The only reason my heart beat.
The only reason my heart stopped.
The only reason my lungs took in air.
The only reason I felt strangled.
The only reason the blood rushed through my heart.
The only reason I would bleed myself dry.
The only reason I would fall to my knees—to rest at her feet.
The only reason I would rise to them, accepting whatever challenges life had in store for us.
She.
This woman.
Aria Amora Bella.
She was my only reason.
My Amora.
Her eyes turned down some before she met mine straight on again. “Say something,” she whispered.
My heart went forward, and I followed it, my arms wrapping around her, pulling her so tightly to me she gasped. There were no words good enough for her. True enough for her.
She was the romantic vision my passionate heart had dreamt up but never thought it would be able to claim. I held my dream in my arms.
“That good, ah?” she whispered, smiling at me, her eyes glistening.
She gasped when I swept her off her feet, carrying her to the church.
The world glowed with a fire that felt as if it was stolen from my chest. A physical representation of our love surrounding us. The air was thick with it. The water in the distance rushed in and out to shore, as if it were beckoning us forward, to take the final steps before we repeated ancient and new vows to one another.
Her eyes were on mine, and mine were on hers.
It was in that moment that I realized: she saw me, and she saw through me.
I was the man I was born to be, a man made of hard lines and laws, but, first and foremost, I would be this woman’s husband. The word would take on a new meaning between us. It was not only for paper, but in the heart, in the lungs, in the blood. With her, I felt a freedom I had never experienced before, though if she moved, I moved.
I set her down gently on her feet, and we faced each other, the fiery blush glow of the world caught between our bodies. I removed the knife from my pocket, and without hesitation, I marked my palm, blood rushing down my right hand.
“I owe you blood, Aria Amora Bella,” I whispered. “My beautiful love song.”
The beautiful love song that set me free of all others.
“Never,” she whispered, her hazel eyes intense on mine. “But.” She took the knife and made a small cut on her left hand. “This is proof, Rocco Fausti. If you bleed, I bleed. My body is yours, and yours is mine.”
“Where you go, I will follow,” I said in Italian.
“And where you go, I will follow,” she repeated in the same language.
Taking her hand, I kissed it, sealing our private vows, before we turned toward the church, prepared to repeat them on sacred ground. Her body and mine locked together in symbolism—we would share this life together, and if she bled, I bled, and if I bled, she bled, but together, we would staunch each other’s wounds.
One could not exist without the other.
