As if he could read my mind, he shook his head, and the slightest of grins touched his mouth. He found me…interesting, sort of like a new species of bug that he’d discovered and decided to keep. I’d decided to keep him, too, this big, bad wolf that I had married and vowed my life to.
In one sense, our marriage wasn’t a traditional one, but in another, it was. Italians sometimes had arranged marriages. The details surrounding ours was somewhat different, but at its core, it was based on the same principles as any normal arrangement.
The details of it made me feel secure, rooted. We both knew what to expect and vowed to uphold the terms. Love not being one of them. After I stood before a church filled with people and sealed those vows with a kiss, and then we had sex, somethinginside of me changed. A vulnerable part of me was hit, shattered, and all the pieces floated in a space that had no name, trying to figure out where to settle.
Was it normal tonothave told your husband that you loved him? Not even once?
Yeah, to my husband, love wasn’t an option, and I was becoming increasingly aware that the feeling—or reality?—had invaded my life. I wasn’t sure if it was the kind of thing that ever went away.It felt permanent, like a soul.
I turned my face back toward the water, not wanting him to see. Because he missed nothing with those eyes, an electric blue that stood out against smooth, tan skin and silky black hair.
He felt like a storm over the water while I was in it.
My breath came fast, too fast, and I took a deep breath of fresh air, then released it slowly, enjoying how smoothly it came and went. Even though my feelings were all over the place and strong, it was what it was between us. As the air moved inside of me, so would how I felt, and I’d release it when I could. For the moment, I’d direct my thoughts down another path.
We were in Greece.
Greece!
On a yacht, bobbing above the water like a toy on an endless paradise of blue. No true direction but where the day or night brought us. Maybe the captain had an itinerary, but no one had told me, and I wanted to keep it that way.
It felt almost magical, falling asleep in one place and waking up in another. We’d started in Cala Gonone, a city in Sardinia, and when my eyes opened after sleeping for so many hours, I lost count, we were at a port somewhere in Greece.
When Capo had told me where we were, it took a minute for the news to settle. Once it did, I found the balcony and, still in my silk pajamas, gazed out at the view. It felt unreal to me.
Not only the view—my entire life.
From dumpster diving to...this.
Then my eyes found the man next to me, and between him and the view, he almost seemed more unreal to me. I had a feeling that he’d read Journey, the journal I’d kept with all the desires of my heart in it, and was making them all come true.
Greece was on my list, and he brought me here for our honeymoon.
I cleared my throat and turned my eyes away from his. All I could think was…the color of the water doesn’t even compare to his, or how much his eyes unnerve me when he looks at me that way.Like he was determined to see into all the places I hid my secrets. For a man like him, a man who always got what he wanted, it almost seemed like a challenge to find them.
“How long do we get to stay?” I asked.
Despite myself, after he didn’t answer, I turned and met his eyes again.
One of his brows lifted. “Thinking of the ending already?”
“No.” I shook my head. “Preparing for the inevitable.”
He laughed, a guttural sound deep in his throat. I stashed the impulse to reach out and touch his neck, where a jagged white line scarred his skin. Sometimes, when his reactions to me surprised him, his laugh sounded like paper tearing away from a notebook. Or maybe he just didn’t laugh that much before me, and when he did, it sounded raw.
“You can never prepare for that, Mariposa,” he said. “That’s why it’s important to live for today.”
“Oh,” I said, smiling. “I’m living. This. Just being here.” I took a deep breath of warm, salty air and then released it in a slow push, hesitant to give it back. Something about it was healing me already. Like our time in Sicily. “This feels like life to me.”
“Your feet are still on theboat,” he said.
I’d called it aboatwhen I’d first seen it, but it was much too fancy for that simple term. It was a floating mansion, in my opinion. Or as Capo had called it, ayacht.
Aphrodite was her name, and she reminded me of a stout dolphin. The front came to a point, like a long nose or beak, then widened to encompass seven decks, including two helidecks (a term Capo used) and a hangar belowdecks. The very top reminded me of a fin. It even had an underwater observation room, which was super cool. The captain mentioned on the tour that the yacht could accommodate twenty-eight guests and had a fifty-six-member crew. He seemed to only mention it for my benefit, because I was sure Capo know the statistics on it already. Since the Fausti family either owned the boat or called in a favor, it made sense that she was as posh as she was. She even flew an Italian flag.
I wiggled my toes. “I know where my feet are,” I said. “They’re basically floating above this water with theyacht.InGreece!”
He grinned and my heart dipped into my stomach, following the motion of the ocean. “Being here pleases you.”
