Cristo opened the door to his apartment in Rome, more exhausted than he could ever remember being. Sleep had become a fond remembrance. He didn’t want to eat. And his heart felt like fifty kilos inside his chest. If this was heartbreak, it sucked.
A faint noise reached his ears, and he grabbed the doorframe. He was not in the mood for company. His legendary tranquil persona had fled and, as the dishonest commodities trader had discovered in China, been replaced by a short-tempered, ill-mannered brute who wasn’t above yelling to get his way. That wasn’t going to play with his mother or Zia Beatrice, who were the only ones likely to have invaded his home.
If it was a burglar, he was about to get the thrashing of a lifetime. Cristo almost hoped it was.
“Hello, who’s here?”
Farrah appeared from the kitchen. He blinked. Great. Hallucinations now. That had to be an illness. Heartbreak didn’t make you see things. Drink did. But he hadn’t had one today.
“Cristoforo.” Her voice was raw—whether from lack of use or emotion, he didn’t ask.
Instead, he stared. She was so beautiful she took his breath. When had he stopped looking at her? When she’d stopped noticing him? He looked his fill now, not sure if this was the last time. Her curly hair was free, a halo around her face and down her back. She wore a loose-fitting sundress that brushed the floor. Her pink-painted toenails peeked out from under the hem.
That’s where he’d start kissing her. Except he no longer had that right. She wanted a divorce.
“Farrah, why are you here?”
“You said we needed to talk.” She bit the side of her thumb. “I know what I want. I’m just not sure I can have it.”
He shook his head. This was one hell-ass of a hallucination. Did he want it to end? Not if it meant Farrah would disappear from his life again.
“You told me not to come back to Tunis.” He made a grab for reality. Well, more of a poke with a long stick from a great distance.
“Is that all of my second message that you received?” She took a step toward him but then stopped.
“Yes. Was there more?”
“Of course there was more. What kind of reply would that have been after your very official-sounding rebuttal to my divorce suggestion?”
“I might have been slightly drunk.”
She approached then and put a hand to his face. “It is so adorable that you get all wordy and pompous when you’re drunk.”
“Farrah, what did the rest of your message say?”
“It said, ‘There are security issues. I’ll wait for you in Rome.’ The power went out just as I hit send, so maybe that’s why you only got the first bit.”
“What kind of security issues?”
“Habibi, aren’t you kind of missing the point?”
He was. He was missing everything. His wife waited for him in their apartment, and he was discussing meaningless messages and political issues in a country far away.
“What is the point?”
“Where we go from here. Or, more accurately, how we get to where we want to be from where we are now.”
“Perhaps I should shut up and you talk.”
Her smile released some of the pressure that had been building in his chest.
“Cristo, have you cried for Mariem?”
“I—”
“You’ve been strong for me, haven’t you?”
“That’s my job.”
“Not at the expense of your mental health.”
“I’m not crazy.” He hoped.
She sighed heavily. “I’m not saying you are.” She bit the side of her thumb again. “We’re getting off track.”
There was so much he wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t form. “Farrah, I’m exhausted. And I’m terrified I’ll say the wrong thing and you’ll leave again. Can we do this in the morning?” He ran his fingers through his hair.
Her eyes searched his, and he had to clench his hands into fists to stop from pulling her into his arms.
“Of course. I made some dinner. Why don’t you eat, have a shower, and go to bed?”
“Alone?” Because that wasn’t going to fly with him.
“No. I’ll join you. But you know I can’t…”
“I just want to know you’re beside me.”
“Me, too. I’ve missed you next to me at night,” she said.
Hope flared in his chest. “I’ll shower first.” Airplane grime and taxi sweat had left his entire body itching. He was in and out before the water had even a decent chance to get warm. He still wasn’t convinced that Farrah was real, and he didn’t want to give her illusion a chance to disappear.
There was a ghost of a smile on her lips when he reappeared, his hair still dripping onto the collar of his shirt. She grabbed a towel out of a drawer and wrapped it around his neck.
“I’m not going anywhere, habibi,” she said. “At least not yet.” She rubbed the towel on his hair, and he closed his eyes at the bliss.
“It’s the ‘not yet’ that worries me.”
She dropped the towel and styled his hair with her fingers. “I promise not to leave until we’ve talked things through.”
