Dean’s heart was pounding. That was a tough phone call. He wanted to be with Hazel every minute of his life but he couldn’t stand to be around her anymore without telling her the truth of everything he knew. The conversation he'd had with Indigo this morning had been… enlightening? Shocking was a more appropriate word. And if he wasn’t confident that Indigo’s heart was in the right place, especially when it came to Hazel, then he would have been angry with her. Plus, Stella had sat with her and held her hand while she spilled her guts and cried her eyes out and every time he felt himself heat up, he got daggers from Stella’s eyes. Stella knew when people needed protecting, and right now Indigo needed protecting as much as Hazel. He just hoped that he could get this weekend over with and get back to Hazel so he could be with her when this entire thing blew up. And blow up it would. He was sure of it.

He was headed to the shower when the doorbell rang. The doorbell had never rung once the entire time he was here. The Italians preferred the rhetorical call of “Permesso?” before just letting themselves in. It had taken him a while to get used to it, but now the doorbell shook him as much as those early visitors had. There was only one person who would ring a doorbell, and it was Adam. He was here. He hadn’t texted him as promised. And why would he ring the doorbell? This was practically his house. Sara had told him how he'd bought it for her mother when she refused to leave after her father died. Adam had wanted to move them to a grander location. Maybe a big house in town, or even a house with property on the outskirts of Borgotaro, but Stella had refused. He hurried down the stairs. He wanted to get a glimpse of who “we” was so he could prepare himself. If any of the big wigs were here he'd need his "Dean McLean" businessman alter ego prepared. In the hallway Sara grabbed the door handle, a tentative smile on her face. How long had it been since she had seen her husband? It must be months. Dean stood to the side, wanting to give Sara and Adam some space. She pulled the door open, and her smile dropped.

“Oh, Sara darling, you look exactly as I remember you. A little tired maybe but I hear babies do that to a person, as well as abuse a woman’s body, right?” Isabella sashayed into the foyer. Isabella! What the hell? She spotted Dean. “Dean darling, how I’ve missed you. You look positively scrumptious, as always.” She moved toward him like a predator, her manicured talons reaching out to grab his forearm, her painted lips below her huge sunglasses landing just to the right of his own. He could feel the smudge of oily lipstick she left on his face. She was nervous. He could tell that much. She hadn’t dressed for comfort on the long flight but was in her usual uniform of tight dress and four inch heels and a gigantic Chanel bag flung over her arm. Dean knew from experience that the bag was bottomless. It held an endless supply of potions, oils and lipsticks, and a wallet fat with the cash she constantly requested from him, “just in case.” Unbelievably she was wearing a small fox fur flung over her shoulders. It was July. Her superficiality was as plain as the nose on her face. She was so transparent in her fawning. How had Dean missed it? How had he ever believed he loved this woman?

“Isabella. What are you doing here?” Dean felt panic flutter in his tummy. She knew it was over. Why would she come? And why would Adam bring her? He glanced over Isabella’s shoulder, half expecting to see Hazel standing across the street, arms folded across her chest, but Adam stood behind her. Of course Hazel wasn't there. Hazel had a tough day of work ahead of her. Without him at the house to move things along, today’s renovations would drag on into the evening. He felt a rush of guilt followed by a rush of relief when he realized that running into Hazel today would be unlikely.

“She’s here because I thought you were getting a little too comfortable out here in this little corner of nowhere. We've come to drag you back to LA. Once you've signed the contract updates of course.” What contract updates? And really, why was Isabella here? Adam hated Isabella. How is it they'd traveled across the world together without killing each other?

“Hello babe!” Adam had turned to Sara and went in for the kiss. She stepped backward out of his reach.

“Hi Adam.” She was on the verge of tears.

Dean cringed when he heard the pain in Sara’s voice. When he had told her that Adam was coming she had seemed surprised but excited. She didn’t seem either surprised or excited right now.

“You remember Izzy, right? Where’s the baby, babe?”

Izzy? Did Adam just call Isabella Izzy? She hated that name.

“He’s, um… he’s sleeping.”

“Hello darling, like I said, so nice to see you again.” Isabella stepped away from him now and he felt sweet relief fill the space she vacated. She crossed over to Sara and grabbed her hand even though it was plain that Sara was physically recoiling from her touch.

“Hello, Isabella. What a surprise to see you here.”

“Is it, darling? Is it really?” A look passed between the two of them that Dean couldn’t translate. Sara extricated her hand from Isabella’s grip.

Something big was going on here. Dean suddenly felt it was something so big that it would change the course of his life. If only he could figure out what it was.

* * *

It was hot. What a difference between the stuffy liquid air here in Pisa and the fresh mountain air in Borgotaro. They'd left the limousine to find parking and now strolled through the main square around the famous leaning tower. Dean was miserable. He still hadn’t figured out what Adam and Isabella were doing here in Italy, but at least he’d gotten them away from Borgotaro, and from possibly running into Hazel.

Adam had complained from the minute he'd arrived. He'd complained about the house, about the fattening food that Stella prepared for lunch, about the baby crying when he was trying to make a phone call. Had Dean never noticed how entitled and insufferable he was or had he become this way over the past few weeks? More likely the former. Sara was angry, shooting scowls at Isabella and rolling her eyes at Adam. He’d had to get them out of there.

