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“And fucking meaner,” Marciano added, touching the back of his head where his brother had whacked him.

I had a pang of sympathy for Marciano. I knew how this felt—except it was Mariano’s flesh pipe that had gotten me in the head.

Another bubble of laughter escaped my mouth, and I covered it again. I probably looked so devious, an evil mastermind, the way my hand was set and the look on my face. Bwa hahaha , I am going to laugh at everyone until my wicked spells have been cast , bwa hahaha .

Mariano narrowed his eyes at his brother before he turned back to me. “You’re safe with me.”

His words seemed to sober me up. I dropped my hand and my eyes. “I know,” I whispered, looking for a piece of grass to pick. “I just do not like them. Snakes, I mean.”

He turned my face, met my eyes, then leaned forward and kissed my forehead. “Come,” he said in Italian, picking me up, “you’ll sit close to the fire. I’m going to feed you.”

I might not have been good at the fishing, but Mariano was excellent at the catching and cooking. He manned the grill, and every bite was as delicious as the last. I would not go hungry with him around.

However, it seemed he was avoiding bringing me back to nature after the fishing trip.

We only had a short amount of time before his family arrived.

I felt their arrival was going to change things.

I could tell Mariano did as well. Sometimes his sighs would be so heavy, I felt the weight of them in my soul.

Still, we did not bring it up. Although my cousin’s wedding was a bright spot, the impending reality was hard to face at times.

So I did not.

I concentrated on the moment—no further.

Since he was so good at feeding me, he would take me into town almost every day to grab a drink from the local coffee place, The Main Bean. I almost screeched when he pulled up and the outside menu flashed their new flavor of the season: caramel apple.

Mariano looked around, as if a predator was upon us.

I smiled at him, squeezing his bicep. I could not get my hand around it. “You can relax, my knight. I am just excited!”

Per my usual, I climbed over him and placed the order. This time I had no changes, and instead of just ordering two, I ordered enough to hand out at the ranch. This drink should be celebrated.

“That’s going to take a while,” the barista said with a Wyoming twang to her voice.

Mariano’s hand was where it usually was, stilled close to my culo . When I turned to face him, our eyes caught, and his breath was coming faster from his parted lips.

“What?” I smiled.

I enjoyed catching him off guard. It transformed his face. As if he was seeing something he never had before. He liked it. Could not get enough of it. Fascinated.

He ran his hand tenderly down my face then squeezed my ass cheek. Just that alone sent the memory of our last, and only, time rushing through my blood. It felt as if my entire body flushed.

“If you only knew.” He took a breath, released it slowly, shook his head.

“This. Just being this way with you. Just being with you. It sucker punches me in the heart sometimes. When you climb over me, so eager to place an order for coffee with a ton of fucking preservatives, sugar, and fake flavoring. The way you sing along to every song on the radio, no matter if you know it or not. Country or not. The way you turn to me and sing it to me. How you fucking steal my breath every time you walk into a room.”

“I am new, this is why.” The words came out automatically, without the permission of my mouth.

His face turned to stone. “Fuck new. Fuck middle. Fuck old. It doesn’t matter when.

You’re my new, and you’ll be my middle and my old, if I have to give my last breath for it.

You’re my life, Annie.” He set me down next to him, placing my hand over his heart.

It pounded against his chest, as if it wanted to be set free.

“My heart is racing. It always races. And I never fucking knew why.

I thought I was restless. It made me feel reckless—a compass without a direction.

I found out why the day I walked into the jewelry store and was stopped in my fucking tracks.

It was always racing to you, la mia vita . Already the wife of my heart. My soul.

“When I first looked at you, it was a religious experience. A life-altering experience. I was gazing at the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling, the light filtering in, bringing it to life.

Bringing you to life, every color imaginable surrounding you, like they all couldn’t bear to be far from you either.

Right now, even the space between your heart and mine feels like fathomless, endless, miles.

