Hold You Against Me (Stripped 4)

All the paths lead to the middle of the space, where a three-tiered fountain pours water from a pineapple at the top. Except when I reach the middle, it’s gone. As far as I can tell, the walls and the plants are exactly how I left them. But the fountain is missing. In its place is a large plot of bare ground.

The heat of Giovanni’s body is a gentle caress at my back, letting me know I’m caught.

I could keep running, but I’m mesmerized by the flat circle of dirt. So much about this mansion remained the same. Even things I would think a man would prefer to change, to make himself more comfortable, to decorate to his tastes. It’s almost as if it’s been preserved like a museum.

Except for this. “Where did it go?”

He doesn’t pretend not to know. “I didn’t like it.”

My room, the same. My father’s office, the same. The ballroom with its parquet floor and orchestral booth, the same. “Not a fan of pineapples?”

“Maybe you can sculpt something for it.”

The soft, almost diffident way he offers it makes my voice catch. This is real. The wedding tomorrow that I still can’t quite comprehend. Giovanni standing behind me. This life he thinks we’ll build together. All of it is made real by his hesitant offer to let me sculpt something for the mansion. In this he is totally unlike my father, who dismissed my work as a child’s scribbles.

“You would let me?”

“I would love it,” he says, his voice hoarse.

A shiver runs over my skin. Could I really make a marriage out of this? Could I really accept the life I’d always fought because I had no other choice? Part of me wants to forget about the drugs and the limo. To pretend like I’m here because I want to be here. The other part of me knows that a man holding power over a woman can never be a partnership. I would always be his prisoner.

I take a small step to the side, skirting the patch of empty earth. The brick walkway is cold under my feet. “What would I sculpt?”

The beads on my dress catch the faint light, shimmering like the drops of water on leaves. I feel a little bit unearthly, the way I’m shining in the dark. A little bit beautiful, the way he can’t seem to stop looking at me.

He remains where I left him. “Anything.”

Something gnaws at me, the question of why that one random thing offended him enough to remove it. “But not a pineapple?”

A pause. “If you like.”

“On top of a fountain?”

“No.” His tone doesn’t invite more questions.

I continue walking the circle, considering the space, considering him. They’re not so different. I want to figure out what to sculpt for the space. The process feels less like creating and more like whittling away, taking away bits of air in my mind until the right shape forms. I’d never actually have sculpted a pineapple on top of a fountain, but it’s curious that he doesn’t want me to.

Giovanni is another puzzle I have to chip away at until I find the shape of him, whittle away at this cold, powerful exterior to find what’s underneath.

“I found your obituary.”

He blinks, faintly startled. “You looked?”

“I loved you, remember?”

The shadows at his neck move as he swallows. “You shouldn’t have seen that.”

“Or I guess it shouldn’t have been written. It wasn’t true.” I’ve come full circle around the plot of dirt. There are paths leading away in multiple directions, walls of black alternating with walls of ivy. It creates a kind of int

imacy between us, something even more private than when we’re alone in my room.

“It was true enough for my mother. She wrote it.”

I come to a stop in front of him, heart aching. I never spent much time with his mother, but he talked about her. She was pious and dutiful, the way a good Italian wife should be. Very religious. “She thought you were dead?”

“I was gone for a long time. She didn’t know where.”

I hear the pain in those words, and anger rushes up. “But you would have me disappear from Honor without a trace? So she can put my obituary in the newspaper?”