I felt like one of those fuckers in an action movie who clings to the rock a second before going all the way over. The wind had knocked against my body, swinging me back and forth. The sea had been seething that day too. The motherfucker stood over me, looking down, his teeth pulled up in a laugh or snarl. It was hard to tell with him. I had to use all my strength to pull myself up before I became the wreckage.
Cool sprays from the sea dotted my overheated body, and finally, with an animalistic noise that came from my chest, erupted from my throat, and came growling from my mouth, I lifted myself back on solid ground.
I was face-down in the dirt, breathing it in. When I could catch my breath, I stood.
My eyes had locked with his. “Not today, motherfucker,” I had told him. “Not fucking ever.”
He moved his head up and down, stomped his hooves, and made a noise I took as acceptance. I mounted him again and, without any complaint from him, we took a leisurely stroll back to the property.
It had been that way ever since, except there was an understanding between us.
We were one and the same.
I leaned over a bit, patting him on the side as we both seemed to absorb the view around us.
The horizon spread out as far as the eye could see, as did the sea underneath it. One a mirror to the other. The weather was silver and black, moody as fuck, and a fine mist of fog drifted in the air like a ghost, attempting to cling to the living.
“The ghost of who I once was,” I muttered to myself.
After Sistine had come into my life, shattering me to pieces, I didn’t recognize the man I once was. I had found clarity once that part of my life had drifted away like the fog.
All the women.
The chasing.
The temporary fulfillment of the moment that had somehow filled the emptiness for a time. That was why there were so many women.
All that Casanova behavior ended abruptly the moment my eyes had found mine in the jewelry shop in Venice.
A breath left my mouth when I remembered seeing her for the first time.
Girl in a Renaissance Painting.
My girl.
My woman.
My religious experience.
My Sistine.
My Annie.
My wife.
My life.
Looking back, my heart had fallen at her feet. It still hadn’t recovered. Never would. It would always hit a dip whenever she came to mind. Because she had hit body, heart, and soul with something much stronger than any force on this earth.
She was underneath my skin in the best and worst way.
The sickness and the healing.
Her fucking socks.
The elf she had made up.
A growl vibrated low in my throat, and I set a hand over my heart, rubbing the aching spot. It was the most childish fucking thing, the elf, but she was so fucking cute, she broke my heart.
