His eyes burned into mine as he watched me come undone, reliving it, feeling everything again because he was feeling it, too. He knew what I went through because he felt it all right there with me.

“When I went home, Marcello, I had every intention of coming back, to you, once I had my career on track and I could apply for something near you, whatever it was, I was coming back. But things change and things happen and—” My voice cracked then, and my body gave me away because I could never talk about this, ever, without going through it all over again. “Once I was home, I slipped too easily back into my old life. And after a while, I ended up sleeping with Daniel. And then I got pregnant. And then I got married. And then we lost Hannah when she was only three months old and—” My eyes blurred, tears spilling over. “And then I got lost, too.”

He was up from the table, this blurry beautiful man whom I could barely see because of my tears, and taking me into his arms and tucking me into his side and hurrying me out onto the balcony and away from prying eyes and curious looks and concerned glances. Away to a quiet corner against the railing where strong Italian arms wrapped around shaking American shoulders and words were whispered in a quiet language that couldn’t possibly be understood but they were. They were because it was Marcello speaking to his Avery, to me, and he worried and fussed over me like a child, wiping my tears and kissing my forehead and telling me that it was okay, that I was okay, that we were okay, and when he wrapped his hands around my face and kissed me gently, so gently, I knew that this man would be the only man kissing me for the rest of my life.

We stayed that way for a moment or an hour, I’m still not entirely sure, while my tears subsided. And when I was finally under control, he leaned back to look at me with a hint of a smile.

“So,” he said, breaking the silence. “Divorced?”

“Divorced,” I sighed, saying it out loud as though it were already a fact. I trusted the wind coming off the lake to carry my words into the ether somewhere, making them real and true.

“Divorced,” he said again, rolling around the word a bit, as though trying to decide how it felt. I shivered a bit. That word-laden wind coming off the lake was chilly.

“I like it,” he finally pronounced, dropping another kiss on my forehead. “I have always wanted to have a torrid affair with an American divorcée.”

“Yeah?” I asked, feeling drained but also a tiny bit hopeful. Marcello now knew all my secrets, I had nothing left to hide. And that felt pretty incredible.

“Yeah,” he said, in his best American accent. “Come, let’s go home. I’d thought a nice walk through the gardens would be a nice way to end the day, but . . .”

“But?” I asked.

Pressing his mouth just under my ear, he whispered, “But now all I can think about is getting you into bed. Or up against that cabinet in the entryway. I am not picky.”

Goose bumps broke out across my body as he walked us back inside and over to our table. “Gardens are overrated.” I shivered once more as he dropped a kiss on my neck, leaving our unfinished meal and a mess of bills behind for the waiter. There was an urgency now to get home, to be together, to feel what was here and now instead of what was over and in the past. I tugged at his hand, wanting nothing more than to be with him.

“Let me just get your sweater, tesoro,” he said.

I looked at the heather-gray cashmere cardigan with tiny pearl buttons hanging on the back of my chair. Bitsy had bought me that cardigan, a Christmas present. It matched one that she had exactly . . .

“Leave it. I don’t want it anymore.” I tugged him toward me by his collar. “I’d rather you keep me warm.”

He did. With his hands, his arms, his words . . . and his own sweater. Which he took off and gave to me.

* * *

THE REST OF THAT WEEKEND was, in a word, bliss. We spent hours on the lake, simply enjoying the quiet pleasure that this entire region seemed devoted to. While Marcello answered emails or went for a jog, I curled up on a chaise and sketched in the garden. Or he would row me out into the center of the lake so that I had a full view of the house to capture on the page. Sometimes it would be a single flower scribbled on the back of a napkin or billowing vases filling up my phone to get down onto paper later.

Things seemed to have changed slightly between the two of us. Something subtle had shifted, and I wondered if I was the only one who felt it.

When we went back to the villa that night, after I told him the truth about my past, and my present, he had taken me right up against the cabinet in the entryway, too fumbling mad with passion to get me into bed. But while the passion had been as eager as always, the hunger as impossibly growling as always, in between the scrambling hands and the frantic kisses there’d been . . . a tenderness.

The way he held my face in his hands when he pushed into me. The way he swept kisses along my spine, smoothing the skin with barely there brushes. The way I caught him staring at me as I came apart under his tongue, as though if he blinked I might’ve disappeared.

And the way he said my name when he came apart, his lips swollen from my frantic kisses, chanting like Avery was the only word he knew.

For the first time in a very long time, I felt treasured.

I still felt treasured as the train pulled into the station in Rome, back into the Eternal City and the eternal beautiful frenzy. I’d been reluctant to leave the countryside, but I was actually eager to get back to work the next day. I was beginning restoration work on the final section, and I’d be trying a new technique on a particularly stubborn lime deposit that had rendered the colors almost invisible in this part of the mural.