It’s hell. The kind of hell the devil couldn’t even fathom. ”

“ Ah ,” I breathed out, licking my lips. As with our first kiss, what was a mere woman to do with those life-changing words? “Fuck, ah, me,” was all I could whisper, my eyes burning.

A huge grin lit up Mariano’s face as he hit the gas and pulled up to the window. The baristas, who waited for him to arrive every day as if they were all mares waiting to be romanced by the wild stallion in town, were all huddled together, dabbing their eyes on their aprons.

Mariano’s eyes narrowed before they turned to me. I was wiping my eyes.

His eyes turned soft, and he took my hand, kissing it. “It is your right as a woman to cry this way,” he whispered in Italian. “Today will be the first day of this kind of romance.”

This might have been the first day, but it was not the last.

After that it was:

A rodeo in Cheyenne, accompanied by Marciano, Atta, Angelo, Ty, and Emma.

It was one of the largest in the country, next to the one in Houston, and they even had live entertainment.

New and established artists took the stage.

I was so excited, I took my fingers and stuck them in my mouth, sending out a sharp whistle. Atta’s Papà had taught me how to do it.

Mariano chuckled, pulling me in close as the first artist took the stage.

I lifted my hat over my head, tipping it to the entertainment.

Mariano did not dance but kept me close without getting whacked.

He moved with me, avoiding my flailing arms. He was so in tune with me, and I was so in tune with him, it was as if our bodies were one. We were extensions of each other.

The song I had sang to him in the car on our way to the auction was performed, the original artist singing it.

I never cried.

But warm tears ran down my face as I sang it while Mariano held me so close, it was a miracle I could even breathe. Years in the future, when I heard that song, I would be back in that moment again.

When I met Atta’s eyes, she wiped hers and smiled at me, tipping her hat to me. I tipped mine to her, and then we started dancing when a faster song came on, bumping our hips and waving our arms, in our own worlds.

I left that night with more memories and stuffed animals than I could carry. Mariano had won them all for me at the game booths.

The day after we returned from the rodeo, the surprise he had planned for me had me rocking in my black heels with a red stripe on the bottom.

Mariano only instructed me to dress up. I wore the red version of the black dress I had worn to the auction.

This time crimson buttercups were the flowers on my four-inch heels.

When I stepped out of the room, his hand went straight to his heart. “The wife of my heart,” he called me in Italian. “You are the only woman who has ever stopped my heart and been powerful enough to restart it. You are the disease and the cure.”

“ Grazie ,” I whispered, turning my eyes away from his. My face felt hot. It was not even his words but the look in his eyes.

He was looking at me the way he had done the night in the natural springs. As if I was already naked and he was about to devour me, smoke drifting from the temperature of our bodies alone, all fueled by want.

He used the knuckle of his pointer finger to lift my face and force my eyes to meet his.

The signet ring on the smallest digit of his hand glinted gold in the dim light of the cottage.

The eyes of the lion were peridot. My grandfather had made that ring for him right after Mariano was born.

My great-grandfather was well known in the Fausti family for the style of that ring.

The craftsmanship and attention to detail.

“You are the only creature strong enough, powerful enough, to meet my eyes and stare into them without challenging me,” he whispered.

His breath caressed my lips. “Without a doubt, I surrender and bow at your feet.” He leaned in, and I finally found the strength to close my eyes and submit to him as his lips grazed mine, then took my mouth in a passionate kiss.

A kiss strong enough to make my knees weak, a volcano inside of me going off, causing me to melt into him. He held me so close, it was as if I was melting into him , into his bloodstream, but at the same time, I kept all the strongest parts of me so I could walk this earth next to him.

I was still dazed on the ride to wherever we were going. I kept my fingertips on my lips, determined to keep the feeling of his lips on mine forever. I blinked when the car stopped and he stepped out, fixing his suit, coming to open my door.

Remo replaced him in the driver’s seat as my door opened and Mariano offered me his hand. I took it, clasping his fingers, entwining them, and smoothed out any wrinkles in my dress as he led me into a brick building.

