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Mariano

E leven minutes.

That was how long it took me to find my wife in the maze located in Veneto.

She was sitting in an alcove, on a marble bench, thick bushes surrounding her. The flowers that belonged to that bush were frozen in time, but I had ordered Dandolo to set red roses and red Persian buttercups around my wife. She loved both of those flowers, and I wanted walls of them for her.

She wore a white wedding dress that seemed tailor-made for her body.

The details of it shimmered underneath the wintry sun.

The fabric was a mixture of tulle, maybe, like the stuff mamma wore to dance in, and silk, and it almost glistened as ice would.

The style of the gown at the bottom reminded me of a mermaid tale, the flowers on it three dimensional, the back low cut.

The sleeves matched the pattern of the dress, but the flowers that seemed part of her skin were an illusion.

Her hair was slicked back, separated down the middle, and a veil sat atop her head.

This was who my wife was in Italy.

It never ceased to amaze me how any soil she set her feet down on seemed made for her. Not the other fucking way around.

For her.

Even mountains fell at her feet.

Who was I then, a mere fucking man, to think I could ever stand against her?

Her eyes found mine, the connection sending a lightning bolt through her and then through me, and a trembling breath that tangled with the chilled wind seemed to come from her mouth and mine.

I took a knee in front of her, slipped the blood diamond on her left hand, where it was always meant to be, and held her cold hand in mine, directing her to stand.

The marble was cold. The wind was cold.

My wife wouldn’t be cold. Not if my body burned for hers.

Even after death.

She had set my soul on fire—but only around the edges. The most important area, the area that was eternal, was protected and preserved by her love.

If I lost that—I was lost.

So fucking lost.

I closed my eyes and kissed her hand. “In this life and all others, in death, in heaven, we will never part,” I said in Italian. “You are my wife, and I am your husband, Sistine Evita Fausti.”

She squeezed my hand, the trembling of her bones wracking mine, and then I rose to my full height at the command of her hand. I looked down at her, and she looked up at me. I took her hand and set her earbuds in them. She had given them to me before the maze.

“Yours,” I said. “You. You’re all mine. This is why I found you—I’ll always find you, even without the unnatural. Fate. Fate has its own compass—destiny.” I took her hand and hit my heart with it.

We left the maze without a word, our hands locked, and afterward, a photographer was waiting to capture our day. My sister was all over the place. One minute she was over there, and the next, she would be in front of our faces, telling us how to pose, or telling us to be natural.

My sister had a natural talent when it came to the camera, inheriting it from our mamma, who at one time had been invited to collaborate with top-name publishers to create books from the photographs she had taken over the years.

A few hours later, my wife was whisked away from me again. This time, to prepare for our church wedding. We married at sunset at The Church of San Leopoldo in Follonica.

My wife wore the same gown from the maze.

Our eyes connected, the connection between us a slow-moving heat that would eventually rise to a fire.

But there was a cold that refused to leave my wife.

I was not as touched as my mamma and my sister, but it felt as if I could touch it.

I felt it when I touched her. She had some residual issues with me from our time apart.

I wouldn’t dwell on those then.

Later.

When her time was fully up—the time to shy away from me—she would allow whatever was eating at her to go free.

She would get mad. Throw a tantrum. Pitch breakable things at me.

Come at me with her claws drawn. Cause battle wounds against my body.

Steal the heart from my chest. But I wouldn’t allow indifference bred by a hurt I wasn’t aware of to come between us.

Nothing would.

I would kill anything that dared.

The night moved, and we moved with it to our home in Grosseto.

Our reception was set deep in the woods surrounding the property.

Wooden tables were set out with decorations fit for my wife.

If she was happy, I was fucking happy. A band played.

My grandfather sang. My parents gave us a gift.

A 1965 Chevy Impala. The car was still in Louisiana, but Mamma had a picture painted of it, with my wife and I occupying the front seat.

My old man said it still needed a little work, but he thought he and I could take care of it in no time.

My parents thought my wife and I would like to cruise like they did in my old man’s vintage car, the one he brought back to life himself.

