Page 14 of The Biker and the Curvy Widow

After the memorial last night, one of the waitresses locked up—I'd texted her the code when it became clear I wasn't coming back. Now the chairs are still stacked on the tables, the candles burned down to stubs, Marco's photos watching me from every wall.

I don't turn on the lights. Just walk through the dim space, trailing my fingers over tablecloths and chair backs, letting the familiar scents of garlic and wine and memory wash over me.

Marco's face smiles at me from a dozen frames. Our wedding day. The restaurant's grand opening. A candid shot from some club party where he's laughing at something off-camera, his whole face lit up with joy.

I stop in front of that one, my throat tight.

"I slept with him," I whisper to the photo. "Pope…Ryder. I slept with him, and I don't regret it. Does that make me a terrible person?"

Marco doesn't answer. Of course he doesn't. But standing here in the half-light, staring at his smile, I can almost hear what he'd say.

I just want you to be happy, bella. That's all I ever wanted.

The memory surfaces without warning—a night about six months before he died. We'd been sitting on the couch after closing, too tired to move, and he'd looked at me with this strange, knowing sadness in his eyes.

"You deserve to be happy, Mara," he'd said, out of nowhere. "Really happy. Don't waste your life being loyal to a ghost."

I'd laughed it off. Told him he was being morbid. But the way he'd looked at me...

Like he knew something I didn't. Like he was trying to tell me something important and I was too blind to hear it.

"What did you know?" I ask his photo now. "What did you see that I didn't?"

Silence. Just the hum of the refrigerators in the kitchen, the distant rumble of a truck passing outside.

I wander through the restaurant for what feels like hours, touching Marco's things, remembering. Our first date here, before it was ours—just a struggling Italian place with amazing food and terrible service. The night he proposed, going down on one knee between tables twelve and thirteen. The early mornings learning his grandmother's recipes, flour on my face and his laughter in my ears.

I loved him. I did love him. That wasn't a lie.

But was it enough? Was the steady warmth I felt with Marco the same as the fire that blazes through me when Pope—when Ryder—looks at me?

I sink into a chair at table seven—our table, the one Marco always saved for us—and let myself feel everything I've been running from for two years.

The grief. Still there, but softer now. Like a wound that's finally starting to scar over.

The guilt. For the feelings I couldn't control. For the relief I felt when the weight of an unfulfilling marriage lifted. For moving on when part of me whispers I should mourn forever.

And underneath it all, something new. Something terrifying and exhilarating and impossible to ignore.

Hope.

I pull out my phone before I can talk myself out of it.

I'm not selling the restaurant. Not yet.

I hit send, then type another message.

We need to talk. Really talk. Tonight.

The reply comes less than a minute later.

I'll be there. 7pm.

I stare at the screen, Marco's smile still watching me from the wall.

"I'm going to figure this out," I tell him. "Whatever he's hiding, whatever secrets are still between us—I'm going to get the truth. All of it."

The photo doesn't answer. But I swear, just for a second, Marco's smile looks a little less sad.