Page 45 of A Winter Wedding Adventure (Adventure Weddings #2)

Kira was jittery, as though she’d been one of the beginners making her way up the wall for the first time.

After struggling through the pep talk which closed the class, without remembering anything she said, there was nothing left to protect her from whatever Mattia would throw at her next.

Two months ago, if an ex had walked into the climbing gym and said they wanted to talk to her, she would have run the other way screaming, but she’d spent weeks thinking about him, agonising over all the things that had made their time together different from anything she’d previously experienced, even with Christian, before she’d learned to shut people out.

But Mattia, with his angel bone structure and compelling voice, had refused to be shut out.

Her chest was tight, her throat swollen up and whatever he wanted to say, she wasn’t ready, but that’s what being brave was for.

He’d just climbed a wall in her gym, looking rather fine as he did so.

She would try to bear her nerves, her embarrassment, her fear – and the giddy excitement that was threatening to choke her.

As the others in the class headed for the changing rooms, sprightly with adrenaline, Mattia swung in her direction with a purposeful stride until the toes of his rubber climbing shoes were half a foot from hers.

She opened her mouth to say something – probably to babble about the class and mock him gently, so he remembered she was prickly and grumpy and not worth his time – but he lifted a hand to her face, brushing her hair back from her forehead, his fingers stretching along her jaw and his thumb pressing gently on her lips.

Her eyes slammed shut and she swayed on her feet. The touch was her kryptonite – no, her drug. She needed it with a physical longing that scared her. How mortifying to be brought low by the human instinct for closeness. She couldn’t pretend any more that she didn’t need it.

She’d been icy towards others for the past twelve years – for longer, if she were honest – too scared they wouldn’t accept her. But Mattia was the spring sunshine and he’d started a thaw she didn’t know how to reverse.

‘I need to tell you something,’ he began, drawing in a few heaving breaths. ‘You don’t have to say anything in reply. I know this is hard and I know you don’t want to hurt me.’

The mushy snow in her chest puddled into liquid. She was hard and blunt and pushed people away, but he was right . Hurting him would kill her.

‘You didn’t want me to say anything in Austria and I respected that, but you don’t know what I wanted to say that morning. You can’t know, so I have to tell you.’

She’d known she couldn’t bear to hear him brush her off. The fact that he’d come all the way to Weymouth suggested this was not a brushing off, but Kira’s rational brain seemed to be suffering from hypoxia, given the amount of air she needed just to keep her heart beating.

‘I’ll start with the little things and you can just say “okay” or “no” if I’m wrong. I’m prepared for any answer – mostly.’ His grimace was eloquent as he rubbed his forehead, drawing Kira’s attention to the light scar there.

‘Okay,’ she said, and his eyes snapped to hers in surprise. ‘You told me to say “okay”.’

‘Giusto, I did. Good. Good?’

She nodded, her own nerves settling a little as she noticed his. It was just Mattia – sincere, funny, self-deprecating Mattia. She could do this.

He cleared his throat. ‘I don’t want to never see you again,’ he blurted out, glancing up with a pained look.

‘Okay,’ she replied immediately.

His face brightened, but he kept his gaze on his feet, concentrating hard. ‘I do want to take your class. I don’t think I’ll ever be good enough to climb with you on a route you’d enjoy too. But I want to know why you love it. I came here today to see you and also to try to understand you.’

‘Okay,’ she said again, a little wobbly this time as his earnestness touched her.

‘Because I know our lives don’t overlap much. I only bring you complications.’

She shook her head. ‘No.’ He’d brought her so much more than that and even the problems had proven to be solutions she hadn’t known she’d needed.

When she opened her mouth to say more, he held up his hand again.

‘I’ll listen to anything you want to say to me soon, but I need you to listen first.’ He paused, gathering himself.

‘I thought I was learning how to be… intimate with someone without getting my feelings involved. We hadn’t known each other long and I’d never been with anyone like you before. ’

That was starting to sound like the words she didn’t want to hear.

He must have noticed her trying not to flinch, because he reached for her hand – her rough, callused hand with bitten nails, held in his smooth, manicured one.

But she’d felt that hand all over her body and he’d reached for her now.

It might not make sense, but it had all been real.

‘But the truth is, my feelings were already involved. What I told you that day in the minivan is still true: I can’t do casual. If I’d truly only felt friendship for you…’ He flinched at the thought. ‘I don’t think I can get close to someone without those feelings – if it’s not right.’

His words struck Kira square in the chest and she couldn’t hide any more. Their relationship had never been just physical. She’d stumbled into something she hadn’t been prepared for and now she feared she was stuck – open, vulnerable.

‘I know we agreed to keep things casual between us and I’ll never blame you if you can separate the two.

It’s my fault for not realising I wasn’t keeping my side of the bargain, but you meant something to me from the moment you turned off the fridge, despite everything you thought of me at the time. ’

The words were coming more easily now, visible in the way his shoulders rose and fell. The hand that wasn’t holding hers came up to gesture for emphasis and here was onstage Mattia, pouring out his emotions.

‘Those few days together completely changed my perspective, made me realise how much I’d been holding myself back.

I was stuck with a single vision of myself.

Then you were there, throwing the truth in my face, but making it all okay.

No matter what problems I fixated on, you pushed me to manage them. You believed I could.’

‘Of course you can,’ Kira said fiercely, tears threatening in earnest now.

He smiled then. Raising his spare hand to her face, he splayed his fingers over her cheek and into her hair with more of that magic. ‘You have no idea how beautiful you are when you growl like that.’

‘I’m not beautiful ,’ she contradicted automatically. ‘And I’m not growling.’ There was less conviction in her voice for the second sentence.

