by Nichole Van
The man from my vision continued toward us. He was older, gray stubble peppering his leathery cheeks. His emotions were wary and guarded—undercurrents of resentment and anger—though I sensed some interest in Olivia. He kept his eyes on her as he approached.
“Salve,” I greeted him formally in Italian.
“Good morning,” he returned in accented Italian, dragging his gaze from Olivia. “How may I help you?”
Wasn’t that the question of the hour? “We wish to speak with one of your elders. We have mystical questions to which we seek answers.”
The elderly man stared me down. Irritation and anger flared. “We are a peaceful people. We are not monkeys to perform for you.”
“I understand that.” I spread my hands wide, palms up. “We have felt guided to come here. Will you please help us?”
The man studied me for a moment longer, his eyes drawing back to Olivia. He scratched his chin, his emotions moving from anger to irritation to pensive and back to anger.
“I cannot help you,” he finally said.
My heart sank. Why had my vision sent us here just to be rejected?
Olivia looked back and forth between us, obviously not following our quick Italian.
“He says he can’t help,” I murmured to her.
“Seriously? We drove for two hours to get here.”
“I know.”
“You saw us coming here in a vision.”
“Also true.”
“We need help—”
“You have a vision?” The elderly man interrupted us in broken English.
“Yes!” Olivia clasped her hands together. “Can you help us?”
The man shook his head, still staring at her. “I can no help you.”
He paused and looked away. His emotions morphed back to pensive.
He turned to me, continuing in Italian. “I cannot help you, but there is one outside Rome who might consent to talk to you. She may have answers.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe this hadn’t been a complete waste of time.
“Thank you,” I said.
“You are lucky you caught me in a good mood.” He said the words in Italian to me, but his eyes never left Olivia. “Let me give you directions to her.”
A few minutes later, we were back on the road again. This time headed south.
“So now we’re driving to Rome?” Olivia asked.
“Approximately. We’re headed to the Lago di Bracciano area, which is a lake just north of Rome.”
“Gotcha. How long is the drive?”
“A little over three hours.”
A pause.
“What’s the best way to do this drive? It can’t be easy for you,” she asked. “Surely there’s something more I can do than just be here.”
This woman.
Intuitively, she understood that the journey so far had been difficult and that driving hours through city after city . . .
“Tu potresti sposarmi ed essere il mio amore per tutto il resto della mia vita.” The Italian tumbled from my lips.
You can marry me and be my love for the rest of my life.
Olivia shot me a confused look.
Right.
I seriously needed to get a hold of myself.
I shook my head, like I hadn’t meant to speak in Italian. “Let’s map a way down on backroads, bypassing the larger cities and staying in the country. That will help minimize the mental noise.”
She consulted her phone, tapping in a route for us.
I navigated through the crowded streets of Prato.
Silence hung in the car. Emotions pounded—lonelinessdespairgriefelationworrystressrage.
Unbidden, the feeling of falling flared through me, the chain snapping.
It would be so easy. One step off a cliff. A building. A medieval tower.
And I would be free.
Free of the guilt of Zach’s death. Free of my selfishness that hurt those I love. Free of the danger of killing Olivia.
Most importantly, free of this damned curse—
Stop.
Those are lies.
I took a deep breath, reaching again for Olivia’s soothing void. It continued to help, but for how long? My ability to withstand the emotional battering was not infinite.
“Talk to me,” I said. Staying in my own head and stewing on others’ emotions was a surefire way to trigger a vision.
From the corner of my eye, Olivia froze. “Uhmm, okay.” She chewed on her cheek, tucking an errant curl behind her ear. “About what?”
“Anything. Talking helps.”
“Okay.”
More silence as Olivia continued to chew on her lip.
Then, she abruptly changed. She straightened her spine; her head instantly went upright. She crossed her legs and canted her body toward me. A too-bright smile fixed on her face.
“You mentioned that you work for your brothers. What do you do for them?” she asked. Polite. Succinct. Almost rehearsed.
What had I just witnessed?
Feeling off-guard, I said, “Come again?”
For some reason, my follow-up caught her unawares. “Uhmm.” Olivia shifted, clearly flustered. “Your work? You said you have a job?”
“Yes. I help with art provenance and research, mostly online, obviously.”
“Right.” Her shoulders slumped and she chewed on the inside of her mouth again, sucking her left cheek inward. “Do you enjoy it?”
“Yes. I like helping them.”
Silence.
I pulled through a large roundabout and bypassed the entrance to the wide autostrada that led to Rome, and instead merged onto a rural highway. Tall apartment blocks flashed by—cream stucco, green shutters, terracotta roofs.
Olivia looked ahead, saying nothing.
“Did I say something wrong?” I asked.
“What?” Her head whipped back to me. “Oh, of course not. I’m just sorting through questions looking for the good ones.”
“The good ones?”
“Well . . . the proper ones.”
“You want to ask me proper questions? Since when did we become so formal with each other?” I shot her a quick grin, forcefully repressing all the inappropriate questions I wanted to ask her.
