Someone passes, calls, “Evenin’, Lucy.”
I wave back, open my mouth to respond.
Then, for some reason, I freeze.
“That’s not my name.”
The muttered words slip out before I can stop them, and my heart thuds dully in my chest.
Huh. I didn’t think I’d miss hearing it. My real name. I especially didn’t think I’d miss it the way it used to sound on his tongue.
Deep. Low. Rolling.
With that curling intonation that always sends fireworks whistling through my veins.
Sicilian. Old school. Not at all boring or run-of-the-mill.
Lu-cee-aa. Lu-cee-aa.
“Lucia.”
My heart stops and the world tilts.
I’m imagining it. I have to be. After all this time, my brain has to be playing tricks on me. All because of that quote I foolishly bring to mind, sending myself down this stupid rabbit hole.
“Lu-cee-aa.”
The blood drains from my head as I twist around in the sand.
The man standing there, not six feet from me, isn’t a shadow or a memory or a cruel little sunset trick.
Oh hell no.
It’s him.
Flesh and blood and bone.
Dark. Tall. Immaculate, even in casual clothes. Or his version of casual clothes, which still manages to be GQ runway perfect.
The very air around him seems to shift, to bow in reverence, barely lifting his wavy jet-black hair.
His bronzed, tattooed, brawny arms are cocked on his hips, and his dark blue gaze pins my trembling body in place, giving zero quarter.
My lungs forget how to work and I feel my jaw sag, unable to contain my roiling emotions.
I shake my head, my sludgy brain forming the words no, no, no, when he speaks.
“Hello, beautiful,” he says softly.
The Sicilian-laced New York accent hits me like a punch as I stare at him, in shock, horror and unending dread.
“I’ve found you, my little runaway wife. At last.”
The secondI snatch air back into my woefully depleted lungs, I do the only sane thing.
I spin. Scramble to my feet.
And I run.