‘I felt some amazing things in Austria – all of them while I was looking at your face.’

‘You don’t have to say I’m beautiful just because we had great sex,’ she muttered.

He straightened. ‘You’re only supposed to say “okay” and “no”, remember? I’m not finished yet.’

‘I can’t imagine how much more you’d have to?—’

‘You’re beautiful because I know you, Kira. It hasn’t been a long time, but I know you better than almost anyone else does.’

It was a presumptive statement, but she couldn’t contradict him.

She wanted him to know her. Maybe he was afraid of fire and fridges, had never seen snow before this year and lost his shit in a gondola, but she couldn’t doubt what he was saying right now when the truth was evident in his whole body.

‘I don’t want to lose what we had. It’s too important to me. I want to build on it. If you mean this much to me after a single week, I can’t wait to find out how I will feel about you in a year. It wasn’t a casual fling – it was a miracle. At least that’s what it was to me.’

A tear tumbled down her cheek. She was used to hoarding doubts, protecting herself with scepticism and shunning hope. But Mattia was standing in front of her, a mirror of her own feelings, and she couldn’t doubt any more.

This was something, between them. This might be it . She should have been horrified at the thought, but she wasn’t.

Her feelings weren’t a mistake – they were exactly right .

She couldn’t imagine feeling more for him than she did then, but his words curled around her heart, making her want it too: being together. One day, she’d tell him she loved him. The conviction shook her.

‘There’s one more thing,’ he said. ‘I’m moving to London.’

Her jaw dropped. ‘Okaaaaay.’

‘I haven’t quite got a job yet, but I’ve had good feedback from two of the auditions – the third one was a fire from the depths of the inferno, so please remember it’s a miracle that I’m here and still halfway hoping you’ll want to see me.’

‘Okay,’ she responded with a faint smile.

‘My manager thinks London is a good base for building my career.’ He paused and she gave him an encouraging nod.

London was several hours away, but it was so much closer than if they were several countries apart and she’d take it.

‘That’s not really the thing that appeals to me about London.

I thought, if I were there, I could come and see you? ’

‘Okay,’ she said with an easy nod.

A smile twitched on his lips. ‘Would you… I’d like to go out for dinner – with you.’

‘Okay.’

‘Lots of times.’

‘Can I say something other than “okay” now?’

‘Only if it’s “yes, please”.’

She was the one to come closer this time. ‘Yes, please,’ she said softly.

He slipped his other hand into hers and tangled their fingers. ‘Maybe we could keep doing the…’

‘Yes, please,’ Kira said with a grin.

‘Can I call you my girlfriend?’ The eager spark in his eyes made her laugh.

‘Okay,’ she agreed. ‘Only if I can call you my opera boy.’

‘You do anyway,’ he said with a doubtful look. ‘But I like the sound of your opera boy.’

She sneaked her arms around his waist and held on, enjoying the moment his hand ventured into her hair.

‘This is not how I pictured it,’ he said absently.

‘It’s not?’

‘Honestly, I thought you’d be harder to convince, that I’d have to be your friend for a few years before you’d see how good we are together.’

‘With benefits, I assume.’

‘Allora, I did hope.’ His sheepish shrug made her smile and press a kiss to the middle of his chest. ‘But I would have stayed without. I might have been a little miserable, but… I’ve never felt this way about someone before.’

‘Me neither,’ she mumbled into his shirt.

He stilled, as though the truth of returned feelings was just as astounding to him as it had been to her, and Kira realised it was her turn to say the difficult stuff.

‘I don’t think it was ever casual for me either, Mattia,’ she admitted.

He drew back to study her. ‘But you said?—’

‘So did you,’ she reminded him, ‘to Alessandra, the day before the wedding, and it bugged me so much.’

‘Ahi, no! I was lying shamelessly. I knew I was lying too. I didn’t think I could lie, but… I’d promised you.’

‘You hadn’t promised,’ she assured him. ‘It was my fault for resisting what my heart was trying to tell me. I missed you, these past weeks. It was terrible.’ She pressed her cheek to his chest.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said into her hair, wrapping his arms more tightly around her. ‘I’m sorry it took me so long to be brave.’

‘You’re here now, even though I did everything I could to push you away. You’re stronger than you think.’ She gave him a shove for emphasis.

He just nodded in reply. ‘When you say it, I believe it. I want to be strong with you.’

Winding her arms around his neck, she peered up at him. ‘Just don’t lose your wonderful ability to feel things deeply. You changed my perspective too. You made me realise I can acknowledge my emotions and survive it,’ she admitted with a wry smile.

‘I am very glad we can both survive deep feelings,’ he said solemnly. ‘And declarations of them. How about I protect you from your deep, scary feelings and you can protect me from all the fires and fridges and ticking clocks we encounter?’

‘It’s a deal.’

‘God, the rest of us almost didn’t survive!’

Kira wrenched her head up at the sound of Reshma’s voice. She was tapping her foot by Toni’s desk, a hand on her hip. Toni sat watching them with a grin, miming popcorn.

‘Usually you just say, “Do you want to go out with me,” and the other one says, “Yes!”’ Reshma continued. ‘You two are hopeless.’

‘Is that what you said to Willard?’ Kira shot back, making Reshma colour. ‘I didn’t think so,’ she mumbled. ‘You might want to close your innocent eyes. I’m about to kiss him.’

‘Put the poor boy out of his misery!’ Toni called out cheerfully.

Mattia grinned down at her, clutching her tightly around the waist. ‘Yes, put the poor boy out of his misery. I’ve waited five weeks for this.’

Lifting her chin, she went up on her toes until her lips were a breath from his. ‘I think I’ve been waiting my whole life.’