A bell dinged in the kitchen, and she stepped away, but the sensations of her touch lingered. Their lives were at a crossroads, but he couldn’t see far enough down either path to know which way to go.
“Dinner’s ready,” Farrah called out. “I’ve set the table in the dining room.”
Her presence across the table resurrected his taste buds, and the tajine she’d made was the best he’d ever had. Even better was the look in her eyes when she glanced at him—like she’d finally found some peace.
“How have you been?” he asked.
“Emotionally, a wreck. Physically, I’m almost recovered.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”
“Don’t apologize. I needed the time alone. You were right. I had to figure out what I wanted from life and our marriage.”
She was here with him, so odds were that he figured somewhere in her plans. But he was too terrified to ask. Which did not sit well with him. Or his stomach.
Farrah reached over and put her hand on top of his. “You’re exhausted. We’ll talk tomorrow, Cristo.”
The lyrics from an Annie song flitted through his mind. He sure as hell hoped she loved him tomorrow.
***
Something was wrong.
Farrah reached out a hand, but the bed beside her was empty. She hadn’t dreamed her reconciliation with Cristo, had she? She was finished with losing people she loved. She was going to fight for her marriage. And she wasn’t going to settle for some type of “partners in life but not in love” situation. She wanted total emotional commitment.
She sat up in bed, but he wasn’t in the room or the adjoining bathroom either. Grabbing her wrap from the chair, she went into the living room.
Cristo stood with a drink in hand, staring out at the lights of Rome and the approach of dawn. Her reflection appeared in the glass next to his. It looked like they were standing together, even though they were several meters apart.
“I didn’t feel it like you did,” he said without turning around.
“What do you mean?” She wrapped her arms around herself.
He turned then but didn’t move toward her. “For me, your pregnancy was an abstract notion. Some mysterious thing happening to you. I couldn’t really grasp the concept of my child growing within you. As soon as we learned that the baby wouldn’t survive, I deliberately began to distance myself. I wouldn’t let myself feel hope or love or any of those emotions prospective parents are supposed to experience.” He swigged the rest of his drink and put the glass down on a table, his hands shaking slightly.
“Because you didn’t want it to hurt when she passed?”
“Because I wanted to be strong for you. I knew you would have a hard time.” He pulled in a long, audible breath. “I didn’t want to feel. But when I held Mariem in my arms… Dio, it hurt so much to know I wouldn’t hear her laugh or watch her take her first steps. It still hurts if I let myself think about it.” A sob broke from him, and he turned back toward the window.
She walked over to him and hugged him from behind, holding her palm open over his heart. Her own tears soon soaked the back of his T-shirt. “I know. I can’t stop thinking. Every time I close my eyes, I see her beautiful face. I feel like such a failure.” A lump caught in her throat, making her voice husky. “I didn’t make her properly.”
Cristo turned and took her in his arms. His eyes were glassy and red-rimmed, but his tears had stopped. He was all warm, masculine strength. The sandalwood and bergamot cologne he wore eased some of the tension from her muscles. He pressed a kiss against her temple before resting his cheek on top of her head.
“You know you weren’t to blame. The doctors all said there was nothing you could have done to prevent her condition. I had an email from Dr. Fabrizio. He said all the tests done on Mariem showed that it wasn’t genetic, just one of those random abnormalities that medical science can’t explain. Any other children we might have should be fine.”
“Do you want more children? Do you want to take the risk?”
“I want what you want. If you don’t feel you’re able to go through it all again, I’ll understand.”
“I don’t know. I’ve always wanted children, lots of them. But now I’m scared. I’d rather be childless than endure this hell again.”
His hands rubbed up and down her back, and more than once she felt dampness from his tears on her scalp. “The doctor also said that Mariem saved six people, four of them babies. The families want to thank us personally, but I’ll leave that decision up to you.”
“Not now.” Maybe in time she’d be able to meet the children who’d received her baby’s heart or lungs or kidneys. It was too soon, the pain still too raw.
Cristo nodded, his cheek rubbing against her hair. “When I got your message that you wanted a divorce… That’s when it all hit me. I haven’t gotten drunk in more than a decade, but I did that night. The thought of never hearing you laugh again, never holding your hand or watching you bargain with the men in the souk as though the fate of the universe rested on you getting the best deal… It tore me in two. I love you so much, Farrah. I have no idea how I am ever going to live without you.”
