by Lisa Mangum
Dante immediately held up his hand to stop me in my tracks.
“Abby,” he said, his voice raw with emotion, his eyes searching mine. He reached out his hand toward me, but stopped before he actually touched me; I could see the tremors running through his fingers. The light wreathed the gold around his wrists with a pale shimmer. “Is it really you?”
I had so many questions, but I swallowed them all. Dante’s focus was so intense that I felt the pressure of it inside me. He took a step closer and the tension in the air between us changed, suddenly filling with endless potential, limitless possibilities, and unspoken promises.
Dante began to circle around me slowly, drinking in the sight of me from all angles. I shifted a little, turning slightly to keep my face toward him. I wanted to see as much of him as I could too. To be so close to him and yet no closer was agony. Once again, I shifted my weight from my heels to my toes, ready to take that final step and be in his arms.
“No,” he said, his voice low in his throat. “Not yet. Wait.”
I closed my eyes, all my senses attuned to tracking his progress as he stepped closer to me in an ever-tightening spiral. I could feel him behind me, the heat from his body arcing to mine like lightning. A whisper of air breathed along the back of my neck, and the hairs on the backs of my arms lifted in response. I felt him curve around my right side, and I turned my face to follow him like a flower tracking the summer sun. He passed in front of me, and I caught his familiar musky scent. I heard the rustle of his clothes as he walked slowly and deliberately around me, close enough to touch, but still a world away.
Then I felt him lean down and I heard him whisper in my ear, “Mio angelo. You are even more beautiful than I remember. How is that possible?”
I shivered as much from the nearness of his lips to my skin as I did from the words. The darkness behind my eyes spun and I swayed, dizzy as though I had been the one spinning instead of standing still, caught in the vortex of his desire.
Dante stood behind me, his fingers lighting on the curve of my neck, his touch as delicate as a snowflake falling and as hot as lava. I bowed my head, inhaling quickly as the heat from his touch scorched through me. I felt him gently lift the chain of my silver necklace with his thumb. He brushed the tip of his finger over the brand that remained on my skin.
“This is new,” he said.
He followed the mark with his fingers as it curved around my neck and crossed the front of my collarbone. He paused for a moment, and I was sure he could feel the pounding of my heartbeat like the aftershocks of an earthquake. He slipped his hands back over my shoulders, pressing his palms flat against my shoulder blades. Then he placed a soft kiss on the nape of my neck where the clasp of the locket rested.
“I am sorry that holding my heart has brought you pain.”
I opened my eyes and turned quickly in his embrace to face him. I could see myself reflected in his dark, star-shaded eyes.
I couldn’t stand it any longer; I had to touch him. I pressed my body to his, cupping his face with my hands, my palms fitting naturally along his cheeks, his jaw. “It was worth it so long as I could keep your heart safe—keep you safe.”
Threading my fingers through his hair, I pulled him to me, finally claiming the kiss I had dreamed about since the black door had closed behind him on the bank.
I could tell he was surprised at my insistence, but only for a moment. Then his lips warmed beneath mine, shaping themselves to match mine, returning gentleness for my fierceness until I was finally convinced that he wasn’t a dream, that he wasn’t going to disappear into the darkness again, that the Dante I had been waiting for had truly and completely returned to me.
Pulling back a fraction of an inch, I smiled at him. “Welcome home,” I said. And then I kissed him again.
Chapter
18
Sometime later, I slowly felt the world stop spinning and start to return to normal.
Dante still held me close, his hands locked around the small of my back and his cheek pressed against the top of my head. “Grazie, Abby,” he whispered. “Thank you for keeping your promise.”
“How could I not? I’m just following your example.” I traced my fingers along the back of his neck. I loved the feel of his skin. All those months when he had held himself apart from me, afraid to touch me because he knew too much contact would upset his carefully controlled balance, and then the weeks when he’d been a voice in the darkness had been terrible. I was relieved to think that perhaps those times were behind us.
I tightened my grip. “It didn’t hurt you, did it? The darkness, I mean.”
A tremor ran through his body. “It didn’t want to let me go,” he said quietly. “Once Tony was . . .” He cleared his throat. “Once I was alone, it seemed to be worse. It was like, instead of an absence of time, there was a concentration of it. Almost like the process was accelerating.” He pulled me closer. “I’d forgotten how intense it could be.”
“I’m sorry about Tony,” I said, trying to focus on the good memories I had of him instead of the sound of his screams. “I wish I could have saved him, too.”
Dante leaned back to look at me, his eyes soft and warm.
“What?” I asked.
“Tony wasn’t your friend. You barely knew him, and what you did know about him wasn’t good. He brought pain into your life. And yet, you would have saved him like you saved me if you’d had the chance.”
“I would have tried,” I said, feeling a little embarrassed. “No one should be lost in the dark.”
“I was lost,” Dante said, his face serious. “There, at the end. I knew I couldn’t hold out much longer, and I didn’t want to go without a fight. Not when I knew you were fighting so hard to reach me.”
I bit my lip, remembering Valerie’s story about Dante searching in the dark. I knew now how close I had come to losing him forever.
