“—who will weaponize that love,” I finish for him, the sentence tasting like coins and old blood.
He nods once. “I won’t force you. I’ll just refuse to pretend the knives aren’t knives.”
The least romantic thing is sometimes the kindest: the truth, plain as linen. I pick up the new phone; it’s heavier than it looks, reassuring in the palm, a quiet promise to filter the world. The box I mailed from Amalfi lifts its lid in my head and shows me what I did with love and panic and too many years of learning the wrong reflex.
“You can be infuriating. You know that, right?” I tell him, which is how women like me saythank youwhen we’re not ready to be soft with our throats.
“I can,” he agrees, completely unbothered. “Will you take it?”
I look at the screen, still dark, still innocent. I imagine handing my old number back to a man who will ring it at midnight just to hear me breathe. I imagine answering because the part of me that still wants to fix the past can’t resist picking up.
I slip the new phone into my bag.
“Fine,” I say. “But if you installed an app that shocks me every time I typeHandatoo close together, I’m giving it back.”
His mouth slants. “Fuck, I should’ve thought of that. But as tempting as it is, I’m the only one allowed to give you shocks. Pleasurable ones,” he emphasizes.
A small silence opens, charged but not empty.
I drag a finger along the seam of my skirt to keep from reaching for his hand and confessing the thing that’s been banging on my ribs since Florence—I want this to be more than a year. I am afraid of what that means if we fail.I suspect he’sholding the twin of that confession in his own mouth and hates it just as much.
“What did Harrison do?” I ask instead, because if we’re going to bleed tonight, let it be for something outside the room.
“Tried to rattle a pre-IPO fund with a story about my ‘stability’,” Vasso says. “He found the grumpiest octogenarian on the docket and fed him a line about men in linen suits who marry for headlines.” A pause, wry, lethal. “He didn’t account for the octogenarian’s granddaughter liking your lighthouse vows. It’s… handled. For now.”
For now is a phrase that leaves thorns in the air. I smooth my skirt again, then his tie, then the front of his shirt because if my hands are busy they won’t shake. “Thank you,” I say, and the gratitude is a stone with heat in it. “For fixing the part I couldn’t.”
He tips a knuckle under my chin, a motion so tender I have to catch my breath to keep it from sounding like a sob. “Thank you,” he says back, and I blink, startled. “For calling the trustees. For pulling the strings only you could pull. I heard your name three times before lunch. Each time it made stubborn men remember their better selves.”
“I bribed them with path names and wildflowers,” I confess, because it feels like a sin to take credit for magic I hired.
“That’s leadership,” he says. “Rope and roses.”
My laugh is a crackle that breaks just enough to let oxygen in. “We’re very good at this part,” I say. “The war.”
His gaze drops to my mouth; the atmosphere drops an octave. “And the other part.”
Heat licks low. “The other part,” I agree, and then we’re both remembering the salon and the red silk and the way his mouth pressed yes into my skin until the word held.
He steps back a fraction—discipline, mercy—extends his hand. “Dinner? We owe Milan a performance before we leave.”
“We always do,” I murmur, sliding my fingers into his, the contact simple but not small.
We walk out together past mirrors that give us our reflections back a little braver than we felt. In the corridor, a junior seamstress drops her pins and blushes, no doubt a witness to our unalloyed passion.
Outside, a photographer angling for a stolen shot gets a curated one instead—our shoulders brushing, our mouths curved like we know secrets we might actually survive.
In the car, the city flickers by, granting us glimpses of the Duomo, slick storefronts, and zipping scooters. I sit with a new phone heavy in my bag and a husband heavy in my chest and the understanding that turbulence is the price of flying fast toward something worth landing.
He watches me without pretending he isn’t.
I look back.
Neither of us saysI’m scared.
Neither of us saysI want this enough to make a fool of myself.
Our silence is overcrowded with unsentences.
