Page 70 of The Fall Affair

“You mean email?”

“No. I’ll write you letters. I’ve been making rubber stamps, the kind you use with an ink pad to make a design on paper. I’ll finish the one I’m carving for myself and stamp my own stationery. I’ll only use it to write to you.”

“Who makes a rubber stamp?”

“I do. It’s easy. The first one I made out of a potato. But that rotted pretty quick. So the new one I’m working on is made from a big eraser. I carved my initials, and I’m working on the flowers now.”

I shook my head but couldn’t help but smile. “You’re a weirdo.”

She rubbed her nose to mine. “Well, that makes you a weirdo lover, then, doesn’t it?”

Izzy was teasing, but she wasn’t wrong. I’d fallen in love with her the first time I’d laid eyes on her under the bleachers, though I hadn’t said the words out loud yet. “I guess it does.”

***

A few days later, it was time to say goodbye. Izzy and her mom were going on a month-long mission trip to Cambodia with the church her mom belonged to, and then they were heading to Soave, a small village in northeast Italy where her dad had bought a run-down castle with big plans to restore it and make a million euro renting it.

As far as I knew, he’d never worked in construction, and he definitely had no experience with two-hundred-year-old castles. But whatever. I just hated that she’d be gone all summer.

Luciana and I had gone over to help them load the last of the boxes into the moving truck, and my sister was downstairs with Izzy’s mom, quizzing her on words she was trying to learn in Khmer, the native language of Cambodia. It was the first time Izzy and I had been alone all day.

She shut the door and rested her hands on my chest. “I wanted to give you something before I go.”

I tried to smile, but my face had been perpetually sour lately. “What’s dat?”

She licked her lips, then leaned in and pressed them to mine. “This.”

Izzy might’ve started the kiss, but my body took over. More than a year’s worth of wanting her pushed past my hesitation. My hands found her waist, her hair, her back. They moved all over, touching the places I’d been dying to feel. I kissed her like I’d been waiting for permission, and now that I had it, I wasn’t going to waste a second.

She made a tiny sound—half sigh, half surprise—that lit me from the inside, and the world went blurry. There was only my body against hers and her lips parting against mine. It was soft and hungry all at once. I deepened the kiss, and she didn’t pull away. If anything, she pushed closer, like she wanted me as badly as I wanted her. It was next to impossible to stop.

When we finally did, we were both breathing hard. She leaned her forehead against mine, her eyes closed and her voice barely above a whisper. “Wow.”

“Yeah.” I smiled. “That was…wow.”

She pulled back enough to look at me. “I’ve been wanting to do that for a while.”

“I’ve been wanting to do dat since the first time I met you.”

Her smile widened and lit her whole face. Seeing it knocked the air out of my lungs even more than the kiss had.

Izzy brushed another soft kiss to my lips before stepping away. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

I knew I’d be counting the days until I saw her again. I just didn’t know there would be so many to count.

Chapter 23

Matteo

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, I woke to the smell of fresh-brewed coffee and bacon. I assumed it must’ve drifted in from a nearby caffé since it was only 6:45. Allegra couldn’t possibly be up this early after the night she’d had, much less cooking. But when I walked into the kitchen, I found her standing at the stove.

Her hair was piled on top of her head in a messy bun, and she had an apron tied around her waist. She turned when she heard me, and my eyes dropped to what was printed on the front of the apron—a naked Michelangelo.

Allegra laughed. “I found it in a cabinet. I didn’t want to get grease on my clothes. I considered stealing it as a souvenir, but then I remembered I’m already leaving with a sister.”

I raked a hand through my hair and smiled. “I didn’t think you’d be up this early, considering how much wine you drank.”

“I woke up to use the bathroom and decided to make breakfast to thank you for the last two days.”