“She’s enough.” I’d never dreamed that I’d have her. She was, to me, such a miracle in this life.
He placed a soft, lingering kiss against my neck. “She’s more than enough. She’s heaven.”
“She is.” My smile grew wider, even as my arms suddenly felt so empty, along with a big chunk of my heart. She was the only one who could fill such a deep void.
She might have left my body, but she would forever be with me. Each second without her felt like it caused a small death. I knew we had to wait until it was safe to take her with us, but it was the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life.
He took my hand, leading me toward the door.
“Where are we going?” I looked back at the cabin, needing to clean it, to put everything he destroyed out of anger, frustration, and maybe desperation, back to how it was.
It was even worse. He’d destroyed even more when I was out of it for three days, which explained his bloodied knuckles the morning I came to.
“We’ll be back,” he said. “But there are things you need to see.”
* * *
Niello droveus to Pennsylvania to a bed and breakfast there. The people who ran the place seemed to know him—know us. They called us by a bogus last name and showed us to a room that was “ours.”
After Niello removed an old creaking floorboard, along with a box that looked fireproof, he showed me everything he felt I should see.
Videos, or what seemed like movies, of the two of us, and then the three of us. Some of the movies seemed vintage, like we took them with a camera that was from another time.
The cabin was without power because we were off the grid, so I understood why he waited until last to show me this.
The woman in the videos was me—but she was so different. She seemed wilder, like she never believed this world could touch her, and much happier than I could have ever imagined.
I looked to my right.
Without a shadow of a doubt, I knew that the wild and free woman, singing some song from one of the cassettes, was who she was because of the man next to me.
No fear in this world could touch me because he was behind me every step of the way.
He gave me the permission, the strength, to live life on my terms.
It was nice to think that I gave him the same permission, the same strength, and somehow, who we were together was much stronger than who we were apart.
I loved that woman. I loved that man. I loved who they were together.
A force.
I vowed to have that again—all that we had then, but even more.
I vowed to fight for that until my last breath.
* * *
As the week continued,every stripped bone of my life had gained enough flesh and blood to take shape.
It wasn’t the same shape as before, but a promise of who I was going to become.
Each time we danced in the kitchen to some song on a mix tape, I felt like we were taking steps forward. I’d learned that we’d had two wedding songs. “The Music of The Night,” fromThe Phantom of the Opera, and another that was so romantic that it made my heart beat faster every time I listened to it. “Come away with me…”
Each time he showed me a side of his life, of him, that he hid from the world, I felt like he understood me better, too.
I’d learned that Aniello Assanti could make a mean pizza (he worked for Peppin at his pizzeria as apizzaiolowhen he was a kid) and a fish dish that had me going back for thirds.
“My mamma taught me how to make this,” he said, gesturing to the plate before us. “In Sicily, they use grey mullet, though.”
