I let that sit. Don't push about Matt.
Maybe I should.
Later,in the dark, I stare at the ceiling and think about Matt's recovery.
How fast it's been. His bruises cleared before mine. His face is almost back to normal, while I'm still discovering new colors on my body every morning like a mood ring I didn't ask for. Yesterday my left hip was chartreuse. Today it's somewhere between plum and regret.
Biology, probably. He's bigger. Stronger. Men heal faster, isn't that a thing? Or some people are just built to bounce back, and I'm not one of them. That's fine. I've never been the bounce-back type. I'm more the drag-yourself-forward-on-your-elbows type, which is less inspirational-poster material but gets the job done.
Elio breathes beside me. Steady and deep.
I turn toward him. Press my mouth to his.
Not because I have to. Because I want to. Because this man let people I care about stay without conditions, and I have never, not once in twenty-eight years, had a person in my life who gave without keeping score. Danny loves me, but there's always an angle. Sean loves me, but there's always a lecture. Ma loves me, but there's always a cost, calculated in guilt and rosary beads andwhy can't you just be normal, Violet.And Elio—Elio gave without being asked, without conditions, without tallying it up for later, and that deserves more than words.
So I kiss him. And I mean it with my whole body.
My mouth opens against his, tongue finding his bottom lip, hands sliding up into his hair. My fingers twist into it, pulling him closer until there's no space between us, until I can feel the hard planes of his chest against mine and the heat of his skin through the thin cotton of his shirt. He makes a sound low in his throat, hungry and raw, as his hand goes to the back of my neck, fingers spanning the column of my throat as if they were made to fit there. His mouth takes over. Warm. Sure. Devastating in that way that makes me forget I'm a person with bones, because every single one of them has turned to liquid.
His other hand finds my waist, pulling me into him, and the kiss deepens into something that tastes like espresso and smoke and recklessness that comes from choosing a dangerous man and meaning it. My teeth catch his lower lip. He exhales hard through his nose. Pulls me tighter.
I could live in this. Build a whole new architecture out of the way Elio Marchetti kisses me when he stops thinking.
But when I pull back, his eyes aren't on me.
They're on the open door. The corridor beyond it. The one that leads to the guest wing. The one Matt walked down earlier today.
His jaw is set. Not angry. Not jealous.Focused.
I don't ask what he's thinking. I settle against his chest instead and listen to his heartbeat.
15
VIOLET
My ribs are no longer trying to kill me with every breath I take, and finally keeping food down more often than not, which is a lower bar than I'd like to celebrate, but I'm celebrating it anyway.
Full parade. Confetti. Streamers. One of those giant inflatable tube men flailing outside a car dealership.
The works.
My body is filling out again, and my face is no longer that gorgeous shade of hospital-gray. I even have a bit of a tan since I spend as much time as possible outside.
And with the amount of milage I accumulate, you'd think I'd have gone to the maze by now. It's been on my radar since the first time Elio mentioned it. I've studied the sprawl of box hedges from his window for hours. Load paths, sight lines, the geometry of intention. Whoever designed it understood negative space. Understood that the absence of direction is its own kind of beauty. I've sketched it twice from above, filling in the paths I could see with pencil lines and leaving the hidden ones blank.
But I've never gone in.
Tonight this changes.
The hedges are eight feet tall, dense enough that moonlight barely filters through the upper branches. The smell of boxwood and evening jasmine fills the Sicilian air, layered over something earthier underneath. Damp soil. Old stone. Green things growing in the dark. The gravel crunches under my feet, and the sound bounces off the hedge walls. For the first time in weeks, the wordalonedoesn't make me flinch.
I take a turn. Then another.
Let the maze swallow me.
I'm about three turns deep when the gravel shifts behind me.
My heartbeat picks up when I hear footsteps behind me. They're unhurried, the sort of cadence that says, I don't have to run to catch you. I know that walk, heard it outside my door many times before.
