“Oh god, I’m stuffed,” I groan, sitting back in the chair. Across the table, Bruno laughs, setting his fork down and taking a sip of his red wine.

“I’m a little jealous,” he says, looking back to me and grinning. “I wish I had the excuse to eat for two.”

I pat my belly. “Well, don’t be too jealous. I think the whole getting-to-eat-a-lot thing is really only a fair trade-off for the constant exhaustion and nausea.”

“How has that been lately, by the way?” he asks, leaning forward and furrowing his brow. I love the way he does this—effortlessly transitions from goofing around to taking me very seriously. I can tell that underneath his jokes, he’s often worried about me. Worried about the baby.

He keeps his concerns to himself most of the time, probably because he doesn’t want to give me anything else to fret about, but I know him better than anyone. I can see when something is bothering him.

I can feel it.

“Much better, actually. I think being around your family and… well, you, has helped a lot with the sickness,” I assure him, reaching across to take his hand.

He nods slowly, and I can see the cogs turning in his mind.

“I’m sorry, Serena,” he says suddenly, his face going solemn, his voice lowering.

I tilt my head to one side, confused at this sudden apology.

“Sorry? For what?”

He looks back up at me, those bright green eyes full of feeling.

“It’s my fault. How rough the past few months have been for you. I should have been here, by your side, helping you all along. I feel like I abandoned you at the worst possible time. You’re carrying my baby—our baby—and for all that time you had to do it alone. I can’t help but think that’s the reason you were so sick. You were stressed out and scared and lonely, just like anyone would be in that situation. I should have been there, Serena. I’m so sorry.”

I give him a smile, shaking my head.

“Bruno, I don’t blame you for anything. You know that, right? None of this is your fault.”

“If you hadn’t met me, gotten tangled up in this mess—”

“Then I wouldn’t be carrying this baby,” I interject. “I wouldn’t be in love with the most amazing man in the world. I wouldn’t be here right now, sitting in a genuine Italian restaurant eating genuine Italian pasta and drinking a very small, very cautious glass of red wine.”

I shrug and squeeze his hand.

“Bruno. You have to understand: I don’t regret anything. I don’t regret any single thing of what has happened since you came back into my life that day at Bathing Beauty. Hell yeah, it’s been difficult. Of course, it has. But it’s worth it. Everything—every hardship, every moment of fear, every misstep, it’s led me here. With you. And I can’t think of anywhere else I would rather be right now.”

He stands up and walks over to help me up, kissing my hand like a true gentleman. Gazing into my eyes with pure devotion, he says, “I’ve never met anyone quite like you. So strong. So brave. Our child is lucky to have you as a mother. And I am lucky to call you my fiancée.”

We pay the bill and stroll back out onto the cobblestone streets of this quaint little countryside village. The sun is setting over the golden hills, casting pink and orange streaks through the sky. There’s a pleasant breeze keeping us from getting too hot in the balmy, early summer evening.

Hand in hand, we walk down the street toward the sound of live music playing, both of us wondering what the commotion is all about. We turn a corner into a village square ringed with vendors selling gelato, wine, spritzers, sgagliozze, and cannoli. There’s a band of lively musicians playing folk music while in the center of the square, a big gathering of people are dancing, some in couples, others in groups of young women.

There are many more people sitting at little tables arranged on the perimeter, watching the dance while they sip wine and chat. It’s an almost magical scene: the music, the laughter, the smells of salt and sweetness mingling in the air.

Bruno turns to me with an adventurous, mischievous look on his handsome face.

“What?” I ask warily. He grins and pulls me along behind him as we join the dancers. “Oh no, Bruno, I’m not much of a dancer!”

“Don’t worry,” he says, grinning, “I am.”

He takes the lead, spinning me around through the village square, teaching me how to find the beat and move fluidly with the music, without ever saying a word of instruction.

At first, I’m awkward, my face burning bright pink with embarrassment. Everyone around me seems to have taken dance lessons their entire lives or something. They all move freely and smoothly, never missing a single beat, whereas I feel like someone’s weird grandpa at a family barbeque.

But gradually, between the little bit of wine I drank and Bruno’s patient faith in me, I begin to loosen up. And as soon as I turn off my brain and just go with the flow, it’s like the music takes over my body, and suddenly I can dance. Maybe not like a professional, but at least nobody is laughing at my awkward moves.

