I’d never been to Natchitoches before. Or if I had, I couldn’t remember the trip.
I’d been with my father’s parents since birth. A couple of months after I was born, my mom left me with them. It was supposed to be a temporary situation. My parents had decided to part ways, or my dad had decided to part ways with my mom, leaving her utterly broken hearted. To this day, my feelings told me my dad had been the love of my mom’s life, but he hadn’t wanted to truly commit. That aside, my mom decided my grandparents would keep me until she got on her feet.
She had gotten an apartment and a part-time job while she was going to attend college. My maternal grandparents were at a point in their lives when they wanted to travel, so…Nonno and Nonna got stuck with the responsibility of me. Dad moved out on his own, and Mom started coming to see me less and less, until both of my parents signed over custody of me to my paternal grandparents. Nonna said she and Nonno had always wanted a houseful of kids, but it wasn’t in the stars for them. After Nonna had my dad, she couldn’t get pregnant again. She suffered with endometriosis. So, I was a welcome blessing in their lives, no matter when I arrived.
All this to say, we traveled some when I was little. Nonna had sold Home Interiors to make extra funds, and the seller’s position required some travel. There are pictures of me in places like Paris, Texas, but I couldn’t remember if there were any of me in Natchitoches. The small town was only three hours or so from New Orleans, even though Rocco made it there in what seemed like two. His entire family drove fast, but his speed never made me nervous.
Looking at him, at how in control he was, it only sent a thrill through me. He seemed to sense this and kissed my hand. He held mine in his the entire drive. He even moved with me when I wanted to change the song on the radio.
I sighed, staring out the window, already feeling at ease in the small town. Brando and Scarlett, along with their entire family, called it home. It was hard for me to make sense of how close the Fausti family had been to me my entire life, even visiting when Nonna had worked for Scarlett’s family, and now I was married to one.
Crazy how life can turn out to be.
Even crazier, the warning Nonna had given me always echoed inside of my head, but my heart silenced her fears. If she had only had the chance to get to know Rocco, she would have loved him. She would have loved him for me, even if a small part of her worried about my new last name and the weight it carried with it.
I let the worries go as we turned into a drive, bushes guarding the house that was tucked behind them. Scarlett had told me the story of how she and Brando had come to fall in love with the house when it was abandoned, and it was clear to see they had made it into their home.
She and Brando were on the porch, amongst the fall display Scarlett must have decorated herself, watching in the distance as the SUV rocked its way toward them. Rocco slowed, and thesmile on Scarlett’s face seemed to be the reason the weather was warm, or at the least, the reason why her husband wasn’t as frozen as ice. The set of his face was always so severe, but when his wife was around, it seemed to soften some.
I realized in that moment how hard all the men were, but how their wives were the soft about them. I glanced at my husband, who at the motion Scarlett made, was rolling down the window.
The same hardness belonged to him too, and I imagined a woman, who I’d met on a cliffside in Italy as she dangled over it, next to him—even though the thought made me feel jealous, I pushed it aside to see the truth.
Rosaria couldn’t balance him out. If anything, she made him even harder than he naturally was. Inhuman, almost. I clasped his hand even harder and brought it to my face, which was warm. His eyes instantly softened, as did the entire set of his face.
“I’m so glad you’re mine, Rocco,” I whispered. “So thankful and blessed.”
He stared at me. He stared at me as if words had failed him, and he couldn’t speak past the lump in his throat.
“I know.” I smiled. “It means a lot to you when I say these things. When I share with youmytruth.”
“More than you could ever know,” he whispered, a soft rasp to his voice, as if he forced the quiet words past the tightness.
The way he was looking at me overwhelmed me, and I broke eye contact first to take a deep, deep breath, learning how to deal with the emotional side of all this.
Emotions—so many of them—rose from a depth I never knew belonged to me when he stared at me in the way he did, as if I was his entire world, and he was holding on to it while it slipped through his fingers. Because we both understood how limited time could be, and we were all victims of it, none of usimmune. We both grasped that through love, though, there was never a time we would part. We loved so hard, would always love so hard, that nothing could ever take us from each other. But my husband had the most heartbreaking eyes. Just thinking of someone treating him less than the love he had to offer… It broke me in ways that were hard for me process.
The man in him needed to shield my body from the dangers of this world; the woman inside of me needed to shield his heart from them. I wanted his home inside of me to be his idea of heaven. His haven.
Our hands squeezed at the same time, like what resided deeper than the flesh understood this.
Brando was behind Scarlett when they made it to the car. I blinked at Scarlett before I could form words.
“Your home is so beautiful,” I said. “It looks like a place out of a magazine spread.”
The love Scarlett had for her home made her light up. Then she looked at her husband and was set ablaze. “It’s one of our favorite places on this earth. It’s our small slice of heaven.” After a second, she shook her head and looked at me. “It’s easy to forget time around here.” She looked at Rocco, then at me, and then grinned. “Don’t forget Eva is hosting a party at her and Gabriel’s place along the bayou on Saturday.”
I laughed, lifting my phone, shaking it some. “How could I forget? She programmed it in.”
Scarlett laughed. “Eva is nothing if not detail oriented.”
“So true.”
We chatted for a few minutes before Brando started to ease his wife away from the car. Rocco lifted off the brake, and the car started rolling forward slowly.
“Call me if you need any help with the recipe we talked about!” Scarlett wrapped her hands around her husband’s, which were firmly around her slim waist.
“I will!” I shouted out of the car, Rocco still holding tight to my hand. As Scarlett and I had been talking, every time I’d move my hand, his came with.