Olivia smiled in return, though her expression was still not quite genuine. “I figured I should try to be less of a freak. Katrina always says I should reject the first fourteen questions that come into my head.”
“Katrina?”
“My communications coach, Katrina.”
A moment while I unpacked all the implications of that.
“You have a communications coach?” I asked. “Why would you need a coach?”
Olivia’s returning look was definitely disbelieving. “Uh, you heard the whole part about rejecting the first fourteen questions that pop into my head, right? Only a freak takes fourteen tries before reaching a non-intrusive question.”
“You’re not a freak, Olivia. Sei il mio angelo. Sei perfetta.”
You’re my angel. You’re perfect.
I said the words on a rush. I hated that my woman thought of herself as a freak.
Hated. It.
“Why fourteen questions?” I continued. “That seems . . . oddly specific.”
Olivia shrugged, like this was normal. “Yes, well, Katrina started by rejecting the first five questions. But, turns out, I need more of a buffer between my brain and my mouth than simply five. So we worked on it and eventually landed on fourteen as the point where my brain will start to offer more socially acceptable questions.”
There was so much wrong with that explanation, I didn’t even know where to begin.
What had happened to Olivia that she thought of herself that way? Was this her parents’ doing? Michael’s?
“I’m still struggling to understand what’s wrong with your first fourteen questions.”
Olivia sighed and melted back into her seat, her dark curls spreading around her head. Sunlight grazed her cheek, kiss
ing the tip of her nose, highlighting the golden smoothness of her skin.
“Man, where to start with that. My parents hired Katrina after a garden party where ended up in a conversation with the Japanese ambassador. I asked him if he became the dictator of a small island nation, what crazy dictator stuff would he do?”
A bark of laughter escaped me. “You didn’t! To the Japanese ambassador, no less?”
“To my mother’s everlasting horror, I most certainly did. In my defense, it was a totally legit question. The man looked like a caricature of the typical animé villain—dressed with eerie precision, lots of hair gel, deep rumbly voice. It was only logical that my mind went there. Well, for my oddball brain, at least.”
“So what was the answer?” I had to ask it.
“From the Japanese ambassador? Nothing, unfortunately. He looked really uncomfortable and excused himself.”
“Your question must have hit too close to home.”
“Exactly!” Olivia tucked a foot underneath herself, bouncing a little. “That’s exactly what I said.”
“It’s a great question for weeding out career politicians with delusions of fascist grandeur.”
“Gah! Yes! See, you get it. My mom didn’t appreciate my thought process when I pointed it out, however. She said I was one clumsy question away from causing an international incident, which fine, I get it, but still. Sometimes you need to know these things.”
Silence.
“Pajama Mondays,” I said into the silence.
Olivia turned her head to me, expression a question mark.
“That’s what I would do with my dictatorial powers. I’d insist that every Monday the entire country had to wear pajamas all day.”
Olivia chuckled. “That’s way too tame. You clearly need to work on thinking through the scope of your dictatorial-ness. If nothing else, insist on bacon delivery drones.”
I laughed. “I want to hear the fourteen questions you rejected asking me. They sound like more my speed.”
“Are you serious?”
“Does Hollywood love Botox?”
Olivia rubbed her hands together, giggling a little maniacally.
“Don’t let the power go to your head,” I chuckled.
“Too late. You’re stuck with me now. Okay, so questions I’m dying to know the answer to. There are two types of people in this world. What are the two types?”
That was easy. “Those that like Barry Manilow and those with musical taste.”
“No!” Olivia gasped in mock-outrage. “I’m not buying that. My taste in music rocks—pun intended—and I love Copacabana.” She named one of Manilow’s better-known songs. “Besides, my eighth-grade biology teacher used to play saxophone in Barry’s band—”
“Shut up.”
“No, it’s totally true, I swear. He said they called him ‘Bare-ly Man-Enough’ behind his back.”
I guffawed. “Stop it. You’re lying.”
“Not even. I felt kinda bad for Barry. Like here’s this man at the pinnacle of his career, and the guys in his own band make fun of him.”
“And find the experience so distasteful they quit the band to teach eighth-grade biology?”
“Yeah. See. It’s sad.”
I chuckled. It was more funny than sad, but whatever.
“And you?” I countered. “What are your two types of people?”
“The people you drink with and those who make you want to drink.”
True that.
“Next question,” Olivia continued. “Who else did you have as a pet growing up? I’ve met Elvis, but who else?”
I huffed, wanting to make sure I clearly understood her question. “Not what kind of pet, but who?”
“Exactly. Do you collect the souls of washed-up, rock-n-roll bad boys? Misogynistic ’60s sitcom stars?”
“I wish. My first memory of a pet was a calico cat named Attila—”
“No way.”
I shrugged. “I have no idea, actually. Dante was too young for his gift to have manifested to that level yet, but Attila was vicious. We then had a bearded terrier my mom called Rasputin.”
Olivia’s eyes went wide, dark curls tumbling around her jaw.