We’d probably find a copy of Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me” in it. The song held meaning in my family because it had meaning to my mamma’s brother, Elliott, and my old man. Mamma even taught me how to dance a combination of the rumba and bachata to it.

Then my wife changed her gown. She wore the gown from our wedding in Wyoming.

She was the reason I seemed to be breathing, but she stole my breath time and time again.

It was the most natural thing, while also being the most unnatural.

Like she was breathing air into my life but stealing it from my lungs at the same time.

I couldn’t get control of it. I couldn’t rope it in and make it submit. I was powerless against her.

My knees didn’t feel so secure anymore, but my feet were planted firmly in front of her. The feeling was so fucking overwhelming, my hand went directly to my heart to ease the ache.

Pain never bothered me.

Seeing my wife in this gown, in her nightgown, in any gown, clothed or not, when she looked at me with those eyes, those eyes that could see straight through me, shattered me all over again, yet she kept me together.

“You make me a man, Sistine Evita Fausti,” I whispered in her ear after I pulled her against my body, my marrow demanding to be as close to hers as possible.

Her eyes refused to leave mine. “You make me a woman,” she whispered, and she touched her stomach.

I ran my hands up and down her arms. This gown was lighter than the other one, airer, and her skin was chilled. “You’re fucking cold,” I said.

“No,” she breathed out. “Perhaps my skin, but the rest of me is warm. I’m next to you, and the fire inside of me is…hot. The…baby,” she whispered.

My stomach hit a fucking dip it could never recover from, and she gasped when I pulled her closer, my grip tighter, family and friends making their way toward us to congratulate us.

“Not far,” I said. “My heart can’t fucking take it again.”

She didn’t try, maybe because she knew it was no use.

Even when the women of my family pulled her to the dance floor, or the men of my family asked her for a dance, I stayed close.

My old man had that fucking grin on his face again, the one that said, “Yeah, ask me how I know what you’re fucking going through. ”

I slammed back a couple of drinks, fueling the fire in my veins, and then took my wife from my greedy fucking brother, Marciano. He laughed at me, raspy and low, as he took her hand, kissed it, and went to join my family.

We danced to the slow song playing, the one I had sung to her in Wyoming, in our cabin.

When the song was coming to an end, she pulled away from me some, looking into my eyes.

The small lights strung from tree to tree, floating over our heads, brightened her eyes.

She opened her mouth, closed it, then looked away from me.

I turned her chin toward me, tipping it up, and refused to allow her to shy away from me.

“You can rip my heart out, my wife,” I said in Italian. Then I switched to English. “But fuck if I’ll allow you to be indifferent to me.” I swept her off her feet, and her arms went straight to my neck, her airy gown flowing over my arms.

Guests were starting to come at us with sparklers my sister insisted we have.

“Our reception!” my wife said when she realized I was taking her to the waiting Friesians, the extremely rare white one already saddled for my wife’s comfort.

I had gotten the female as a gift to my wife.

As a breed standard, white wasn’t the norm, but I knew my wife would love her. “I’m not riding a horse!”

“You’ll ride with me. Guerriero will follow on his own.”

“Mariano!”

I easily mounted the female Friesian, then took my wife by the arm and hauled her up, deftly setting her behind me. The female Friesian went to sniff the apple-scented beauty behind me, craning her neck as far as she could, and my wife stiffened, her breath catching.

“Mariano,” she said underneath her breath, like she didn’t want the horse to truly known she was on her back.

I tick ed my mouth at the horse and turned her reins so she would know which direction to take. On the scale of how much horse the female was, she was in the negative compared to Guerriero. He followed behind us.

My wife held onto me like she was white-knuckling the wheel of a getaway car. After a minute or two, she relaxed, and I could tell she was enjoying the ride. When we arrived home, I dismounted first in the stable, then picked my wife up and set her on her feet.

She narrowed her eyes at me. “All those people at the reception.”

“Know where to fucking go,” I said. “Most of them are staying the night here, in the extra properties.”