by CD Reiss
“Two weeks.” He held up two fingers. “Two. And she was talking to people. And not just ordering dinner.”
“I spoke at a third-grade level and I barely had a vocabulary. Seriously. It’s not a big deal.”
Lucia, in typical Italian affection, put her hand over mine. “You have a gift.”
“Well, whatever.” I hid my face by taking a drink of water.
“No,” she tsked, wagging her finger. “This is not to be ashamed of.” The rest she said in Italian too quickly for Chris to understand. “This gift is what God gave you. And if you are ashamed of it, you are ashamed of God.” She slid back into English. “God made me beautiful, and I use it.”
“Indeed,” Chris grumbled amicably.
“Anyway, are you going?” Lucia asked. “To Como?”
“We haven’t decided,” Chris replied.
“I want to see my sister.”
“So you return.”
“Maybe. There’s a lot to see. I don’t know. It’s not like there’s a schedule or a point.” I shut myself up. I’d started to bring up my trouble with Chris. I didn’t want to float around the world all the time. I loved traveling and meeting new kinds of people, but something was missing.
Lucia tapped my arm. “Come with me. Un momento.” Then, to Chris. “We’ll be back.”
She led me across the plaza, not missing a step in six-inch heels on uneven cobblestone. Her bag was tucked under her arm, a gift from her current beau.
“Where are we going?”
She stopped at one of the sellers and bought a little grey box. “To make an offering.”
“What’s in there?”
“Porridge. Don’t look like that. It’s just a little.”
We passed through the doorway, into the back of the basilica. The stone floor was worn smooth, and with the sun in the side of the sky opposite the single stained glass window, the little foyer was dark.
“I told you I’m not getting married again,” she said.
“Have you changed your mind?”
“No. Please. Save me from it.”
Through the far entry, we entered a large nave lit with ceiling lamps. Along one side, a long table was set with candles. Celebrants slipped their carnations inside vases or laid them before the paintings of the saint and left bills and coins in gilded chests. Some prayed at a red velvet rail that ran the length of the table.
Lucia put her box with the rest, dropped cash into the box, and kneeled, tapping me to follow. “Santa Monica was Saint Augustine’s mother. She followed him all over the world. Now, you can say what you like about that. But she was a mother first.”
I nodded while she rested her chin on her folded hands. She was going somewhere, but I couldn’t imagine a destination.
“I love children. Always. I begged to take care of my cousins. I thought I would be a mother. But God gave me a gift instead. He made it so that I had to give myself to children who didn’t have someone to take care of them. I’m not marrying again, at least not soon, because my gift isn’t to be a wife. Chris will vouch for that.” She stood and smoothed her skirt.
I followed her to an empty pew and sat next to her.
“It has been so good to know you,” she whispered.
“Thank you. You too.”
“You pick up what people are saying and speak back to them in their language, but your gift isn’t languages. Your gift is listening.” She took my hands. “I’m going to make you an offer to use that gift.”
“What kind of offer?”
“I need you at the Montano Foundation. It is a big organization all over the world, and it does good work. We feed children and build schools. We need someone like you, who listens and can learn a language. Who is generous. Who wants to help. Children need you.”
My blood thrummed. Work. I’d never had a job. I’d always assumed I didn’t have a skill worth paying for.
Lucia continued, “There will be a lot of travel, but we’ll talk about it later. First, you think about it, because you won’t be so free to move around when you want.”
“Okay. Thank you. I’ll think about it.”
When we got back to the plaza, I could see the café. Our lunches were at the table, and Chris was on the phone. He invested his own money, but still loved taking risks and crunching numbers. He loved his job.
Our lives revolved around two things. My travel whims and his work.
How would a position with Montano, where I’d have to travel where and when I was needed, fit into that?
* * *
Chris and I were alone on a small jet flying out of a private airport outside Rome, taking up two of the eight seats. The rest were empty. We’d stayed in the apartment in Trastevere another week, missing the Como festival. I’d been too wound up to take the short hop to Tuscany. I spoke less, got lost in thought mid-sentence, stared out the window for too long.
I hadn’t told Chris about Lucia’s offer. I wanted to think about it first, but I just kept thinking.
Would I be separated from Chris for weeks? Months?
How could I ask him to prioritize my work and his at the same time?
What did the future look like if I did this?
We were in the air before he spoke. “Catherine.”
“Yes?”
“When we get home, is this over?”
“What?” I was too shocked to make a whole sentence. How could he think that? What had I done?
“Just tell me.”
“Wait…” I twisted in my seat to face him. He’d shaved off his beard, and his eyes were soulful and honest. Had he looked this mournful since I spoke to Lucia? How hadn’t I noticed?
“I want you to be happy,” he said. “But you’ve been saddish.”
Saddish? I’d been thinking about my life, for sure. Who I was. What I wanted. He’d turned that into me wanting to leave him, and that wasn’t going to work.
