“I told Marco this morning that we will be staying in separate rooms as long as you want.Many might find that odd, but I won’t make you sleep with me.One day, I hope your feelings for me will match, but just remember, I’m devoted to you and only you.And I will worship you if given the chance.”
Mia stepped closer to the desk.Not much.An inch, maybe two.Enough to tell me she risked my gravity field and see if it crushed her.
“What did Lily do,” she asked, “that made you sure she would hurt me and my family?”
I wanted to teach myself the discipline of distance where Mia was concerned.Discipline had been a religion I practiced.I failed it that night.
“She told a man that you were tired of being a Moretti and wanted a normal life.That you wanted to move away.”
Mia let out a breath that trembled at the end of it.“She said that?”
“Yes, to a man who would have put you in a car that night and called your father to sell your return.She was a bomb with a lit fuse, just waiting to go off.”
Mia closed her eyes for a moment—one long blink, the kind a person used to hold tears back by force.When she opened them, there was grief in them.
“You took her from me,” she said.“And I didn’t even know it was you.”
I didn’t look away.“Yes.”
“Do you know what it’s like,” she asked, voice steady and not at all, “to lose the only person who knew me before I became a commodity?Another Moretti daughter opened up to someday be married off only to help form alliances?”
“No.I could never understand that view.My love, I can’t give you Lily back.But if anyone else tried to hurt you, I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
Mia studied me as if the answer were written in a place I had not thought to hide.“What do you want from me right now?”
“I want you not to run.I want you to tell me the rules.And I want you to hold me accountable to the man I swore I would be when I said I do.”
She took a slow step to the side and ran her fingers along the edge of the desk.The touch raised gooseflesh under my shirt, which I resented and cherished in equal measure.
“I don’t know how to be your wife.We barely know anything about each other.”
“Be yourself.That’s who I fell for.Attitude and all.”I laughed.“And you might not know much about me, but my love, my knowledge of you is a laundry list.You have to remember, you have been my obsession for over five years.”
Something in her mouth softened—an unplanned line of almost-smile that vanished as quickly as it came.“You think you can be different.”
“I am learning how to be good.For you.”
We stared at each other across everything we had broken and built.
“Tell me about last night,” she said suddenly, and the ground moved under both our feet.“Not the ceremony.Not the announcement.You.What you thought when it was just us.”
The answer arrived in the back of my mouth like I had been saving it there.“I thought of my father’s hand on a leash,” I said, “and how short he kept it.I thought of how ownership looks like safety from the outside.I thought of the wordmine.I told myself I was nothing like him.And then you said my name, and I understood why he failed.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to own you because I did not trust the world not to take you from me.I kissed you and the bridge between who I had been and who I swore I’d be was finally under my feet.”
We let that live between us until it had a shape.
“You think the priest can absolve you?”she asked, a sideways arrow, not unkind.
“I don’t ask him to,” I said.“I ask him to look at me the way God might, if God believed men like me could change.”
“And do you?”she asked.
“I believe.”
A knock sounded—two soft taps.“What?”