“And then I found it. The door opened, and there you were, calling me out of the darkness into the light.” He gently traced his thumb across my cheek. “You were as bright as the sun. Seeing you there—it was like I could see your soul. It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. You are the bravest person I know, Abigail Edmunds.” Leaning down, he kissed me, gently, intensely.
I felt the heat of his body next to mine as I kissed him back.
Sometime later, lost in the sweetness of his embrace, I almost missed it when Dante said my name.
“Abby?” Dante said again.
“Mm-hmm?” I leaned back a little, opening my eyes. A thrill ran through me at the sight of him. He was still here, really here. I hoped the thought would never get old.
“Um, where are we?”
“The basement of the Dungeon.”
“It looks like someone tried to burn it down.”
“Someone did.”
“Who?”
“This time it was V.”
“What?” Dante said, gently untangling himself from my embrace and taking a step back. “What do you mean ‘this time’?”
I sighed and surveyed the ruined room. “So much has happened since you’ve been gone, I don’t even know where to begin.”
“How about at the beginning?”
I looked up at him and grinned. “Once upon a time, there was a very smart man named Leonardo da Vinci and he built a time machine.”
Dante didn’t smile back.
“Okay, sorry.” I couldn’t help but be a little giddy. Dante was back. That thought filled my brain and made it hard to think about anything else.
“Abby, you said I was trapped in there for weeks. I need to know what’s been happening.” Dante rested his hands on my waist, holding me away from him.
Sighing again, I ran my hands down over his shoulders and his arms. “It’s a long story. I’d rather not get into it down here. Come on.” I clasped his hand in mine and tugged him toward the stairs.
We’d taken only a few steps when Dante stopped in front of the door, pulling me to his side.
/> He tilted his head back, looking up at the towering door. A shiver flashed through his hand; I could feel the sweat break out on his skin.
“V did a good job, didn’t he?” I said quietly. “It’s not as good as yours, of course, but it worked.”
Dante’s throat moved as he swallowed hard. “It shouldn’t have.”
“What?”
He squeezed my hand even tighter. “See this?” He pointed to a cluster of stars in the upper right-hand corner of the frame. “This is supposed to be the constellation for Aquarius, the water-bearer, but it’s missing a star in the pattern. And I don’t see the balance scales of Libra anywhere.”
“But what about the modifications you made? I told V exactly what you told me to do.”
Dante traced the patterns with his free hand, the gold around his wrist bright against the dark wood. His eyes scanned the door as though he could read the secrets written there. “This is good here. And this.” He lapsed into Italian, muttering under his breath. “But why did he do this?” His
fingers jumped to another spot of stars and he exhaled in frustration, shaking his head. “A beginner’s mistake.”
“So, wait, if V didn’t build the door correctly, why did it work?” Anger and confusion warred inside me. I had trusted V; we had a deal. Had he betrayed me? Or was it what Dante had said: a beginner’s mistake? My mouth went dry at the thought that I’d blindly jumped into the unknown when so much was at stake.
“I don’t know.” Dante looked at me with gray eyes gone dark. “I think you made it work.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t do anything. I just wanted you back safe.”
Dante glanced from me to the door. “However it happened, I’m glad you did what you did.” He ran his hand down the spine of the hinge until he reached the center of the
middle square. He pushed on a depression in the brass and the hinge released from the wood with a quiet click. Extracting it from the door, Dante deftly collapsed it back to its portable size. “I don’t think anyone else will try to use the door, but just in case . . .” He handed me the brass machine. “I’ll feel better knowing it’s in good hands.”
I held the hinge against my stomach, feeling the sharp edges with my fingers. I looked up at Dante’s serious, shadowed eyes, and I nodded, accepting the responsibility. I had helped in the creation of this door; in a way it was as much mine as the original had been Dante’s.
“I’ll take good care of it,” I said.
“I know you will,” Dante said. Then he smiled. “Now, can we get out of here? I can’t tell you how much I want to see the sun.”
“You did promise me that when you saw me, you’d sit with me under a tree and tell me all your stories.”
Dante grinned. “You know I always keep my promises.”
“I know you do.” I reached for his hand again, and this time nothing stopped us on our way up the stairs and into the light.
***
“Leo?” I called as I emerged from the basement, blinking in the sunshine. “Leo, it worked!”
Leo turned at the sound of my voice, hope replacing the worry on his face. His faded blue eyes were bright with unshed tears and he crossed the broken ground in four long strides, sweeping Dante into an embrace.
I stepped back as Dante wrapped his arms around Leo’s back and closed his eyes in relief. The lingering tension drained out of Dante’s body as he held tight to the man he thought of as his father. I knew Leo wasn’t Dante’s father, but he was family, and that was what mattered.
I thought about my missing family—my father and my sister—and I felt tears well up in my eyes. I let them fall, brushing them away with my free hand. I wondered if I would ever be able to embrace them again, or if they would be lost to me forever. Dante was back, but we were still a long way from stopping Zo and setting to right all that he had changed.
“I’m so glad you’re all right,” Leo said, holding Dante at arm’s length and looking him over.
