His mother had not raised him to think highly of the institution of marriage.
He had taken her around the island over these days that bled one into the next. They had explored the Roman ruins. They had driven through the rural splendor of Anacapri. They had climbed in the hills, lain out on the beaches, and found ways to have sex in a variety of public places like they were a pair of teenagers.
Though he couldn’t recall having quite as much fun when he’d actually been one.
Normally, if someone accused him of something likebeing pensive, he would drawl something impertinent, change the subject, and have them wondering why they’d imagine him capable of such a thing.
But this was Ivy. “I don’t feel pensive,” he said. “Or not unduly so.”
She leaned closer and propped her chin on her hand.
“Do you think it’s Capri that has changed us?” she asked, with that directness and simplicity that killed him every time. “Or do you think we’re not changed and this is simply a fun holiday, and when we go back we will simply…act as if this never happened?”
He found that his ribs hurt and he could not account for it. “I think that learning how to live in the moment, since it’s the only thing we really have, is always wise,” he told her.
Yet Ivy, rather than taking his sage counsel, rolled her eyes. “I love when you say things like that.” Though her tone suggested that she did not, in fact, love it. “Because, of course, you like to make it seem as if you’ve lived only in the moment your whole life. But I know better.”
“Ask anyone,” he dared her, but not in his usual joking, careless tone. There was something else inside him tonight. It felt almost like a kind of grief. “I am reckless, untrustworthy, undependable, and impossible to pin down. I will run through your hands like water and leave no trace behind.”
She shrugged. “That’s not my experience.”
He blinked, not sure if he was taken aback by what she’d said or that brisk tone she’d used. As if it was so obvious that she wasn’t sure why she was even saying it out loud.
“I mean it,” she said when all he could manage to do was stare at her. “You tried, back at the castle. You did your best, but that version of you that everyone seems to know is not at all believable once a person spends time with you.” She tilted her head slightly to one side then and he had the strangest urge to pull his hand away from hers. That he didn’t felt heroic. “But it seems as ifyoubelieve it.”
And there were so many things he couldn’t tell her. Secrets he had agreed to keep—secrets that had never been any hardship to keep. This had all been too long coming. It had taken years.
He wanted to tell her, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her—it was the simple truth that he didn’t trust himself.
Giaco had kept his secret for so long that it had become a kind of superstition. He worried that if he shared it with anyone, for any reason, that would make certain that it all fell apart. That he would fail when he was so close to the end.
He didn’t dare risk it.
Hecouldn’trisk it.
But he also couldn’t play his usual role with her any longer. Not after the weeks they’d spent on this island, wrapped up in each other. Not only would she not believe it, but for the first time in as long as he could recall, hecouldn’t. He didn’t have it in him. Not now. Not when they’d learned so many truths about each other while they’d been here.
Everything on the island of Capri was bright. The sun, the sea. The colors of the buildings, the smiles of all the people.
The two of them were, too.
Sometimes he was certain that Ivy knew as well as he did that they could only stay safe if they kept away from the shadows.
“I know exactly who I am,” he told her, and that was true. He played with her hand in his, moving her rings on her finger. “You asked me for no masks and I’m not wearing one. Maybe I am pensive, little saint. Maybe this is who I am when no one’s looking.”
“I’m looking,” she whispered.
“But you are like the moon over the sea,” he told her, not sure where the words were coming from—only that they needed to be said. That hehadto say them, like they were coming from a part of him Giaco barely knew. “Not a spotlight or flashbulb. And don’t you know? Everyone looks better in the moonlight.”
She shook her head at him, and then leaned across the table to kiss him. It was sweet. It was perfect. It was only a kiss, and they were in public, so there could be no deepening it.
Not that the public part mattered as much as thekindof public this was. A restaurant was not a hiking trail. It was not a grotto off the beaten path where it was worth the risk.
That was not the sort of press Giaco wished to make.
So she kissed him, and they held hands over the table, and it was so simple. It was soeasyto be here, sipping Capri spritzes beneath the stars while gentle music played. They ate food fresh from the sea and simple, perfect Caprese salads and talked of absolutely nothing at all—yet hung on each other’s words.
And that was when Giaco knew.
