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I narrowed my eyes. “Did you have a disaster management plan for our honeymoon? Answer me honestly.”

“I’m always honest with you,cara. And there’s nothing wrong with being prepared. But I assure you, none of my plans remotely involved what actually happened to us. So, the jury is out on whether those kinds of plans remain useful or not.”

I sighed and sank deeper into the hot water, so it came up to my chin. The bubbles massaged my upper back and shoulders. It felt heavenly. “What doyouthink the marriage code should contain, Slash?”

He picked up his wineglass from the edge of the tub, swirled it, then took a sip. “Honestly, I’m not sure what rules, particular methods of communications, or long-term plans anyone needs to have for a successful marriage, let alone us. I’m figuring it out along with you. However, I do have an interesting story. During my very first trip to the United States, I heard a country song on the radio that claimed to know the secret to a good marriage. The lyrics went something like this, ‘A good woman stands by her man’s side during bad times, and that leads to lasting love.’ At the time, I wondered if Americans really believed that was necessary for a lasting relationship. Can you enlighten me?”

I saw the twitch of his lips and knew he was teasing me. Still, I played along. “Oh, I’m happy to enlighten you, Slash. First, it’s clear a man wrote those lyrics because a woman would have written, ‘A good woman stands by her man’s side during bad times to tell him none of it would have happened if he’d just listened to her.’ Andthat’swhat leads to lasting love. It’s the I Told You So rule. That makes a lot more sense.”

Slash laughed so hard he nearly choked on his wine. “Touché. I guess we’ll have to research this marriage code together to make sure we get the programming just right. Luckily, we’re both excellent programmers, so I anticipate a first-rate platform and one that is uniquely ours.”

I smiled. “I like that plan, and I also anticipate a superior outcome. But we’re not at the point yet to initiate subroutines, as we can’t program those until we have the overarching structure firmly laid out.”

“Fair enough,” he agreed. “We have time after all. A lifetime.”

We lapsed into comfortable silence before Slash spoke again. “Do you remember the Italian phrase‘Non tutte le ciambelle riescono col buco?’Nonna said it at our wedding.”

A smile tugged at my lips at the memory. “Oh, I remember. It means not all doughnuts have a hole. I had no idea what that meant until you explained that in Italy, it means that sometimes things don’t turn out the way we plan them, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that’s a bad thing. Is that right?”

“That’s right,” he confirmed. “Sometimes it could be destiny correcting its course. Other times, it’s fate. In our case, I think fate was on our side for our honeymoon. It favored us.”

“It did more than that—itsavedus,” I corrected.

“Which is an odd thing to say when we just barely survived a coup and an encounter with one of our worst nemeses,” he pointed out.

“It certainly is. But it is what it is.”

I scooted closer to him in the tub, still holding my glass. He put his arm around me as we sat in quiet contemplation, sipping wine and watching the sky and the ocean.

My phone suddenly dinged from the picnic table. “You got a text,” Slash said.

“Who’d be sending me a text now?” I wondered aloud.

I climbed out of the tub, grabbed a beach towel, and wrapped it around my waist. I dried my hands before I picked up my phone, which sat next to my prized bottle of Cook Islands tamanu skin oil, courtesy of Sefina.

I swiped open my phone. “It’s from Basia.” My eyes scanned the message before I gasped.

“What’s wrong?” Slash asked in alarm, standing up in the hot tub. “What happened?”

“There’s been an earthquake. A devastating, 8.1-magnitude earthquake. It hit southern Chile and Argentina about an hour ago. The deaths are likely in the thousands. There are currently two million without power in Patagonia, and all major routes in and out are closed. It’s a catastrophe. I…I told Basia we’d considered Patagonia for our honeymoon.”

We stared at each other in stunned silence, absorbing the enormity of the information.

“We chose the Cook Islands for our honeymoon,” I finally said in a hushed voice. “We could have chosen Patagonia. That was my idea. We could have died in that earthquake, Slash.”

He shook his head, his expression somber. “No. We didn’t choose the Cook Islands. Remember? We left it up to numbers, to chance, to…fate.”

He climbed out of the hot tub, wrapped a towel around his waist, and came to stand beside me, gazing out at the ocean.

“Cosa ci riserva il destino?”he murmured.

“What does that mean?” I asked, still stricken.

“I asked, ‘What does fate have in store for us?’” His hand touched the cross on his bare chest. “Sometimes I wonder.”

I slipped my hand into his. “Whatever comes next, we’ll handle it together as husband and wife. I’m just glad I’m with you, Slash.”

“I feel the same way,cara. You are my soulmate.”

Later that evening, we sat on the veranda again, letting the warm breeze nourish us and carry the worries of the world away, at least for a time. Hand in hand, we watched the sky turn a soft pink, yellow, and orange before melting into a picturesque sunset.

We were smart, but there were a lot of things in life we didn’t know or understand. We weren’t even sure how to properly proceed as man and wife.

But we knew this time, for once in our lives, fate had led us to exactly where we needed to be.

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