso Dillinger makes for a very climb-worthy treat.
The plane dips and rumbles and between one heartbeat and the next, wheels kiss runway with a purr.
Game on.
I swallow, find my shoes, and stand on legs that have the audacity to tremble. He watches me with a look that says he’s memorizing that tremble for later when he capitalises, makes me earn the interest.
“Get dressed, Mrs. Dillinger,” he says, voice warm steel. “Let’s go impress a man who collects wives and checks.”
“Perfect,” I say, smoothing my dress, finding my ring, my nerve. “I’m becoming well-practiced at pretending we’re besotted.”
He comes up behind me as I adjust my hair and meets my eyes in the mirror, the cabin’s soft light turning him into something I’m not ready to name. “Practice makes perfect, sweetheart,” he says, not like a taunt. Like a prophecy.
I don’t look away fast enough to make it a lie.
I cling to relief as we exit the cabin.
The plane door opens and the world rushes in. Sun, the smell of concrete and distant cypress, the first notes of a plot twist I’m not sure how to execute without lying to myself.
But I’m a Kane. Wait…no, I’m a Dillinger.
And heaven help me but I am less of the former and more of the latter as we clasp hands and step out into it, together.
12
NAOMI
