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Salvatore’s eyebrows rise as I speak, and I see a flicker of something in his face that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. He looks almost—impressed. As if he’s surprised to see me calmly standing up for myself—but that he likes it, too.
He lets out a slow breath, moving to one side as he sinks down onto the lounge chair. “I don’t know what I’m prepared to give you, Gia. I lost control earlier. I’m not proud of it. I’m ashamed of myself for becoming so angry, for handling you that way, for letting my lust overcome me. You deserved your punishment—and you have yet to apologize for your behavior,” he adds, his eyes narrowing. “But I shouldn’t have lost control.”
“The way you touched me—that was what I wanted the other night. Not that strange, cold way you fucked me.” I bite my lip. “I wanted you. I wanted you to want me, and?—”
“The problem isn’t wanting you,” Salvatore says quietly. “The problem is that I shouldn’t.”
“And why not?” I demand. “I’m yours now; you’ve made that clear. You’ve taken my virginity; there’s no going back to Pyotr for me. I’m not your daughter, Salvatore. There’s no blood between us, only a promise made by you to protect me if need be. You’ve done that, in the only way you said you thought that you could. I’m a woman. I’m not a child. I’m your wife. The only thing you’ve done wrong is not treating me like your wife. I’m not some object you can just put behind glass to keep it safe, and never touch! I’m a person. And if you want to protect me, to take care of me—you have to think of me as the woman you married.”
I see the way he tenses when I say that I’m his, the indrawn breath. I see that he wants me, even now. All he has to do is let himself accept it.
“I can appreciate you standing up for yourself like this, Gia,” Salvatore says finally, his hands clenched between his knees. “But I don’t know what I can give you. What is it that you want?” He looks up at me, his gaze dark and unreadable. “What do you want from me?”
A dozen responses run through my head, from sweet to sharp, soft to biting. But I let out a slow breath, and sink down onto the chair next to him. Not touching, not quite—but next to each other.
“To start,” I say quietly, “you can behave like a real husband, on our honeymoon.”
Salvatore raises an eyebrow. “What do you mean by that?”
I smile, just the tiniest bit. “I want to spend the day together tomorrow,” I clarify. “You and I, on our honeymoon. No work. No talking about New York, or danger, or what you’re dealing with there. For one day, we’re on vacation together. And we’ll see how that goes.”
Salvatore doesn’t smile, but I think I see the corners of his mouth twitch. He reaches down, the side of his hand brushing against the side of mine. The slightest touch, but one of the rare occasions that he’s touched me casually of his own volition.
“Alright,” he says slowly. “One day of vacation. Just the two of us.”
Salvatore
In the morning, I wake to see Gia still asleep next to me. My first thought is that I need to shower and dress so that I can be gone for work before she wakes up—and then I remember that I promised to spend the day with her.
I don’t regret the promise. It just feels odd. I’m not someone who has often taken days off, for anything. Other than that annual trip with her father that I mentioned, I’ve always had a tendency to use my ‘days off’ to still do work at home. And when I have taken time in the past to relax, more often than not, it’s at home, at least in the last ten years or so. I haven’t been the type to spend my time off out at a bar or a club in a long time.
So the thought of spending a day doing leisure activities seems, oddly, a little daunting. I’m not sure if I want to mention that to her or not, and I mull over it as I shower, taking my time this morning since I have nowhere that I need to be immediately. It makes me realize, as I think about it, that it’s come to matter to me what she thinks of me. That it worries me that, if I tell her I have no idea how to plan a day at the beach for us, she’ll think I’m boring.
She already wishes you hadn’t married her, I think grimly as I rinse out my hair, breathing in the eucalyptus-scented steam in an effort to calm myself. It’s not as if you can make things worse.
That, ironically enough, is the nudge I need to just talk to her. I finish my shower, putting on a pair of khaki shorts and a linen button-down with the sleeves rolled up, and go to wake her. I hesitate for a moment at the edge of the bed, looking down at her peaceful, sleeping face. I haven’t been the one to wake her in all the time we’ve been together so far. In fact, I can’t recall ever having done what’s in my head just now. I feel as if I’m outside my body, watching myself as I lean down to brush her hair out of her face with one finger and kiss her lightly on the forehead.
It feels sweet. Intimate. Things that have never been a part of my life. Something in my chest cramps with a feeling that approaches panic, but I push it back down. I’m going to have to face these things, if I want a possibility of a future with her. I have to figure out how to allow myself to feel the things that I’ve closed myself off from my whole life.
Gia makes a small humming sound under her breath as I pull back, sleepily shifting in bed. I have that same urge that I felt the last time I looked at her like this, the desire to simply rejoin her in bed and keep her there—and I’m flooded with the same guilt, too.
But that’s not what today is about. Today is meant to be about getting to know each other, feeling out what life together might be like if Gia could accept that there’s no going back on our marriage, and if I could give her what she needs. And I realize, as I reach down to gently urge her awake, that I’m afraid of either outcome.
If there’s no possibility of us finding a mutual middle ground, then the future ahead of us is one of mutual unhappiness instead. We’ll find other things in life to give us happiness, I’m sure—Gia has already said that she sees our future children as a source of that for her. But there will be no happiness, no satisfaction from our marriage.
But if we do find a way?—
I don’t know how to make a wife happy. How to be a good husband. I’m confident that I’m a man capable of intimidating others when necessary, of exercising diplomacy when need be, of handling sensitive business dealings, and managing dangerous situations. None of that helps me when it comes to knowing how to make Gia happy, how to be the kind of husband she seeks, how to give her the intimacy she craves. And I feel as if I’m going to disappoint her, no matter what.
She makes another of those soft sounds as I gently nudge her awake, her eyes fluttering open. “Salvatore?” She sounds briefly confused, as if she, too, forgot that there was a reason I wouldn’t have already left, and then a small smile curves the corners of her mouth. “You didn’t go to work.”
I feel an odd pang in my chest. “You thought I would, after what we agreed to last night?”
Gia pushes herself up, sitting back against the pillows, and I have to resist the urge to reach out and touch her hair again. It looks thick and soft, falling in heavy dark waves around her face, and I want to feel it slide through my fingers. “I thought something might come up,” she admits.
It’s a careful way, I know, of saying that she thought I would find an excuse to back out of it. It hurts a little that she would think so, but at the same time, I can understand it. Our marriage hasn’t exactly been amicable so far.
“Do you want me to leave?” I smile a little as I say it, trying for a joke. I want to lighten the mood between us, to start this day off right.
