“I don’t need a piece of fabric to keep my wife still.” I threw it to the floor, the silk drifting in slow motion, even with the force of the movement.
“No, and neither do you need chains or iron bars,” she said, her voice full of conviction. “Just those damn eyes.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Brando
A month later, after traveling to Vienna, Munich, Zurich, Giethoorn, Prague, Lauterbrunnen, and Budapest for our honeymoon, we arrived back in Paris and I carried her over the threshold of the apartment.
Setting her down, we stood side by side, staring at the gifts that lined the walls. Her parents’ friends were the kind of wealthy that enjoyed competing over who could give the best gift.
She blew a breath up, fanning the small tendrils of hair out of her face. “This isn’t all of it,” she said, placing her hands on her hips. “I sent some to the house on Snow. Just in case you chickened out.You’dhave to send some of them back.”
A long minute passed. “Did you just call me a chicken?”
“No.” She grinned. “But if you had backed out, I would have called you a lot worse. In fact, I would have strangled you. Crime of passion, I believe it’s called.”
“I deserve that and I would’ve let you, but I wasn’t backing out, baby,” I said, looking over the tower. “Still, I’m not touching those gifts until you come home and help me. They’ll collect dust.”
“Perhaps we should go through them and see what we want.” Her eyes scanned over the walls, tallying. “The rest we can donate. Our house back home isn’t big enough for all of this.” She waved a hand.
“No,” I agreed. “But there’s one gift I’m hoping you’ll want to keep.”
“Which one?” She bobbed from left to right, eyes searching over the boxes.
I went into our room and retrieved the thing. I shrugged. “This one.”
“You bought me a telescope?”
“Yeah, so you don’t have to strain your eyes to see the stars.”
She smiled so wide that I had no choice but to follow. She looked it over, her entire face bright from the surprise.
“Brando! This is so much cooler than suckers!” She hugged me tight, bobbing on her heels. Then she sniffed and started to cry. “I love the stars.”
“I know.” I hugged her tighter.
“No. You don’t understand. I really,reallylove the stars. I’m obsessed with them.” She almost sobbed. “The only thing I love more is you.” She sniffed hard, pulling away. “Do you ever stop to think how happy you make me?”
I went to answer but she sucked in a breath. “You do! You make me so happy.”
“You all right, Ballerina Girl?”
“I think it’s all catching up to me. The time before the wedding,thewedding, the castle, the ghost, the honeymoon.” She threw her hand around wildly, gesturing to the lined walls. “The gifts! I feel…odd.”
I gave her a look that conveyed that odd and Scarlett Fausti was like two sides of one coin. She grinned, but her bottom lip trembled.
“I don’t know, Brando,” she whispered. “I felt this way before, the first night I went to Sous Rosa. I feared the endof something. My skin felt stretched to the point of tearing.”
“You were afraid.”
She nodded. “Afraid and lonely. I’m just afraid now.”
Afraid and lonely. Those two words from her mouth gutted me. I had left her alone for too fucking long.
I made her look at me. “You never have to be afraid or feel lonely. Not with me here. We’re together. Never one without the other.”
Her hands moved with the tension, sliding them back and forth against the telescope, touching me, patting this or that. “I know,” she said, her voice quiet. She made a few hand gestures, not able to keep them still, using sign language to communicate.