“How about a trip today?” he’d proposed as the lunch dishes were being cleared away. “Isabella, haven’t you always wanted to see the Tower of Pisa?” Isabella had leaned back in her chair and clapped her hands like a toddler, earning another scowl from Sara.

“Yes! The Tower of Pisa! I love it. Is it close?”

“About an hour away.” Dean had answered, “we can take the train. It would be fun.”

“The train! OMG! I can’t think of anything worse, can you, Adam? I’m not taking the train.”

Adam had been texting on his phone, which was what he'd been doing pretty much constantly since he’d arrived. “Hmmm?” He looked up and gave Isabella a brilliant smile. “Whatever you want, Izzy.”

Izzy again. What was with the ‘Izzy’? Yes, Adam had a penchant for pet names, even for virtual strangers, but no one called Isabella, Izzy. Except Dean. Dean was surprised she wasn’t jumping down his throat.

“Well, I doubt Adam wants to come. He probably wants to spend time with his family, right Adam?” Dean asked.

“Sara and the baby will come too. Get outside for a while.” He looked around and scrunched up his nose. “This house... this town, can be truly stifling.”

Sara stood and started clearing the lunch plates. “It’s July daaaarling (she dragged the word out, making a point). I don’t think July is the ideal time to take a baby, only a few months old, into stiflingly, hot Pisa. Do you? We won’t be going.”

Adam went back to his texting. “Well you’ll miss out then. We’ll have fun, won’t we, guys?”

Dean looked back and forth between his best friend and his wife. This was not going well. “Well you won’t want to come if Sara and the baby aren’t going. Isabella and I will be fine on our own.”

“What? And miss the Tower of Pisa? I’m coming. Sara doesn’t have to come if she doesn’t want to.”

And that's how Dean found himself strolling toward the Tower, in the stifling heat, with his best friend and his ex-girlfriend.

“Do you have the tickets?” Adam asked. “Total bucket list item, right buddy? Climbing the Tower of Pisa? Let’s get this over with and then we can have a long chat over lunch. It’s time we talked about getting you back home.”

Surprisingly the line wasn't long on this summer’s day. Adam had connections, he always did, and had phoned ahead to get the tickets. Normally you had to purchase the tickets and then wait for your allotted time slot, but Adam wasn’t interested in waiting. He was more interested in lunch.

Isabella had grabbed Dean’s hand as they turned into the circular stairway to begin the climb to the top of the Tower. Maybe it was the sudden entrance into the cool shade that made Dean shiver, but probably it had more to do with his body rejecting her touch. Over the past few hours he'd marveled over how he could have ever had feelings for this woman. He now realized that her every move was calculated. She'd always had him wrapped around her finger, making him believe she was madly in love with him, stroking his ego, controlling him. Hazel was the first woman who'd ever challenged him. Every other woman he'd met during his time in Hollywood had been all over him, giving him what he wanted, striving to please. None had ever been honest about their true feelings in any moment they were with him. But that wasn’t Hazel. What you saw was what you got.

Adam and Isabella were in front of him on the stairs and he took up the rear. The climb was dark and long and he felt weird prickles of uneasiness; untraceable to any thought or feeling, just a generalized anxiety. Then he saw a bright archway up ahead and soothed himself with the assurance they were almost there. Almost out in the open again. Adam and Isabella had turned into the doorway and walked out onto the bell tower level ahead of him. He stepped into the light, turned left, looked down, and froze. He'd emerged from the Tower on the tilted side. Because of the angle of the tilt the railing that would normally be at waist height, providing a barrier between him and the expansive green lawn below, was instead at his knees. The ground below him spun, and he felt his balance teetering. He plastered himself against the wall and looked up at the sky, but the cloudless blue above him felt like a vacuum sucking him upwards. He was frozen and about to faint and fall off of the Tower of Pisa. Apparently his new fear of cameras came with a side of terror of heights and a dash of vertigo.

The man behind him on the stairwell bumped into him as he turned the corner, and Dean tightened his grip on the wall.

“You alright, mate?” the man asked in a thick, cockney accent. “Wait a minute, ain’t you that guy? You’re the Rolling Thunder bloke!” The man was now scrambling to lift his beer belly so he could get into his fanny pack. He pulled out a notepad and pen, shoving it into Dean’s face when he didn’t reach out to take it. How could he, he couldn’t look down. “‘Ow about an autograph for my daughter then, mate?”

“Excuse me, excuse me,” it was Adam, thank God, leaning past Isabella to place his hand on Dean’s arm. “You’re mistaken sir, this man is not Dean McLean, but he gets it all the time. Move along.” The man gave Adam a dirty look, and lingered, but then pushed past Dean to continue around the outside of the Tower, headed for the last interior stairwell that would take him to the top. Good old Adam. He could always count on Adam to be there. He’d help him get down.  “Looks like you aren’t enjoying this buddy. No worries. Izzy and I will just pop to the top to have a look and we’ll come down and get you afterwards. Just step around him folks,” Adam said to the people in the doorway, waving his arms around Dean's frozen, rigid body, and they did.

“But Adam…” Deans’ voice sounded strangled even to his own ears. But it was too late. Adam was gone. And Dean was stuck with his vertigo, plastered against the Tower, unable to move.