She looked away for a second, and then her hazel eyes turned back to mine. So fierce. “Scarlett told me the story of the pears—those pears she loves, and how she can trace back the history of them to before the beginning of her and Brando’s love story.”
“Sì.”
“We can trace ours back too. To this spot.”
Lifting her hand to my mouth, I placed a soft kiss on her racing pulse, then set it over my heart, allowing it to answer for me. Mere words could not do this moment justice. To offer a prayer and then have it be answered in such a miraculous but solid way…what words could honor it? None.
“Our eyes…when they connect…” She took a deep breath, and when she released it, I breathed her in, refusing to allow it to go to waste. “I can’t describe it in words. And that’s my job. To take the scenes in my head, capture the emotion behind the words, and share it with the world. The only way I can describe it is, my body yearns to be wrapped up in yours. The only reason my soul levitates is because it needs to get to yours. My body is the vessel that keeps it locked inside, but someplace stronger, deeper, it meets with yours when we connect this way, in any way, Rocco Piero Fausti.”
My eyes burned as they did when the art of life moved me. I did not hold back. I softened my shell so that this woman, my wife, could see and feel how vulnerable I had become with her. She moved our hands from my heart to my eyes. I leaned in and kissed hers, the tears she cried for our love as sacrificial as the blood she would shed for our children—if we were blessed with them.
“Even with my eyes closed,” she whispered. “I see you, my husband. I see us.”
I removed the scarf from around her head, and while her eyes were closed, I tied our hands together. Slowly, her eyes opened, the hazel color celestial in this light.
“A cord of three is not so easily broken,” I said in Italian. “The cord binding us together—nothing or no one can unravel.”
“Sì.” Her voice was bold, not a tremble in it. “We won’t allow it.”
“We will not,” I said, my blood rushing through my veins with conviction—with the undiluted truth my family was known for. “I will die for this love. Live for it.”
“For always; for the both of us.”
I took her hand and brought it to my lips once more, our eyes holding as securely as the stars blazing above our heads clung to the night sky. “My prayer on the loneliest night of my life was this: that a woman with the same hypnotizing scent as was on the scarf, the same beautiful hair, would satisfy the lion in my chest someday. In the claim, in the one word,mine, the empty void in me would close, and my skin would be warm once again.”
She searched my eyes, and even though she knew the answer, she asked. “Are you? Are you healed, Rocco Fausti? Are you warm?”
I grinned at her and her breath caught, then picked up. “I have found the one my soul recognized right away. I have found the one who could not only destroy me but heal me. I am no longer freezing. I am no longer lacking. I am your husband. No matter what happens in this life—I am yours and you are mine. My prayer was answered. I am…whole for the first time in my life.”
“So am I,” she said. “SoamI.”
I took her in my arms and we turned toward the sky, our hands still connected by the cord. We knew without a doubt that for as long as the stars burned, for even longer, our love was written in them, and in the same spot we stood, no matter how long or how far, we could always return to them and find our way home.
The scent of mine drifted in the air, from my skin, along with the taste of her on my tongue, and it was a warm reminder of who I was.
The grandson of Marzio Piero Fausti.
Son of Lucious Leone Fausti.
I am Rocco Piero Fausti.
The grandson and son in line for the Fausti throne.
I was no longer alone in this life, bred only to rule and nothing else. I would rule, but only with my queen at my side.
To whom do I belong? Who belongs to me?
Two questions that were neither absurd nor fantastical. Two questions that went beyond all others.
The two most important questions of my life.
All my life, I was taught to believe I belonged to the family. My grandfather. My father. I could understand that. I could accept it. However, a man such as I needed more than that.
In my arms, I held much more.
I finally held my home, my heart. Inside of its chambers, my lion roared, calling for his lioness, who answered him in a language only the two of them could understand, feeding a hunger only a starving animal could know. My wife squeezed my hand in understanding, and together, we watched as the cold stars burned, warmed and healed by the love between us.
“Let this be our prayer,” my wife whispered.