“Christopher Carmichael.” I grabbed the front of his shirt. “You are a piece of my happiness.” I tugged the fabric. “You are the love of my life. Do you hear? Do not ever imply this is over unless you want to end it.”
“Then what’s on your mind?”
I let go of his shirt and smoothed it down. “I wanted to think about something before I told you.”
“Well, you’ve thought enough. We’re partners. You don’t get to think that much without me. Out with it.”
Lucia had put the official offer in an email. I got it up on my phone and showed it to him. His expression went from mild irritation (probably with his ex-wife) to deep consideration, to a sharp nod as he handed the phone back.
“You taking it?”
“I don’t know. I want to, because I’m bored. Not with you,” I said quickly. “Not with you at all. Not with traveling or the new places. I love all the people. I love seeing things I never thought I would, and there are so many things I never even imagined. Northern lights. Pompeii. So much. But I’m bored with myself. I don’t have a purpose. I’m not fighting for anything. It’s like…”
I’m dead inside.
But that was too harsh and unfair. He’d breathed life into my heart, but there was only so much he could be for me.
“It’s like you need to become the next version of yourself.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re not going to get there globetrotting.”
“Right!”
“But you’re afraid you’ll lose me if you have your own needs.”
He’d hit the bull’s-eye, and he knew it. I couldn’t look at him.
He unsnapped his seatbelt, then undid mine. He looked down the aisle to the front of the plane. The attendant was tapping on her phone in the galley. He craned his neck to the back of the plane, then stood and held his hand out to me. “Come with me or I’ll carry you.”
I laid my fingers in his palm, and he pulled me to the sleeping quarters and snapped the door shut, cutting us off from the rest of the plane. We were alone with a tiny bed and a standing shower. He
unbuttoned his shirt.
“Chris, really?”
“Really. I don’t know how to make you believe me.” He shrugged off his shirt and made short work of his pants. In seconds, he was as naked as the day he was born. “Do you see me?”
I took in the beauty of his naked body, but when I laid my hand on his chest, he moved it away. “I see you.”
“I have nothing.” His voice was cut through with resolve and hunger. “This is me with nothing. I came in this way, and I’ll go out this way. This body? It has needs. I need food, water, and sleep, okay? That’s how it stays alive. I have a brain. It comes with the package. It needs to work and to figure things out. If I’m not doing that, I’m dead, because it’s here, in the skin. And I have a heart. When I’m naked and all the other shit is gone, it’s part of me. It needs you. You.”
He was making my point for me. I nodded, about to explain that I understood. He needed me and if I was doing something else, his basic needs wouldn’t be cared for. But he took my shirt at the hem and pulled it over my head.
“Chris, I—”
“Give me a minute. I’m not done.” He stripped me down until I was naked and vulnerable in front of him. “You come with this package.” He looked at all of me as if cataloging. No lust. No lingering on the most feminine parts. “It needs food, water, sleep, shelter. Your heart needs love, and that you have covered, by me. But the mind?” He took my head in his hands and kissed my forehead. “It’s been neglected long enough.”
When I blinked, tears fell onto my cheeks. I swallowed hard, took a hitching breath, and tried to thank him, but I couldn’t.
He went from my forehead to my temples, my cheekbones, my jaw, my chin, and hovered over my lips. “I won’t allow you to die. Not any part of you.”
I couldn’t hold myself back. I threw my arms around his shoulders and kissed him with everything I had, and he let me. He leaned back and sat on the bed, still connected to me at the mouth. I felt his erection between us, and my entire body—with its need for food, water, and sleep—needed it. My heart, with its need for his love, needed it. My mind, with its yet undiscovered needs, needed it. I lifted myself on my knees and he guided himself into me.
“I love you, Catherine of the Roses.”
“And you. I love you.”
I moved against him in a rhythm that gave both of us what we needed, together.
Epilogue
CATHERINE
He’d planned his proposal with the care and patience of a lawyer arguing before the Supreme Court. He’d had the ring, the place, and the time.
Unfortunately, my flight out of Sri Lanka had been delayed. He’d spent the first week with me, then gone back to New York. I was supposed to follow, and he was supposed to propose at the top of Freedom Tower. Instead, he’d met me at the airport, carried me upstairs half asleep, and put the ring on my finger while I was dreaming.
Of course I’d said yes. I may have been crazy busy, but I wasn’t crazy.
And now, here I was under a tin ceiling painted with roses in a designer wedding gown my fiancé’s ex-wife had commissioned. It was gorgeous. The veil was set in my hair with roses. My nails were done, and my lipstick softened my face.
Lucia was behind me in a pink business suit, hooking the back of the dress closed. Marsha was pinning and repinning my hair.
“I love it,” I said.
“Of course you do,” Lucia replied.
“Chris is going to fall in love all over again,” Marsha said. “He hasn’t seen you yet, has he?”
“Not for a week.”
