The Hazards of a Crushing Amount of Love
Imade a hissing sound, my hand automatically going to my eyes, when we stepped out ofCastello Burranea, and the bright light of a new day hit me. Rocco had given me a pair of sunglasses to wear, but my eyes were completely adjusted to minimal light. This light was much too bright. Garish. It seemed foreign. I wanted to run back inside thecastelloand hide underneath the covers with my husband, who it seemed had turned me into a vampire.
He pulled me into a more shaded area and traded his sunglasses for mine.
“Wha—?” I asked lamely, not even able to complete the entire word. My brain sent it, but my mouth cut off the “t.”
“Your sunglasses seem to be broken.” He stepped out into the light and came back a second later with a perplexed look on his face, like he didn’t understand what the issue was.
Even though I was being a brat about leaving, I grabbed his arm and smiled. “My eyes are just sensitive,” I said. “We’ve been in mostly dimness for…”
“Three weeks,” he said.
Three measly weeks?! That was what? Only twenty-one days!
“Not long enough,” I grumbled as he led me to a waiting car, opened my door for me, and closed it behind me as he made his way around, claiming the driver’s seat with the legendary smoothness he was known for.
My arms were crossed over my body as he sped away from thecastellolike it might chase us and claim us again, or he was going to change his mind and bring us back, where we would live happily ever after together in matrimonially (dim) bliss—Forever and Ever,Amen.
My vote went to the second scenario.
Definitely the second scenario.
Being with him had satisfied me beyond measure, and it almost felt like he was cutting off my words when I was in the middle of writing the most important scene of my life. There were times where the pressure to write would be so great, if I didn’t, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. And when I sat down to finally get my hands on the keyboard, sometimes the scene would feel like it fell flat because I hadn’t gotten to the muse in time.
Then I’d remind myself of what my dad had told me once—he rarely told me anything, so the things he did impart to me, I saved. He’d told me he never beat himself up over how slow or fast he wrote a book, because if he did, that meant the story that was coming too slow or too fast wouldn’t have turned out to be the story he was supposed to tell. The words would be different if he started at a different time than he had or was rushed to finish because of a deadline.
“A story is like a woman,” he was once quoted as saying. “She comes when she wants.”
When asked to clarify theshecomeswhen she wantsline, he had told the reporter,I didn’t stutter, did I?
Sighing, I vanished any thoughts of my dad and looked at the man next to me, controlling this car like he had controlled my body. He’d worked me up to fits of passion so raging, at one point, I thought I was a flame about to set the castle onfire. He’d killed every inhibition I could’ve ever had and set mefree in unbridled lands where his body was king.
Okay, maybe I was being dramatic and too writerly about it all, but my feelings were my feelings. I was truly irked about leavingCastello Burranea.And the longer we drove, the sun beating down on us, the wind whipping around us, I was starting to feel the crust I’d acquired. I lifted my arm, setting it on the door, giving myself a sneaky sniff, expecting grilled onions.
I didn’t smell bad—at all.
I smelled like him.
Healthy.
Virile.
Sophisticated and rich, like candle wax mixed with the scents of bourbon, cigar smoke, and bergamot. A solid undertone of citrus below it all.
And he had kept all those scents intact, even after all we’d done.
We could have stayed longer.
Much, much, much longer.
I took my arm back and crossed them, sighing as the world around us invaded my senses, even if I was fighting to keep my entire being, meaning my husband too, back in the room of spells at thecastle. I refused to acknowledge how different the island not only looked but felt without the immense presence of the Fausti family. Though soldiers swarmed the streets in plain clothes. The idea of it was to give whoever was after us the impression that nothing was amiss. Life on the island was going on as it usually did.
Life for me wasn’t. I refused to take my foot off the brake. I wanted life to stay locked out, us standing still together at the other castle. I sighed, long and hard, as the car sped up the hill to the castle above the sea,Castello Sul Mare. Even though I was perturbed, I still couldn’t stop the flutter of the butterflies in my stomach when my eyes went straight for the window my ghost had been standing in, watching me. Something deep inside of memust have known, but it wasn’t until I started writing it all down that I came to terms with it—where my life was headed and with who.
Rocco squeezed my hand and kissed it, like he was feeling it too. I’d learned that, too, during our time in the magical room at the castle. We were connected in ways that already had us answering for each other, or just looking at each other, knowing what the other was thinking. It was the completely in sync thing again. And I didn’t doubt he wasn’t feeling my mood either. He just wasn’t commenting on it, because for whatever reason, he was able to keep his foot on the gas, bringing us forward.
Men scattered like rain when we pulled up to thecastelloand he parked the car. I wasn’t sure where the soldiers disappeared to, but when he stepped out, looking so fine it should have been a natural crime, we seemed to be alone. He was shirtless, his tuxedo pants hanging from his hips, and barefoot. He’d set his white shirt over my body, and it hung like a dress, well past my thighs. He opened my door and, refusing to let me set a foot on the ground, slid me out of the seat and carried me toward the door.
