“Sorry,” I say, peering up at him through my lashes as an unexpected shyness sweeps over me. I want him to finish what he was going to say, but I don’t know how to get us back to that moment.
Gio just chuckles, his eyes dancing as he smiles down at me. “No need to be. I should probably get going anyway. Thank you. For dinner. It was amazing. Truly.”
“Of course. Anytime,” I say, intense disappointment sinking into my stomach, and I force the smile to stay on my lips as I walk him to the door.
10
GIO
Lucky clover-green eyes smile at me, and my heart skips a beat as the sun shines through when her lips part to join the warm greeting.
Standing in front of a flower cart, she’s as colorful as the blossoms she was bending over just moments before.
And now she’s looking at me like I’ve just said the funniest thing she’s heard all day.
“Not a romantic, then, I would take it,” she teases, her perfectly shaped eyebrow quirking to meet the dark hairline of her chic pixie cut.
“I wouldn’t go that far… I’m just saying, if you know you’ll need flowers for your apology, you probably knew you shouldn’t have been doing what you’re apologizing for in the first place…”
Those eyes flash with silent intelligence—and what I think might just be approval.
“I’m Stephanie,” the petite pixie of a jaw-dropper says, extending her delicate fingers to me.
As I glance down to take it, I note the layer of dirt beneath her natural yet feminine nails.
“Giovanni Chiaroscuro.” The name rolls off my tongue with practiced ease, and Stephanie’s lips twitch with amusement.
“You say it like that name is supposed to mean something to me.”
But all I can think about is the electrical current that passes between our palms. Like two magnets colliding… I instantly know I’m right where I belong…
My fingers still tingle as the scene fades into oblivion, my mind rising from the fog of sleep.
I curl my hand into a fist, clinging to the sensation, and I can almost imagine her hand in mine, the dry warmth of her palm, worn soft by the dirt she constantly works in.
Stephanie filled me with a desire to live like nothing else could.
And the day she died—the day I thought she died—it nearly killed me.
I don’t want to open my eyes, to come back to the land of the living, because when I remember the day I first met Stephanie, for the briefest of moments, all the aching sadness, all the agonizing loss that plagues my every breath evaporates.
It’s a moment that should make me happy.
But the crushing reality that follows never ceases to suffocate me.
Only today, it’s different.
Because it only takes an instant to recall that Stephanie’s alive—and not just that.
She’s truly back in my life.
Images of her smile across the dinner table last night come flooding back to me.
The sound of her laughter.
Her full hip brushing against my shoulder.
The whisper of her fingers as they met mine beneath the lip of the sauce pan.
