Page 129

Mariano

S econds.

It only took me seconds to get to my wife and pull her from the depths of the water. It swirled and churned with the eddies of the wind.

I had been right behind her when she stumbled over the rock that sent her over the side of the fucking hill.

I slid down the road that led me to the bottom, expecting to rush up to her when the rock stopped her downward trek.

I hadn’t fucking anticipated the rock dislodging and for her to end up in the tributary, sucked under by the icy-cold mouth of its depths.

The events that followed were almost a blur, except when the emergency team took her from me. In that second, I became a living, breathing memory. I could not escape those moments. I felt like I was trapped inside of a fucking bottle with them, and I couldn’t find a way out.

My wife.

They took her from me.

My grandfather arriving, shooting anyone in his path that attempted to stop me from getting my heart to safety.

My wife.

My healing.

She wasn’t fucking responsive.

The blood.

Her head.

Mine.

Swirling.

Intertwining.

More blood than I had ever seen, soaking her nightgown, and not only from her head.

The rock she had rammed into had impaled her stomach, and no matter how big or small, it was a fucking rock, the equivalent of a solid fist.

My wife.

They attempted to rip her out of my arms.

It wasn’t until my great-uncle ordered me to release her so that she… shall be saved …that I relented. I gave over my heart to people who were skilled in healing.

Healing.

She was my saving grace. My miracle in the last second.

My healing.

I would be sick, so sick without her if—I stopped the fucking thought cold, standing, pacing the length of the hospital room.

My wife.

My wife wasn’t going anywhere without me.

She knew this.

I fucking knew this.

The door opened and my brother, Matteo, walked in. I caught a glance behind him before the door shut. Angelo was standing with his hand on his wife’s neck. She was crying.

Matteo’s eyes took me in, halting on the rings resting on the tip of my little finger.

My wife.

They had given me her rings to keep safe.

To fucking keep safe.

When my older brother’s stare came back to my eyes, he gave me one slow nod.

He knew better than to touch me. He fucking knew better than to be this close to me.

I was in a room by myself for a reason. I was a breath away from burning the fucking world down.

I’d burn it down until she opened her eyes and looked at me.

Told me how ridiculous I was being. She was fine.

She was next to me. She’d always be next to me.

Matteo cleared his throat.

“I don’t know what you’re about to fucking say,” I said, my voice sounding as if it belonged to someone else. I didn’t even finish. I handed him a paper, signed in both of our blood.

Mine.

Hers.

Mixed on my hands.

I’d already had a letter done. In case something happened to me.

This one.

This one was an addition to that one. One I never assumed I’d have to write.

My brother held the stained paper in his hand. His dark eyes, so much like our father’s, scanned the words.

If she dies, I die.

End of story.

In the letter, I gave instructions on where to take us so we’d always be together. The positions to put us in, so my body would always shield hers. What to write on the gravestone.

Here rests a man who will forever be next to his woman. From my rib to hers, we were created to be one—our souls shall return as one.

Forever in love.

My wife is my eternity—to live for, to die for.

Mariano and Sistine Fausti.

My brother cleared his throat again. “No news,” he said, and it was as if he wanted to take my shoulder and squeeze, but he knew better. The only touch I could stand was my wife’s.

If it wasn’t hers, it wasn’t anyone’s.

Nothing mattered unless she was here with me.

“Great-uncle Tito wants a word,” Matteo continued in Italian.

Prozio Tito came in right behind Matteo, as if he didn’t care if I was about to go on a murderous spree or not, even with his hunched stance and paper-thin skin. He held his eyes up to mine as he slow-shuffled toward me.

A medical fucking somebody passed behind him, and he slowly passed, as if he was looking for someone. My heart simultaneously raced and then stopped short, just as my body did whenever Guerriero tried to buck me over the cliff.

If this was the moment I was told my wife had left me, my heart would be the thing going over that cliff, and I was going over after it.

“Sit. Down.”

My great-uncle’s voice was commanding. My eyes snapped to his.

He knew. I was about to go after that worker.

“I said, sit down , Mariano.”

My great-uncle pointed. He wanted to make sure that, if I couldn’t hear him over the roaring of my heart, I could see him.

