POV: Jasmine
The villa came up at the top of the hill the way it had every afternoon that week, but my chest did not unclench at the sight of it.
The cypresses, the white wall, the long terrace. The picture had not changed. The picture was supposed to be the antidote. The picture was not working.
The cold place under my collarbone, the one that had opened in the salon when Finn said the word Jackson, had not closed. It had widened. It had grown a small steady pulse, the way a bruise grew one when you pressed it without meaning to.
Something is wrong. I do not know what.
Nora drove. She had not spoken since the salon.
I sat in the passenger seat running a list I could not finish. Who else has Jackson called this week. What was the second move under the first one. Why this week.
"Stop," Nora said, gentle.
I shook my head without looking at her. "I did not say anything."
"You are saying it anyway," she told me, her hands steady on the wheel. "I can hear it from here. Stop." I tried.
The gravel ended. I sat in the car a beat longer than I needed to. Walk in. Smile. He cannot see you arrive like this. I got out.
The kitchen was open to the courtyard, all the doors thrown wide, and I heard Aurora before I saw her — that high, wild laugh she made only when Liam was being ridiculous on purpose. The sound should have softened me. It did not. It hit a layer of static and stopped halfway.
She came around the corner at full speed.
"MAMA —" Aurora grabbed my hand and pulled. "Papa says I can have two gelatos because we are on holiday and one is for the body and one is for the soul, and I picked the body one already, so —"
"So now you need permission for the soul one." I knelt and picked her up. Hold her. Get the smile right. "What flavour was the body one?"
Aurora held up a sticky finger. "Pistachio. And the soul is chocolate. With the little pieces."
"That is a very serious soul, baby," I said, pressing my nose into her hair.
She squirmed against my arms. "I know, Mama." I let her down.
Liam came around the corner with a dish towel over his shoulder and flour on the side of his jaw. He smiled when he saw me.
Then he read my face.
The shift was small and fast. He did not change the smile. He recalibrated underneath it. His eyes moved across my face once.
He saw it. Now he is going to wait. He never asks in front of her.
"How was the dress?" he said, mild.
I set my bag down on the counter. "It is a beautiful dress."
He tilted his head, reading deeper. "That bad?"
"No, actually beautiful," I told him. "Fine and pinned and hung. I like it."
He nodded, letting it rest. "Good."
Aurora had moved on to a small plastic horse and was lobbying it for something I could not make out.
Nora dropped her bag on a stool. "Photo," she announced. "All three of you. On the terrace. The light is doing the thing."
I looked at her. "The thing?"
"The Italian thing," she said, already steering us toward the doors. "I will not be told no."
We went out onto the terrace.
The light was, in fact, doing the thing. The hills had gone honey-gold. It should have been beautiful. It was beautiful. Why does it not feel beautiful. Why does it feel like the inside of a held breath.
Nora lined us up against the low stone railing. Liam on my left. Aurora between us. His hand warm and certain against my hip.
Nora crouched with the phone. "Look at me, baby. Eyes here."
I made my face do the thing faces did for cameras.
Aurora did not look at the camera. She had tipped her chin up and was staring at her father with the absorbed, unguarded face of a child who had decided he was the centre of the room.
Something in my chest pulled hard. I did not have a name for it.
Nora took the photo. Took a second. Took a third.
I do not know yet that the second photo will be the one. I will know it after.
Nora swung Aurora up onto her hip. "Gelato, soul edition. I will supervise. You two stay out here."
The terrace went quiet.
Liam took my hand and walked me to the far end, past the lemon tree, to the corner where the wall dropped away. He turned me to face him. He did not let go.
"Tell me," he said, and his voice was low and open, the voice that meant he had cleared everything else out of the way.
I told him. The dresses. The seam tearing. Finn's voice on the velvet bench. Asher being made to rest. Jackson filing through the back door of a wedding week. The verbal confirmation, given on the box, in a dress that was just fine.
He listened and did not interrupt.
"You handled it," he said.
"I handled it," I told him. "Finn handled it first. I just confirmed."
His thumb moved, slow and deliberate, across the back of my knuckles. "Then Finn handled it. Listen to me."
I looked up at him. "I am listening."
He held my gaze, steady. "You do not have to be on guard here. Not on this terrace. Not in this villa. Not at our wedding."
I started to pull back. "Liam —"
"I know who you are," he said, holding my hand tighter. "I know the part of you that does not turn off. I am asking the rest of you, the part that gets to be tired, to come and stand on this side of the wall with me for the rest of the week. Jackson is in another country. Finn has it. I want you here. With me. Not in your head. Here."
I opened my mouth. I was going to tell him.
Tell him there is something wrong. Tell him you have been waiting for something all day, all week, since the cabin last night. Tell him your body knows something your head has not caught up to yet.
The words were lined up. Liam, something is — Liam, I have this — Liam, I cannot —
There was nothing after.
Foreboding without an event is not information. It is nerves. He cannot do anything with nerves. He is asking you to set them down. Give him this.
I closed my mouth. The dread did not close with it.
"I love you," I said instead, and heard my own voice break on the second word.
He smiled — the private one. "That is what I wanted."
I pressed my forehead against his chest. "Liam — I love you. Both times. With everything I have."
He lifted my hand and kissed my knuckles. Slowly. The way he did when he was trying to put something inside me that words could not.
Aurora's voice cut across the terrace from inside. "MAMA. PAPA. The chocolate is melting on my hand."
He laughed — short, helpless, fond — and turned toward the doors. "Crisis. Going."
I pushed him gently in the back. "Go save her."
He let go of my hand. He walked back toward the kitchen at a half-jog. I stood at the corner with the lemon tree at my elbow and the cold place under my collarbone widening into something I could no longer pretend was small.
I should have told him. Tell him later. Maybe tonight after she is asleep.
I turned, and I followed him in.