“I know this! However, there are that many numbers listed.”
He snatched the book from my hands, and opening it to whichever page it landed on, he stuck it closer to my face. My eyes went crossed before I took a step back, my arms crossing. A defensive position.
If I allowed my hands to be free, I might attack him, cause him pain—the same pain ripping my…was it my heart? I was so jealous! It felt like acid eating at my skin.
“Fucking look at it, Sistine.”
“Fine!” I snatched the book from him, holding it out. I read off a random number, and when I got to the end, there was the letterNnext to it. “What is that? Some type of code?”
“The N is for no,” he said, as if it should be obvious. “No, she, whoever the fuck she was, was not you. Turn to the end.”
I flipped to the end. He had sketched a picture of me. Similar to the one of my great-grandmother. It was how he saw me the first time he described seeing me. I was at my work desk. He even took great care with how my hair was styled. My dress. A stained-glass window shedding a kaleidoscope of colors around me, even if the sketch was done in what seemed like charcoal. I could not explain it; however, I just knew. I just knew the colors of his mind, even if it came out on paper as black and white.
My eyes slowly rose to meet his. Tears I held back burned. Burned from the jealousy and the relief that this man had fallen for me out of all these numbers.
“My number one,” he said, his voice rough, “turned out to be my fucking end game. Theonewho beat me at my own fucking game.”
I should have been falling into his arms, making love to him with a fervor that would send the plane in flames, making another claim on him, feeling the words he had just spoken to me in unbridled truth.
However.
I was angry.
So angry.
Iggy.
I knew I was defending myself against the crushing amount of anxiety I was experiencing about having to tell Mariano by thinking of how mad I was that Iggy even put me in this predicament!
However, my husband’s eyes, his entire demeanor… Perhaps it was not…anxiety, per se, that he was feeling having to share with me the book of his past, but he was feeling some kind of way I did not fully understand.
He cleared his throat. “Say something.”
The words flew from my mouth. “You are an artist as well.”
He made ahngnoise in his throat.“You sound pissed about it.”
“I am not.” I took a deep breath. I took a small step toward him, another, until I took a seat next to him. “It is the most beautiful picture of me I have ever seen.” My voice was quiet, almost lost to the humming of the plane.
“She is who you are to me.” His voice was rough. “After I left the jewelry store, I couldn’t fucking control my hands. A restless, fucking reckless, need inside of me to capture what I had experienced that day ruled me. You. My wife. I knew who you were to me the first time my eyes found yours. Everything.My life. My breath. My healing. The one woman who started the racing of my heart and could stop it.”
Bene. Bene.He knew, and he would not deny me for what I had hidden from him.
I sighed. It trembled out. “I have to tell you something, Mariano.”
His eyes slowly rose to meet mine. He nodded.
“I do not know how to say this…”
“Fucking say it.” He rolled his shoulders.
“The night of the banquet in Venice…Iggy climbed the hand statue, using it to gain entry to my parents’ palazzo. He…broke into my room. He…told me…he…loved…me.”
Silence.
Complete silence.
Until he got to his feet, all over six feet of him making the space suddenly feel so small, almost claustrophobic, going to fix the suit he was not wearing. His suit hung on the door.
