Those previous tests were taken in December last year. The recent ones, only weeks before I ever arrived in Italy.
It takes a second to fully process, and when I do, something melts inside me. It says everything about the depth of his care and his intentions, that he was already preparing for me long before I set foot here.
I set the phone down on the counter and turn in his arms. Rising on my toes, I slide my fingers into his hair and draw his mouth down to mine. We kiss until we’re both breathless.
When we pull apart, he rests his forehead on mine.
“I can show you mine too.”
He gives a small shake of his head, but I ignore the refusal. I slip my phone out of my back pocket and open my email. When I find the message I’m looking for, I turn the screen toward him.
“I took these tests almost a year ago,” I tell him. “But I haven’t been with anyone else since. No one.”
His hands tighten at my waist. I look up to find the line of his jaw hardened.
As if he hears the question I don’t ask, he says, his voice rough. “I don’t like thinking of you with anyone else.”
His confession mirrors exactly what I felt about him less than an hour ago, that same biting, irrational jealousy that caught me completely off guard.
With my heart kicking in my chest, I slide my hands up his arms, squeezing his biceps, and kiss him, wanting to erase whatever image seems to torment him.
When we pull apart again, his lips brush the curve beneath my ear before he draws back to meet my gaze.
“I know you were supposed to fly home from Rome. But I was thinking... why don’t we make Rome part of the trip before Milan? From there, I’ll take you to the Amalfi Coast. Then we’ll come back here. I want you to leave from Pisa.”
Happier than I can put into words, I smile at him.
“Perfect,” I whisper. “It’s the perfect plan.”
I turn my back to the sea, watching him with a grin as he shrugs out of his shirt and lets it fall onto the lounge chair.
“I think you’re just stalling so you don’t have to get into the freezing water,” I say, teasing.
Alexander laughs. “You’re the one who always tests the temperature with a toe first, and somehowI’mthe one scared of cold water?”
When he starts walking toward me with that look—the one that makes my pulse kick and every instinct in me scream run—I retreat toward the sand.
But Alexander is faster. In the next second, I’m off my feet, being carried in his arms like I weigh nothing at all.
“Alexander, put me down!” I laugh, kicking uselessly as he heads straight to the water.
“Your wish is my command,” he says, just as his feet meet the surf and he takes me with him.
When we resurface, I cling to his shoulders, laughing, half in protest. “Oh my God, you’re the worst.”
“No, I’m not,” he says, trying to hide his grin.
I slip my arms around his neck and float against him.
“No,” I agree, smiling up at him. “You’re not.”
The past few days have felt... more than perfect. We spent two days in Rome, where I discovered not only the postcards that have always lived inside my dreams—the Colosseum as magnificent as ever in the late afternoon sun, the bustling crowds swirling around the Trevi Fountain—but also a lightness I thought I had misplaced somewhere along the way.
Alexander insisted I try a pastry everyonehasto try while in Rome. A maritozzo. He laughed under his breath when I smeared a dollop of fresh cream at the corner of my mouth, before brushing it away with a chaste kiss that made my knees waver in the middle of a crowded street.
Rome was exactly as I had always imagined.
In Milan, we stayed only a single day, most of it spent inside Santoro Marmo’s headquarters. A day I’ll never forget.