Before long, I’m grinning and laughing, not giving a single damn about who may be watching or judging me.

After all, when I take into stock what’s really going on here, how can I be self-conscious?

I’m dancing in a picturesque Italian village with the man of my dreams!

When the song ends, we walk over to a vendor to buy a cannolo to share, and on the way to find ourselves a table to sit at, a few men suddenly swarm over to us, laughing and shouting. For a split second, I’m afraid, until I see them all smiling and calling Bruno by name. Bruno’s face lights up when he sees them, opening his arms to embrace each one of them. They begin to speak very quickly in Italian, but I can sort of follow along if I pay attention.

“Bruno! Is that really you, my brother?”

“Holy shit, man! You used to be shorter than me, what happened?”

“What are you doing back in Apulia?”

“How long has it been? Ten years?”

Bruno answers each of them happily, laughing and clapping them on the shoulder as he reacquaints himself with old friends. If there’s one thing I’m figuring out very quickly, it’s that Bruno was very well-known in these little villages.

When I think about how much of a ballsy troublemaker he was when he was a kid, it makes sense. He’s always been so charismatic and fun to be around, of course everyone back home would adore him.

He spends a few minutes chatting with them, introducing me as his fiancée, giving them a very sanitized version of the events which led us here.

Luckily, all his old friends appear to have been drinking, so they don’t ask any questions. They just seem happy enough to see Bruno again. They don’t need all the gritty details.

After a while, they head off, presumably to keep drinking and meet up with some women.

Bruno and I eat our dessert, listening to the music while he explains to me how he knows each one of the men who just came up to us. It turns out that most of them were schoolboys together, and they took part in many of Bruno’s pranks on teachers and other students. He assures me that they never did anything too destructive, but they were definitely not teacher’s pets, either.

It’s so strange to me, hearing how silly he used to be as a kid. By the time I met him, he was already so mature by comparison to all the guys I had classes with. He seemed like an adult, like he was world-weary and knowledgeable about everything there was to know.

But I guess the life he led, leaving home to work hard for his Uncle Carlo in America, must have changed him. Roughed up those soft edges he used to have. Now that we’re so comfortable together, I can see little pieces of that old silliness and lightheartedness shining through sometimes. But it does break my heart to think of how quickly he had to grow up as a teenager. None of it was his fault, but he was the one who paid the price.

The band strikes up another song, this one slower and more romantic. Bruno takes my hand and leads me out onto the dance floor again, pulling me close.

We spin slowly together, cheek to cheek, his hand on the small of my back. With the tempo change, most of the single dancers have gone to sit down, leaving just the two of us and a few other couples.

The singer croons about old lovers rediscovering one another, about old vows being renewed, about being together forever and ever in love. It’s enough to make my hormonal heart beat a little faster, and I find myself fighting off the tears in my eyes. At the end of the song, Bruno kisses me softly on the lips, his hand cradling the back of my head like I’m something delicate, something precious.

He rests his forehead against mine and whispers, “I love you, Serena.”

“I love you, too,” I answer, smiling.

As we walk off the dance floor, I see several people seated at the tables looking at their partners with lovesick eyes. They scoot closer to each other, hold hands. There’s definitely been a shift in mood. Where before the square was filled with high-spirited laughter, now there’s a seriousness, a sense of heavy romance in the air. And the two of us are affected the same way.

Bruno leads me down the winding streets, away from the bright lights strung up from lamppost to lamppost, away from the music and the smells and the crowds of people. The further we walk, the more alone we are.

We arrive at a lovely, perfectly-manicured little park on the edge of the village. It overlooks the cliffside below, the hilly fields dotted with grazing animals and flowering bushes. The moon now hangs high in the velvety dark sky, only barely illuminating the face of the man I love, his flawless features nearly glowing before me.

He leans in to kiss me, softly at first, then more passionately. He pulls me in tight, our bodies pressed together so I can feel every rippling muscle. His hands slide down over my hips and around to cup my ass.

His tongue pushes gently into my mouth and I moan, feeling my body warm with excitement at his every touch. His hand roves up my body to grope my breasts, his thumb circling over my nipples, poking through the thin fabric of my dress. I shudder, feeling somehow both weak and powerful in his arms. I don’t know how he does what he does to me, but god, I hope he never, ever stops.