Inside waited a woman with a chic haircut, her blond hair glistening in reflection to the hundreds of candles set around the place, her smart black dress hugging her hourglass curves.

She wore artsy, oversized glasses, though she barely looked at me.

Her eyes were on Mariano, who only nodded at her as we entered.

“Mr. Fausti,” she practically breathed, stepping in front of him. “It was such a pleasure when you called. We were thrilled to do this for you.”

“Not for me,” he said. “For mine, Sistine.” He looked at me, bringing our hands to his mouth, kissing my knuckles.

My breath caught, and the bitch who reminded me of my selfish sister might as well have disappeared. She did not matter. Mariano made me feel as if I was the only woman in the world. He always did. Her response faded into the background as he directed me where to go.

I stopped in the middle of the room, my eyes widening at what I was seeing.

“You are art,” he said in Italian. “You create it. You’re mine. These are all mine .”

My grandfather allowed me to work on pieces outside of the scope of what the Fausti family ordered.

I was not allowed to sell them outside of the family.

Occasionally, I sold them to eager members of the family who were looking for something specific that I had already designed.

Or I would occasionally pitch it to them if I felt it fit the individual.

Mariano had somehow gotten a hold of my sketches, and they were life sized on the walls. Some of the actual pieces were interspersed between them. These pieces had been turned into fine-art portraits.

“What?” I breathed, moving closer to one in a daze, my trembling fingers barely touching the canvas. “How…?” I was not sure if my words were coming out in Italian or English.

From behind me, Mariano cleared his throat. “I have my ways. What is yours also belongs to me.”

I grinned, turning my face to meet his glistening eyes. “And what is yours belongs to me.”

“A spell doesn’t work any other way. It takes two.”

“Is that what this is between us, Mariano Fausti?” I whispered. “A spell?”

He shrugged, as if his suit had shrunk suddenly.

“I would have called it a love spell,” he said in Italian.

“That is a lie, and I do not, cannot, tell those. It goes against who I am as a man. An honorable man.” He hit his heart.

“Your man. Love is a lie. I do not have a word for what this is that lives between us. Except for what my parents call it.” He cleared his throat. “Always.”

“ Per sempre ,” I whispered, hot tears stinging my eyes, running down my cheeks. I did not bother drying them. I wanted him to see how deeply he could affect me.

“The tears you bleed is an honor to me,” he continued in Italian, making it to me in three strides, using his knuckle to dry the lines of my tears.

He rubbed them against his lips after, licking them, tasting my heartfelt reaction to what he had done for me.

“I am the man who gets to cause them, out of romance, and dry them when they are caused by things I will kill in your honor. Anything that hurts mine .”

He set my hand over his heart, as if he were making a vow to protect me until the day he could no longer.

“The glory of what exists between us is mine alone to defend. I will kill in your honor, its honor, until I have no breath in me to do so. What exists between us will never die. It cannot. Not when it goes beyond life and breath.”

This thought overwhelmed me.

A world without this man in it.

It would be like a world without Italy. Its people, its culture, the delicious and fresh gifts it feeds its people with, the stunning views that fed beyond the stomach.

Without Wyoming. The rugged mountains, the sheer untamed wildness.

The animals that persevere there. Babies being made in spring.

These same offspring playing in summer. Cuddling in winter between the trees and the mountainsides that break the wind.

Hannah’s sketches of the bison huffing out puffs of smoke, coated in a cold, hard winter, dark eyes glistening like newly discovered onyx.

Mariano Fausti had carved himself inside of my heart—as permanent and irrevocable as the mark an artist makes on the pages of a book.

On gold and silver. On canvas. On marble that has stood the test of time and is still visible for all to see along ancient streets, in museums, but most importantly, in a place that can never die.

The soul.

My chest felt tight. My heart raced. My breaths were short—too short. He took my hand in his, bringing it to his mouth, and just like that—I could breathe again.

It was in this moment that my heart made a declaration, one it had always known, and my mind had ignored: if this man did not exist, then neither could I.