I wasn’t sure what the fuck I was seeing, but the frail old man had my attention.

My body automatically seemed to take to the chair.

I sat, and I wasn’t even sure how I got there.

All I knew was my heart felt too fucking far from my chest, and my body felt as if it was revolting, demanding to be reunited with… life.

My great-uncle sat next to me. I blinked. It was only he and I in the room.

He sighed, shaking his head. “You wife, our lovely Sistine, is in stable condition. However, she is on life support. She lost too much blood, nephew. The placenta severed, perhaps when Sistine hit the rock. She sustained quite a bit of trauma. The list is extensive, including broken and bruised ribs. However, the blood loss is the most concerning issue.”

He made a pained sound, an ache that couldn’t be healed. Or was that me?

“I gave our first Matteo a name. When you have another child, you will honor the first Leopoldo Piero Fausti, even if I am not here to meet him. You will know that I am with him, my healing spirit always close to him.”

“A son.” My voice almost…floated.

I was a fucking ghost. Lost. Lost walking this earth. I wasn’t inside of myself. I was outside of it, looking at my life as if I had separated from it.

“Leopoldo Piero Fausti.” I repeated the name, a tightness in my throat that felt like barbed wire when his name came from my mouth. My wife had physically bled out for him, and I was bleeding on the inside, where no doctor could heal me—I’d always be shredded.

My wife.

My wife was the only soul who could make the mortal wound better.

Prozio Tito nodded. “Leopoldo after the church you and your wife were married in. The name means ‘brave,’ and this is what you and your wife will need to continue forward after this—bravery.”

“Continue forward.” I looked him in the eye.

He touched his heart. “I cannot predict what God has in store. However…” he lifted his hands “…I still feel a touch of healing in these hands.”

“Doctor.” I was able to mutter that one word. He was one of the best, and after Dr. Musa…I didn’t know what our family would do.

He put his hands together. “No, nephew,” he answered me in Italian. “Doctor or no, these hands know how to heal, not because of the title, but because my mamma taught me how to pray, ah?”

A doctor knocked lightly before she walked in. She was wary of me and took a step back when she started naming all the things my wife was being treated for.

“She’s breathing,” I said, having already taken note of every ailment in my soul. I’d count her bruises when my hand was in hers, and for each one, I’d have my brother cause two on my skin when she was home.

Home.

She is my home.

The doctor lifted her hands. “The machine…”

“Nephew!” My uncle sounded as if he was struggling to get to his feet. Marciano appeared and hustled past me to get to him.

The doctor ran out of the room. I was going after her—woman or not if she gave me irrevocable news. My grandfather appeared at the door. He nodded toward the area the doctor had run to.

“Go,” he said. “Be with your wife.”

It wasn’t until I was in the room with her, monitors beeping all around me, that I felt like my knees were not going to hold me. I collapsed in the chair next to her, taking her hand, refusing to let go.

Her breath was mine.

And if hers refused to come on its own…

My brother had the letter.

All was in order.

I wasn’t sure how long I was in the seat beside her bed, but I based the element of time by the bruises on her skin, twenty-five, and how they all started to fade into gold patches.

There was also a tide rising inside of me.

It was slowly drowning me, and the longer my wife refused to look at me, the tension grew.

My heart thudded.

My lungs burned, but it was starting to settle into acceptance.

The reason I kept holding on…

“Come on, baby,” I spoke to the slow thumping pulse in her wrist. “Open your eyes. Look at me.”

I called her “baby” on purpose. Anything to make her mad and make her open her eyes, correcting me.

That wasn’t the name I’d given her. She would hold her hand up like she was going to slap me if I kept doing it.

I lifted her arm, and if I hadn’t been holding it, it would have fell.

I fucking forced the realization of what it meant down, refusing my anger the right to take me from her—I could feel it building inside of me, the growling tide being held back by the shore.

The shore.

I brought up our time in Fiji, whispering about the things we’d done, what we were going to do next time. She had wanted to ride horses on the beach. Climb the mountains in a white Jeep with black rims. Zip line. Experience the thermal mud baths. Jump from the cave into the pool the waterfall fed.

All the things we couldn’t do the first time because of our?—

Leopoldo.