Page 153 of My Husband’s New Fiancée

Then he’d said the words that would stay with me for the rest of my life.

He places the paperweight carefully on the coffee table, as if it were fragile. Then he slips a hand into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulls out a small jewelry box, which he hands to me without a word.

“How did you even have time—”

“Open it.”

I do.

Inside is a pair of diamond earrings. But it’s not their brilliance that takes my breath away—it’s their shape.

Edelweiss.

My voice catches.

Our honeymoon in the Alps. Three weeks hiking the slopes, searching for those impossible flowers, coming back empty-handed every evening, laughing at our failure. We never found a single one. And on the last night, back in our chalet, he had pulled me into his arms and whispered in my ear:

“I don’t know why I was looking for a flower in the mountains when the rarest one is right here beside me.”

Back then, we believed nothing could ever separate us.

I return to the present, tears in my eyes.

“I had them made three years ago,” he says. “I kept them. Like all your jewelry. No one touched them.”

I understand what he doesn’t say aloud. Bianca never touched them.

I can imagine her jealousy. It must have driven her mad not to be able to touch them.

Back then, I didn’t think much of it when she asked questions about the gifts Dante gave me, the attention he showed me.

I hadn’t understood how much she coveted everything.

Not just him.

Everything we were together.

“Help me put them on.”

He obliges without hesitation. His fingers sweep my hair aside, exposing my neck. His lips trail a line of soft kisses along my skin.

A shiver runs through me. I tremble.

His smile lingers against my skin. He fastens the first earring, his concentration almost endearing, his hands slightly unsteady. Then the second. Then he straightens, brushes the back of my neck with his fingertips, taking in his work.

“You’re beautiful.”

I turn toward him.

I can’t tell you which one of us moves first—maybe it doesn’t matter.

The kiss is sudden, almost desperate. His ragged breath against my lips, the scent of his skin going straight to my head. My hands slide into his hair and I pull him closer—as if even a few inches between us is too much. Dante presses both hands into my back and crushes me against him, hard enough to knock the air out of me. I feel every muscle in his body coiled tight, the urgency radiating off him. Our kiss is starving—equal parts longing and fury, like we’re trying to erase in one fell swoop everything that tried to tear us apart.

He lifts me without warning. My legs wrap around his waist on instinct, my nails biting into his shoulders. We stumble toward the bedroom, catching on the stairs, a tangle of muffled laughter and ragged sighs. My fingers tear at his shirt buttons, I nearly rip them off, too impatient to feel his chest against mine.

Clothes end up scattered across the steps, dropped without a second thought. I don’t want any more barriers. Any more distance. Just his warmth, his skin, him.

When he finally lays me down on the sheets, the cool fabric against my back is a sharp contrast to the heat of his body pressing into mine. I feel his weight, his strength, the raw want that’s consuming us both.