He breaks the kiss for a moment, his eyes sparkling as he looks down at me.

There’s a question there. My heart starts racing.

I murmur, “Go ahead.”

He grins mischievously and scoops me up, carrying me over to the thigh-high stone wall that circle the park and keeps people from falling over the edge and down the cliffside. He sets me down there, wrenching my thighs open with his leg as he kneels down in front of me. I can scarcely breathe, my whole body is on fire, anticipating whatever he’s going to do to me.

Some part of me is acutely aware that this is dangerous. I’m literally sitting on the precipice of a painful, terrible fall. And at any moment, someone else could come strolling by and catch us out here, two lovers in the park. But I don’t care. The only thing I care about is Bruno.

He slides the hem of my dress up my thighs and hooks a finger under the band of my panties, tugging them down, exposing my sex to the night air. I shudder at the coolness of the breeze, my hands gripping the stone on either side of me. Bruno looks up at me with a hungry stare, green eyes shining in the moonlight.

And then he leans in, his tongue flicking over my clit, enveloping my dripping pussy in his warm mouth. I toss my head back and groan, goosebumps prickling up on my arms and legs as he devours me. His tongue pulses in and out of my aching hole, sliding up and down the length of my sex, drinking me in. He plays with my clit, suckling at the tiny bundle of intense nerves until I’m bucking my hips, my hand on the back of his head, holding him there.

“Fuck,” I murmur breathlessly, “don’t stop, don’t stop!”

He nibbles gently at my clit, then sucks it into his mouth, his tongue swirling around it expertly. I whimper, feeling my whole body start to tense up. He always knows just what to do, like he knows my body better than I do. Like I was built for him alone.

Bruno spreads my thighs wider and slides one finger inside me, curling it ever so slightly to stroke my g-spot deep inside while his tongue works my clit. The sensation is almost overwhelming, almost enough to make me recoil. But if I withdraw, if I pull back from him, I could fall—down, down the cliff behind me. There’s no place else to go. I have to just suck it up and deal with the powerful, intense waves of pleasure radiating through my body.

“Oh my god, oh my god, Bruno!” I gasp, closing my eyes as my orgasm mounts. He groans into my pussy, and I can tell he’s enjoying this. He loves it: sending me into near-hysterics with that amazing mouth of his. His finger slides in and out of me faster and faster, his tongue circling my clit until I’m almost in tears.

Finally, I erupt into shivers of exquisite bliss, climaxing and gushing sweet honey all over his finger. Bruno eagerly licks up every last drop, not even letting up for a moment while my thighs tremble and I whimper incoherently.

He looks up at me, those green eyes fierce, almost frightening in their intensity. He stands up quickly, turns me so that I’m almost lying down on the stone ledge, one foot safely planted on the ground, the other leg dangling off the edge. He unbuckles his jeans, tugs them down along with his boxers.

His cock springs free, long and hard, and I can’t help but gasp as he reaches down to rub my clit with his fingers, keeping me slick and wet. He’s really going to fuck me right here on the edge of a cliff, in a public park, with a village gathering just streets away from us!

I moan, wriggling toward him, my body aching for him. My heart is pounding, all my senses heightened by the pure danger and thrill of what we’re about to do. “Please,” I whisper, “do it. Fuck me right here in the open. I need it, Bruno. I need you.”

He positions the head of his cock at my dripping pussy, sliding it around, teasing me, making me tremble and shake with desire. Leaning over me, he pushes my dress further up to expose my breasts. I’ve gone without a bra tonight, and at the rush of cool air, my nipples perk up. Still teasing my pussy with the tip of his shaft, he leans down to suck my nipple into his mouth. I groan as his tongue flicks over the stiffened peak, sending spirals of pleasure down between my legs. I roll my hips up against him, begging him to fuck me.

Bruno straightens back up, looks me dead in the eye, and slides his cock deep inside me in one smooth thrust. I cry out, and he quickly covers my mouth with his hand as he starts to pump in and down out of my pussy, not even taking the time to go slowly at first. He fucks me fast and hard, slamming into my g-spot again and again as the two of us balance on the edge of the cliff. It almost hurts, but I can’t get enough of it. I love the way he’s using my body, filling my tight little hole with his engorged shaft like I’m some irresistible fuck-toy.