“Again, not sure if that one was accurate, though Dante did say he had a long beard in one of his past lives, so who knows. More recently, we had a white rat named Boney who died last year.”
“Boney?”
“Yep. Does it help if I tell you Chiara sometimes put a tiny tricorn hat on him?”
Olivia pursed her lips. “Napoleon Bonaparte?”
I nodded.
“So Attila, Rasputin and Boney? You seem to prefer pets with aspirations of world domination.”
“We’ve always been an ambitious family, what can I say?” I grinned. “And you? Pets?”
She sighed. “No pets. My dad has allergies. Unless Michael counts?”
“I’m not sure I would categorize Michael as a ‘pet’.”
Public nuisance, perhaps. But not a pet.
“Along the theme of animals, if you could breed two animals together to make a new animal, what would you create?” she asked.
“A wee-wolf.” I didn’t even hesitate. “A cross between a weasel and a wolf.”
Her brow scrunched. “Why would you do that?”
“Mostly just so I could call it a wee-wolf.”
She laughed. “Mine would be a llamacorn.”
“A llama and a unicorn? You do realize that unicorns don’t exist, right?”
“I’ve got my fingers in my ears singing, la la la la. Did you say something?”
I glanced over. Sure enough, she had her fingers in her ears, staring at me through her elbow.
“Nice.”
“Whew. That was close.” She pulled her fingers out of her ears. “Llamacorns are my spirit animal.”
Happiness bubbled through me—an intoxicating mixture of infatuation, obsession, delight and affection. Again, the emotions all my own.
I worshiped this woman. She slotted into my soul, the puzzle piece I had always been missing.
I couldn’t stop smiling.
I wanted to shout my adoration from the rooftops.
I wanted her fourteen questions every day.
I never wanted to be apart from her.
I was in so much trouble.
“Favorite dad joke?” she asked.
“Why does Norway put bar codes on the sides of their ships?”
“Why?”
“So when they come back to port, they can quickly Scandinavian.”
Olivia obligingly groaned. “That’s so bad it’s good.”
“That is the general goal of a dad joke. What’s yours?”
“A dung beetle walks into a bar and asks, ‘Is this stool taken?’”
I snorted. “Nice. What do you call a dog that can do magic?”
“Hah!” She pointed a finger at me. “A labracadabrador. More questions. What’s the best single day on the calendar?”
I had to think about that one. “June twenty-first. It has the most sunlight of any day of the year. You?”
“January seventh.”
A beat. “That’s . . . odd.”
“No, it’s really not.” She shook her head. “It’s the day when all the craziness of December is done, and we can finally get down to just enjoying winter, ya know.”
Now that she mentioned it, I did know. “It’s the perfect snow day, curl up with a good book and drink hot chocolate in front of a fire.”
“Yeah.”
The scene flashed through me. A snowy day in a mountain lodge. Us together on a cushy couch, Olivia in my arms, my lips buried in her hair—
I practically hurled the image from my brain.
Not helping.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
I shot her a questioning glance.
She smiled, but it was only a cousin to a smile. The kind that is spiked all around with a sort of melancholy.
That near-constant ache spread
through my chest, blazing wildfire.
“Thanks for making me feel normal,” she said.
“You are normal, anima mia. We’re all our own brand of unique, right?”
“Right.” But her tone said she didn’t believe it.
It punched through me, a flash of insight.
The comments about being a freak. Her almost incessant self-deprecation.
My Olivia considered herself broken.
Fury followed in right behind that thought, the emotion all my own.
Who had convinced a woman as incredible as Olivia that she was broken? How could my Olivia ever think of herself as anything but perfect just as she was?
Worse, I wanted to counteract all that damage. I wanted to let her know that she was brilliant and hilarious and perfect and . . . and . . .
“You’ve gone pretty silent there, big guy.” She poked my arm. “Not to mention frowny and stoic. Everything okay?”
I wanted to rage at her, love and caress her until she understood at a visceral level exactly how remarkable she was.
My chest physically hurt with the effort it took to swallow back my words.
Be better than this.
Save her from yourself.
“I want to circle back to Barry Manilow,” I said instead. “Tell me about your guilty music listening pleasures.”
She laughed. “Are you sure you want to hear about my obsession with boy bands?”
“Only if you’re up for my Enya monologue.”
“Shut it. You can’t be serious.”
“Don’t you dare mock Enya. I love that woman.”
NINETEEN
Olivia
We arrived at the gypsy camp north of Rome by late afternoon.
And I thought I had liked Tennyson before the drive . . .
Being with him was like finding the other half of me I had never known was missing. Once I looked past his flashy exterior, I realized that there was a lonely, awkward, dorkalicious poet of a man trapped inside.
Talk about false advertising. Sure, he was one of the Hot People, but he couldn’t help that any more than I could help my broken brain.
Hmmmm. I might have to reevaluate my Venn diagram assumptions.
I discreetly took a photo of Tennyson as he drove and texted it to Langley.
Her response:
Please tell me this is as date-ish as it looks. Cause from where I’m sitting, it looks mighty fine.