We’d been separated for that long before. We had been apart for three weeks when I was setting up a school for girls in Morocco, but this week had been the hardest. He had stayed with Johnny while I stayed at the house, planning everything with Lucia and Harper. And Taylor, of course, who’d found his way back to Harper. But that was another story entirely.
Outside, I heard kids playing and guests laughing. Everyone was coming. The entire town, the board of Montano, our friends from New York. Everyone.
There was a commotion downstairs, in the living room. Someone was calling for Father Grady. I wasn’t supposed to go down. Chris had promised a surprise.
Harper banged up the stairs and threw herself into the room. Her sentence was one long word. “Cassie-the-pregnant-FBI-agent-her-water-broke-so-they-need-to-get-married.”
Cassie the Pregnant FBI agent was with Keaton the Handsome Brit in the Dark Shirt from my birthday party.
“Okay?”
“She’s trying to leave. She doesn’t want to take the wind out of your sails.”
“Nonsense.” I gathered up my skirt.
“Can’t they have the baby first?” Lucia objected.
“I don’t know!” Harper said. “It’s a thing!”
“Americans are such prudes.”
Whatever the reason, it wasn’t for me to judge why they felt as though they had to get married first. I flew down the stairs as a voice with an English accent floated over the confusion.
“We need rings!”
“Use ours!” I called as I was halfway down. Father Grady was putting on his stole and flipping through his book of sacraments. “Chris! Give them the rings!”
Chris spun around and put his hand over his eyes. “I’m not looking at you!”
“Who has them?” I shouted, then froze. The mantel, the wall, the entire side of the room where we were to be married was crammed with roses.
“The best man,” Chris said from behind his hand. “Back upstairs, woman!”
I couldn’t back away. Couldn’t turn from the roses. “Chris.”
Johnny came in from the back in a long-tailed tuxedo jacket and bolero tie. “I got it.”
The clamor went on as people shifted and took new places. Taylor was Keaton’s best friend, so he acted as best man for the moment.
“The roses,” I said.
Chris had given up on not looking at me and laid his hands on the bannister. “You’re beautiful.”
“So many.”
“Seven hundred forty and, well, we were short five. Now we’re up five.”
I searched his face for a moment, trying to place the need for over seven hundred roses.
“The garden’s down ten though. I promised I wouldn’t cut from there, but we have some helpful people around who did it anyway.”
* * *
This is a guarantee. I pay my debts. I’m coming back with the money and more. And when I do, I’m bringing you a rose for every dollar.
* * *
“I remember.”
“I kept my promise.”
“You did.”
“Except about the garden.”
“You kept your promise, Chris.” I went down the stairs, and he met me at the bottom. “You kept promises you didn’t even make. You made me whole.”
“You made you whole. I just watched it happen.”
The impromptu ceremony ended with cheers as the groom kissed the bride. Taylor kissed Harper. Couples I barely knew kissed.
And Christopher Carmichael, the lost boy who’d become a man, the persistent letter writer, owner and friend to a puppy named for a knight, looked at my lips in their sweet pink hue and leaned in.
“No!” Harper shouted and wedged herself between us. “You waited thirteen years. You can wait another ten minutes.” She pushed me up the steps. “Go go go.”
“She’s not even hooked in back!” Lucia shouted from the top of the stairs.
Chris kissed my hand before it slipped away. “See you in ten minutes, Catherine of the Roses.”
“See you forever, Christopher Carmichael.”
I went back up to my room, and under a ceiling of roses, I prepared to spend the rest of my life becoming who I was meant to be.
* * *
THE END
Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed Chris and Catherine.
Harper and Taylor’s story is told in King of Code. I put chapters in the back if you
want to check it out.
Keaton and Cassie’s story is told in the standalone Prince Charming. I’ve put a few chapters in the back for your perusal.
* * *
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King of Code
Where Taylor Harden, a man with an unhackable system, finds his heart thoroughly decoded by our Harper Barrington.
I
Steve Jobs. Bill Gates. Jeff Bezos.
Kings. Emperors. Rulers of kingdoms they built with their own hands. Their own sweat. Nobodies who clawed their way to the top with sheer grit.
Everett Fitzgerald. Even my buddy Fitz is a king.
Rockefeller. Carnegie. Ford. Vanderbilt.
They changed the world.
I’m about to become one of those guys.
Decades from now, they’re going to talk about what I’m about to release into the world. Where I thought of it. What I ate for breakfast. How I got here. I worked harder, thought bigger, drilled deeper. I changed myself from the inside out to get here.
Today, I am granted meetings with kings.
In thirteen days I, Taylor Harden, become a king of kings.
II
There’s going to come a day I don’t have to fuck in the supply closet.
One leg over my shoulder, the other dropping off the side of the table, naked enough to get the job done, but clothed enough for waistbands and shirttails to get in the way. I hadn’t fucked in a bed in four years. I didn’t see my apartment for weeks at a time. I’d showered at the gym until we bought the QI4HQ and warehouse, then I put a shower stall in my office.
“Harder,” she grunted in the dark. “Fuck me harder.”
