I turn to face him automatically.Instinctively.Because I want him close.As much as I don’t.
He’s sitting with his back against the plush white headboard and now that my eyes have grown accustomed to the moonlight, I see his face clearly.His eyes seem to glow.And there isn’t darkness in them, but something else equally hard to look at.
“What’s it gonna take, Goldie?”he asks and leaves it at that, as if I’m supposed to know what he’s talking about.
I just look at him, still wondering why I’m not lying with my back to him and trying to get back to my dream.Is it because this is actually my dream?The one I want to live most of all.
“For things to be like they were,” he adds.“For you to stop pushing me away all the time.”
“I’d think that answer was obvious,” I say and sit beside him, leaning against the headboard.Not close enough for our sides to touch, but almost.
“You want to see your family, be with them,” he guesses correctly.But not quite.
“I want my freedom,” I say.“I don’t want to be a prisoner anymore.”
“It’s for your own protection now,” he says.“You need that more than ever.”
“Because I’m caught up in your war now?”
He nods.“You all are.Your whole family.Things are different.So different there’s no going back.”
“There’s your answer then,” I say and cross my arms over my chest.There’s a chill in the air I didn’t feel before, but it’s practically cold enough to make me shiver now.“That’s why things can’t go back to the way they were.”
The look he gives me is filled with so much sadness and longing, it enters my chest, trickling down like a slow waterfall that seems like it will never stop flowing.I was angry before, then I was confused and now I’m just sad.
Sad for the girl I was, the woman I thought I’d be with this man.Sad for the family and life I lost.Sad for the war that’s about to come.Sad for all the loss he’s suffered.And for all the loss he’s made me suffer.Sad for the cruel fate that made some things so easy for me and others so impossible.
“You have about as much freedom now as you’d have when your father married you off,” he says.“Maybe even more.At least I love you.”
Those words again.The words I so much want to repeat back to him.
“Do you love me?Or do you love the idea of me?”I ask.“A woman all your own, at your mercy, one you don’t even have to marry?”
He’s only wearing a pair of sweats, no shirt, and I glance down at the diamond ring hanging on the leather band around his neck.He grabs hold of it and yanks on the band so hard it comes loose.
“Is that what you want?A ring?”He takes the diamond ring off the leather band and offers it to me.“Will you be my wife, Gianna Codelli?”
A proposal of marriage has been my worst nightmare for years.But the proposal from a man I want to spend the rest of my life with… that’s been my biggest dream even longer.
I freeze, unable to react, every thought in my mind bumping into and clashing with every other thought, none of them coherent.
He’s seriously asking.I can see that much in his eyes.Which are quickly filling with darkness as I just sit there silently, staring at the huge diamond ring sparkling in the moonlight.
I close my hands over his, hiding the ring.
“You can’t do this,” I say.“You can’t ask me to be your wife.My curse will kill you if I say yes.”
The curse that has been the bane of my existence since the first man my father chose for me died a brutal death shortly after getting engaged to me.The same thing happened to the second and third and after that my father stopped trying to find me a husband.And I became known as Gianna the Cursed.
If I truly hated him, I’d say yes, take the ring, and just wait for my curse to kill him.Then I’d be free.Then my family would be free.But things would still not be better.
“I told you before, I don’t care about your curse,” he says.“My own will take care of me faster than yours.So take the ring if that’s what you want.You’re the only one who will ever wear it, whatever else happens.”
And there it is.Him saying exactly what I wanted to hear, needed to hear.And being honest about it.He deserves a direct answer.A truthful answer.
Yes, Matteo Rovina, I want to be your wife.
That’s what I should say.That’s the truth.I know it deep in my heart, the only place that matters.But I don’t say it.I let go of his hand, but don’t take the ring.
