“What makes you think that?” Dante asked.
“Well, for one, the house happens to be named after my mother,” she said with a light laugh, her eyes fixed on Dante so she didn’t catch my frown. “And for another, my best friend and sister happen to be here. Obviously…here together.”
“I’m not asking you for permission if that’s what you’re insinuating,” he countered drily.
I realized I was holding my breath, that the reason for my tension was the possibility of Cosima’s disapproval and censure. I’d had both before, when I hadn’t handled Daniel and Giselle’s affair as gracefully as I should have, and the memory of her criticism still plagued me.
“I suppose I didn’t ask you for permission to date Xan,” she agreed easily. “But a phone call announcing the relationship might have been nice. Especially because I had to read in the newspaper that you’d fled the country, D.”
We both winced a little. Dante looked down at me then, smiling this little smile that was only for me, more of a secret tucked between his curled lips than an actual expression.
“We’ve been busy,” he admitted, his voice soft, intimate as he looked down at me and pushed a lock of errant red hair behind my ear.
I got caught in those obsidian eyes, drowning in the words he’d written in black ink on black paper so only I could read them as close to him as I was.
He wasn’t going to give Cosima a chance to judge us. He was telling her in his own way that we were together. That he loved her, but there was a boundary between them now there hadn’t been before, a line drawn in the sand with my name on it.
It was possessive and bullying and bold; all things Dante could be so it didn’t surprise me because it wasn’t out of character.
But it did surprise me, how much that meant to me.
That he didn’t care what his best friend thought because he loved me too much to change his mind now.
That she was somehow trespassing on an intimate moment between us instead of me being the third wheel in a relationship that had begun years ago and been through so much.
That he implied we were busy, meaning whatever he was doing, I was doing it with him. We were a team and he was broadcasting that so loudly to Alexander and Cosima it seemed blared from a loudspeaker.
“Io sono con te,” he said so softly, lips barely moving, that for a second, I wondered if I imagined it.
But no.
I am with you, he’d said.
A reminder. An affirmation that even with his brother and best friend, he still wanted me to come first.
Tears burned the backs of my eyes, hot as the blowtorch Dante had used on Umberto Arno. I didn’t let them fall, but I couldn’t evaporate them either. So I stared at Dante with glazed eyes and swallowed down a sob.
“Ion sono con te,” I repeated quietly.
The fingers on my hip gave a squeeze.
When I looked back at Cosima, she seemed a little thunderstruck by our connection, but she wasn’t angry. When she caught my gaze, those yellow eyes melted like butter in a hot skillet.
“Lena, my love,” she said, extending her hand. “I’ve missed you so much.”
Those tears I’d been fighting so valiantly to keep at bay surged over my lower lids and fell down my cheeks in two scalding trails.
“Cosima,” I breathed as I broke from Dante and stepped forward.
Cosima stepped forward too, meeting me halfway, catching me up in her long, thin arms so she could hold me tight. We were the same height, but where I was slender, almost hollow boned, with smaller breasts and hips, Cosima was all length with the added bonus of exaggerated curves. It felt good to be held against her softness. It reminded me of Mama and how much I missed her.
“Hi,” Cosima whispered in my ear, her nose in my hair smelling deeply. “Missed you so much, sorella mia.”
I clutched her tighter in response even though I wasn’t normally so physically affectionate. My tears fell into her thick hair, but she didn’t mind. She just held me quietly for a few minutes, murmuring into my hair how much she loved me, how happy she was to see me, how proud she was of me.
She didn’t know anything about my life since I’d taken the case, at least nothing besides my infertility procedure, but somehow, she knew I’d been through the wringer and needed her endless love to soothe me.
“Seamus is dead,” I croaked through my tears, grabbing a handful of her silk hair because it reminded me of braiding it when she was a girl, of tucking her into bed and reading her stories because Mama was working and Seamus was nowhere to be found. It reminded me of time when I’d comforted her as an older sister should, but it didn’t make me shamed for needing her now.