She pulled back so she could see his face. “You love me?”
“Of course I do. How could you not realize?”
“You’ve never said the words.”
His eyebrows pulled together. “But surely you could tell from my reaction after the terror at the checkpoint in Libya. I never want to be that scared again.”
“Cristo, in Libya all you did was get angry at me. And you had on your banker’s face. Definitely no evidence of love. Just commands never to travel there again.”
“My banker’s face?”
She tried to wipe all emotion from her face, narrowed her eyes, flattened her lips, and looked as menacing as possible, imitating him. “Your banker face is, you know, all stern and heartless.”
“You think I’m heartless?” There was no banker’s face now. A shadow of hurt clouded his eyes.
She placed a hand on his cheek rough with morning stubble. “No. Because I know you. I’ve seen your softer side. I saw you pretend to be Luigi and put on a show for a group of children in Libya. I saw you pick up a little girl after she fell, and wipe her eyes and snotty nose with your T-shirt, then put her on your back and pretend to be a camel to finish the race with her. I saw you slip pieces of meat to a homeless cat in Laayoune and then relocate her and her kittens to a cardboard box out of the reach of a bunch of dogs nearby. You’re not heartless—the opposite, in fact.”
“You saw all that?”
“Yes, and it made me fall in love with you even more, if that were possible.”
He stared into her eyes, his filled with warmth. And love. “I’m sorry I never said the words to you. I’d developed an aversion to saying it out loud. My mother uses I love you as a weapon.”
“How is that even possible?”
“If you really loved me is one of her favorite expressions. She uses it to manipulate and get her way.”
Farrah pressed a light kiss on his lips, pulling back before either of them got too distracted. “I’m not like that. Your love is a gift I will always try to be worthy of.”
“Farrah, you don’t need to earn my love. I love every bit of you, all that you are. In truth, you’re more than I deserve, more than I had ever hoped for in a wife. You may be too good for me, but now that I know you love me, I’m not letting you go.”
“I’m good with that.”
He was the one who pulled back after another all-too-brief kiss. “How come you never told me that you loved me?”
“Because I’d already trapped you into marriage.” She put a finger on his lips when he tried to protest. “Whatever way it happened, you had a wife not of your choosing. I didn’t want to burden you further with guilt over emotions you didn’t reciprocate.”
“Please, burden me. I want to hear you tell me you love me every day.”
“Deal, if you’ll do the same.”
He swept his thumb over her cheekbone. “Habibty, you’ll grow so sick of me telling you, you’ll beg me to stop. Just don’t tell my colleagues that I’m a complete softy. I’ve built a reputation as a hard-ass, no-nonsense regulator. Although I may have taken things a little too far on this last trip. I thought I’d lost you, and it did not make me a very pleasant person to be around.”
“You haven’t lost me. You’ll never lose me.”
Their kiss was so full of love a couple of tears squeezed out of Farrah’s eyes. Hadn’t she done enough crying?
“What’s this?” Cristo asked as he kissed the moisture from her cheeks.
“Happy tears this time, I swear.”
“I can’t promise those will be the only type of tears you shed over the next fifty or sixty years. But I do promise to hold you no matter the reason you cry.”
“That’s all I ask. And if you need to let some moisture out of your eyes as well, I won’t tell.”
“Agreed.” He put both hands on her face and stared into her eyes, his green gaze warmed with the glow of love. “Farrah, you say that I married you because you were carrying my baby. And that’s true. But I want you to know, to truly understand, that I am staying with you because I choose you. I love you with everything I am. There is no other woman in the world I want to spend the rest of my life with.”
Just before her throat closed with emotion, she managed to get out, “I choose you, too.”
He kissed her again. When he released her lips, they were both breathless. “I know we can’t make love yet. But can we go back to bed and pretend we’ve just rocked each other’s world?”
“Hmmm. You read my mind.”
He scooped her in his arms and carried her into the bedroom. “We still have to talk about the future. Where we’ll live. How we’ll manage our careers.”
“I know.” A huge yawn engulfed her face. “But first we both need to sleep.”
“My second favorite thing to do with you in bed.”
“Patience, my love.”
“Always.”