A Hunger for the Forbidden(19)

She’d clung to him after. Clung to him and cried. And he’d stroked her cheek with his hand, wiping away her tears. Later she’d realized he’d left a streak of blood on her face, from the blood on his hands. Blood he’d shed, spilled, for her.

He’d been her hero that day, and every day since. She’d spent her whole life saving everyone else, being the stopgap for her siblings, taking her father’s wrath if they’d been too noisy. Always the one to receive a slap across the face, rather than allow him near the younger children.

Matteo was the only person who’d ever stood up for her. The only one who’d ever saved her. And so, when life got hard, when it got painful, or scary, she would imagine that he would come again. That he would pull her into impossibly strong arms and fight her demons for her.

He never did. Never again. After that day, he even stopped watching her. But having the hope of it, the fantasy, was part of what had pulled her through the bleakness of her life. Imagination had always been her escape, and he’d added a richer texture to it, given a face to her dreams for the future.

He’d asked if she always spoke her mind, and she’d told him the truth, she didn’t. She kept her head down and tried to get through her life, tried to simply do the best she could. But in her mind … her imagination was her escape, and always had been. When she ran barefoot through the garden, she was somewhere else entirely.

When she went to bed at night, she read until sleep found her, so that she could have new thoughts in her head, rather than simply memories of the day.

So that she could have better dreams.

It was probably a good thing Matteo didn’t know the place he occupied in her dreams. It would give him too much power. More than he already had.

“I’m not like my father,” he said. “I will never strike my wife.”

She looked at him and she realized that never, for one moment, had she believed he would. Her father had kept her mother “in line” with the back of his hand, and he’d done the same with her. But even having grown up with that as a normal occurrence, she’d never once imagined Matteo would do it.

“I know,” she said.

“You know?”

“Yes.”

“And how is it you know?”

“Because you aren’t that kind of person, Matteo.”

“Such confidence in me. Especially when you’re one of the very few people who has actually seen what I’m capable of.”

She had. She’d seen his brute strength applied to those who had dared try to harm her. It had been the most welcome sight in all of her life. “You protected me.”

“I went too far.”

“They would have gone further,” she said.

He took a step away from her, the darkness in his eyes suddenly so deep, so pronounced, it threatened to pull her in. “I have work to do. I’ll be at my downtown office. I’ve arranged to have a credit card issued to you.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a black card, extending his hand to her.

She took it, not ready to fight with him about it.

“If you need anything, whatever you need, it’s yours.” He turned away and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.

She’d done the wrong thing again. With Matteo it seemed she could do nothing right. And she so desperately wanted to do right by him.

But it seemed impossible.

She growled, the sound releasing some of her tension. But not enough. “Matteo, why are you always so far out of my reach?”

This was Alessia’s second wedding day. Weird, because she’d never technically had a boyfriend. One hot night of sex didn’t really make Matteo her boyfriend. Boyfriend sounded too tame for a man like Matteo, anyway. Alessia finished zipping up the back of her gown. It was light, with flutter sleeves and a chiffon skirt that swirled around her ankles. It was lavender instead of white. She was a pregnant bride, after all.

There weren’t many people in attendance, but she liked that better. Her father, her brothers and sisters, Matteo’s grandmother, Teresa, and his mother, Simona.

She took the bouquet of lilacs she’d picked from the garden out of their vase and looked in the mirror. Nothing like what the makeup artist had managed on The Other Wedding Day, but today she at least looked like her.

She opened the guest bedroom door and tried to get a handle on her heart rate.

She was marrying Matteo Corretti today. In a sun-drenched garden. She was having his baby. She repeated that, over and over, trying to make it feel real, trying to hold on to the surge of good feelings it gave her. Because no matter how terrifying it was sometimes, it was also wonderful. A chance at something new. A chance to have a child, give that child the life that had been denied her. The life that had been denied Matteo.