Dante laughed. “I’m fine, Papa. I’m fine.”
Leo slapped him on the back and pulled him in for one last hug. “Benvenuto,” he said. “Benvenuto, caro.”
“What happened here?” Dante asked, stepping back and brushing his hand across his eyes. He looked around the wasteland. “Abby said V burned down the Dungeon?”
Leo nodded. “It’s complicated.”
“That’s what Abby said.” Dante put his arm around me, pulling me close.
I leaned against his side, grateful for his strength. The intense emotions were catching up to me and I felt a wave of exhaustion wash through me.
Dante noticed. “Perhaps we should go somewhere else to talk about it. Someplace Abby can sit down.”
“Of course,” Leo said, a concerned line creasing his forehead.
He led us back to his car parked beside the curb, and Dante helped me into the backseat. He slipped into the seat next to me and wrapped his hand firmly around mine.
I rested my head against his shoulder, closing my eyes as he gently brushed my hair away from my face. It felt so good to be close to him that I lost track of where we were until Leo pulled up in front of my house.
Looking out the window, I shook my head. “We should go somewhere else,” I said.
Leo turned around in his seat. “There’s nowhere else to go. You both need some rest and something to eat. And we need to talk about some important things—things best discussed in private.”
“That’s just it,” I said. “If Zo is watching me, tracking me through the places I go, what better place to find me than at home? It’s too dangerous.” My heart sank even though I knew it was the truth. Was there no place safe for me anymore?
“Yes, it’s a risk, but if we’re careful, we should be fine,” Leo said calmly. “There is something to be said for hiding in plain sight, after all.”
I nodded reluctantly. Leo had a point, and no one knew more about hiding in plain sight than he did.
Dante and Leo followed me inside.
“Mom?” I called out. In the old days, Mom would have been home in the afternoon, but now I wasn’t sure what her schedule was. As bad as it sounded, I hoped she was at work. There were too many questions I didn’t want to have to answer, too many things I couldn’t explain.
Luck was on my side. There was a note from my mom taped to the refrigerator: Home late. Order pizza.
I plucked the twenty-dollar bill from beneath a magnet for Pizza Box Delivery. Turning to Dante and Leo, I smiled. “You guys hungry?”
***
Twenty minutes later, the pizza was on its way, the hinge was safely hidden in my sock drawer, the binder was locked in the desk, and Dante was in the shower, his clothes already tumbling in the dryer.
I had insisted that Dante take some time to clean up. He needed to do more than wash away a layer of sweat and grime and, although it might take some time for the shadows to disappear completely from his eyes, I knew how therapeutic a hot shower could be.
I sat down across from Leo at the kitchen table.
Leo looked at me and smiled, his faded blue eyes soft and kind. “Thank you. I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”
I shrugged a little. “You don’t have to repay me. I just was trying to do the right thing. I wanted Dante home as much as you did.”
“I know, but if it weren’t for you—your persistence, your courage—Dante might have been lost forever and we might never have known what happened to him.” Leo drew in a deep breath. “This wasn’t the first time I thought I’d lost him. Saying good-bye to him in Italy was hard enough. But that first year after he traveled through the time machine . . .” Leo shook his head. “I wondered if he would even survive those first few months. And then I wondered, if he did survive, if there would be anything left of my brother at all, or if he’d crack under the constant pressure before he could learn to control it.”
“He doesn’t break easily, you know,” I said, glancing upward. I could hear the water of the shower running th
rough the pipes.
“I know,” Leo said, his face serious. “But he was cracking fierce.”
“So what stopped him?” I asked, intrigued at this hidden chapter of Dante’s past. “What happened?”
Leo smiled at me. “You happened. He met you. And you brought him back to life. So, thank you, Abby. Thank you for bringing my brother back to me. In more ways than one.”
I felt the familiar prickling in my cheeks and nose that warned of tears. I took a deep breath and rubbed my eyes. “You should tell him, you know,” I said. “He should know the truth. It would mean the world to him.”
Leo’s smile turned sad. “I know. And perhaps someday I will. But not right now.”
The doorbell rang at the same time the dryer buzzed. I pushed back from the table. “Would you mind taking Dante his clothes? I’ll take care of the pizza.”
Leo had gone upstairs by the time I returned to the kitchen. I set the box down on the table and headed to the cupboard for plates and glasses.
“Need any help?” Dante asked from the doorway.
I turned around and had to stifle a gasp.
Fresh from the shower and dressed in his clean clothes, he looked like a new man. His skin gleamed like polished wood, and he had slicked back his dark hair to a blunt edge at his neckline. His confidence was back as well, a certain set of his shoulders, a look in his gray eyes that spoke of control and balance.
He locked his gaze with mine and slowly walked toward me.
I caught my breath, wondering how such a beautiful man had ended up in my kitchen, let alone my life.
He stood before me and I could smell the blend of soap and laundry detergent mixed with the musky-sweet scent that I had come to associate with Dante.
His eyes never left mine as he leaned in close, closer, and his arm brushed mine as he reached past me to pluck a glass off the shelf. “Thank you for lunch,” he said, stepping away with a grin just shy of wicked.