“Yourdecision?” I clarify. “That’s not the way this works, Luca.”
He pulls off his shoes and socks and is standing again before he replies. “In this matter, baby bird, itismy decision.” He holds up a hand. “Please,” he says, and I can hear in his voice that he’s tired. “Please don’t fight me on this, Finch. Just this once. At least for tonight? I’m still thinking things through.”
“That’s the problem, husband,” I say softly, but he gives me a sharp look. “Youmight be thinking things through.Ihave already made up my mind.”
He nods, as though this is not new information to him, and I’m about to keep pushing when he pushes down his boxer briefs. “I understand, angel. I really do. Let’s discuss it further in the morning.”
On the one hand, this is some straight-up bullshit that I’m not going to let him get away with. Sure, he can make unilateral decisions about his own damn Family, but when it comes to me? To the Donovans? When it comes to my sisters, to my mother? He doesn’t get to make the call.
But on the other hand, he’s standing there naked, and he’s just so damnbeautiful.
“Tomorrow morning,” I say, “we are talking about this again.”
There’s always time for arguing tomorrow. Tonight, though, I just want to love him.
* * *
“My concern is not onlyabout traveling in a foreign country under assumed names, or getting picked up by Interpol, or running into friends of the Clemenzas, or even being too close to Ireland,” Luca yawns the next morning. “It’s simply that it’s a lot of risk for something we don’t know will be a reward.”
I renewed our “discussion” right after I woke up. Luca wasn’t quite awake yet, but I tossed and turned until he was, and then I started in on him. I preempted all possible problems as far as I could see them, and suggested solutions for all. But this risk-reward shit is vague enough that I need to ask him what he means.
He turns on his side to face me and puts an arm around me. I do the same, the bandages he still wears at night fuzzy under the skin of my forearm. I’ll be so happy when all these bandages are gone completely, forever, no matter what scars are left behind. Luca’s flesh is beautiful to me no matter what external forces might come to bear on it. Hell, even if he ends up looking like his brother, I could live with that.
Just as long as there are no parts of him that are covered up or hidden away from me.
“What I mean is,” he mumbles sleepily, “there’s no guaranteed return on investment inanyof this. We don’t know if Róisín will see us. If she will, we don’t know if she still has the rosary. If she does, we don’t know if she’ll agree to give it to you. If she agrees, we don’t know if it’s even what we’re looking for. If it is what we’re looking for, we still don’t know if it will make the number any more meaningful than it is now. And if—”
“Alright, alright,” I snap. “Damn it, Luca. I fucking get it. But do you have to be sonegativeabout it?”
His palm slides around my back and he pulls me closer. “I’m not being negative, or at least, if I am, I’m sorry about that. I’m just trying to consider all the options. Because the truth is, baby bird, even if we get the rosaryandfigure out what the number means, put it all together—it might not amount to a hill of beans. If it’s money, it might have been spent, or hacked, or stolen.”
“It might not be money,” I point out. “It might be…”
He brushes his thumb across my lips. “Tell me what you’re hoping for.”
I swallow. “Something aboutme. About why she never told me. Why she…” I trail off. The fact is, I know exactly what I want, and I also know I’ll never get it.
I want something to make her death make sense to me. But it never will. It nevercould. Death isn’t something that makes any kind of sense, no matter whose it is.
Luca falls silent again and I know I should start talking, rather than risk giving him space to come up withmorereasons why we shouldn’t go, but words just aren’t coming to my lips as easily as they usually do.
“Alright,” Luca says after a long pause.
I raise my eyes to his. “Alright?”
“We’ll go.”
“Luca!” I throw myself at him, rolling on top of him before I remember the scars and his recovery, and try to scramble back off. “Oh,shit, sorry—”
“You stay right where you are,” he tells me sternly, only tightening his grip. I grin into his face and run my fingers through his hair.
“You really mean it?”
“I really do.”
“We’ll have to get you a haircut before you go. And new clothes.Definitelynew clothes.”
“Why not shop when we’re there?” He grins back at me. “Whynotmake a vacation of it? A second honeymoon?”