“Fill me up, Bruno. Fuck me. Make me yours,” I whisper, feeling the rough stone grinding almost painfully underneath me, chafing my bare skin. But the slight pain almost adds to the pleasure of the moment, and I grit my teeth.

“So good for me, baby,” he groans. “Such a tight little pussy. You feel so fucking good.”

“Oh god, I love it when you pound into me like this,” I murmur, my eyes rolling back in my head. He picks up the pace, fucking me harder and faster, his hips snapping back and forth as he uses my pussy. I’m aching, nearly twitching with bliss, and I cry out again as another climax washes over me. I can feel my pussy pulsing around his cock, squeezing him, bringing him closer and closer to the same edge.

He slams into me with such force I can feel my body scooting closer and closer to the end of the stone ledge, but I don’t even care. Fuck, if this is the way I have to go, then it’s worth it. I’ve never felt this exhilarated before, filled with Bruno’s cock, my pussy aching for him to come inside me and stuff me with his sweet seed. Finally, he rears back and shoves into me with such force he has to grab me and pull me back before I can topple over the edge, and he groans, spilling his thick spunk deep inside my trembling sex.

He holds me close for a moment, letting every last drop of his seed fill me up. He leans down to kiss me fiercely, his tongue shoving into my mouth as his hands grope my breasts, my hips, my ass. After a few moments of this, we hear the distant echo of footsteps approaching. Suddenly remembering where we are and how sticky a predicament we’re in, we quickly make ourselves decent and start rushing away from the park, hand-in-hand as we race back to the car.

Laughing with exhilaration, we get in the car and drive home, the car speeding along down the hilly roads. I can still feel his come leaking out of me, staining the brand-new dress I just bought, and it makes me feel satisfied. Complete.

But I’m not quite done with him yet.

We’ve got a little bit of a drive home to go, and there are almost no streetlights, and no other vehicles in sight. I reach over across the console, rubbing my hand over Bruno’s softening cock.

He glances at me, confused for half a second, and then realizing what I’m up to. With a devilish grin, I lean over, under his arms, to unzip his jeans and get to his shaft. At my warm breath on his bare skin, his cock starts to stiffen again. I take my time, teasing him with my tongue, sliding my hand up and down his shaft softly until he’s completely erect again.

He moans, his hand coming down to rest on the top of my head, gently pushing me down, urging me to suck his cock.

And I gladly oblige.

I pull the head of his stiffened cock into my mouth, letting my tongue flick over the tip before I take him in completely. I almost cough when the head of his cock brushes against the back of my throat, but instead I just start bobbing up and down, fondling the base of his shaft with my hand while I work his hard length.

“Fuck, you’re such a dirty, sexy woman,” Bruno says, just barely thrusting up into my mouth. I tease the head of his cock, licking my lips. I can still taste myself on him.

“I just can’t get enough,” I whisper, reaching down between my legs to stroke my clit, still dripping with his come. We ride down the highway this way for a while, my mouth sucking his cock, my fingers rubbing my pussy. Every time we go over a bump in the road, his cock slams into the back of my throat—and I love it as much as he does.

I bounce up and down, sucking him off, swirling my tongue around the head, pumping his shaft with my hand. It’s not long before I’m climaxing again, moaning as I take Bruno’s cock deep into my mouth.

“Brava ragazza,” he murmurs, pushing my head down on his cock. “So good, dolcezza.”

Just before we pull up to the darkened Lomaglio residence, I suck him harder, bobbing up and down faster and faster until I can feel him tensing up. The car rolls to a stop just as he explodes in my mouth, and I swallow down his come hungrily, licking the tip of his cock. I sit back up, proud of myself, and Bruno kisses me, not even caring about the taste of his own come on my lips.

We tumble into bed together, still kissing, ripping off each other’s clothes. We explore each other’s bodies like it’s the very first time, touching and stroking. Before long, he’s down between my legs again, licking my pussy and fingering me. Finally, exhausted and spent, we start to drift off in each other’s arms, totally happy and blissful.

Just as I’m closing my eyes, a smile still on my lips, my phone buzzes on the bedside table. At first, I decide to just let it go. Let it wait until morning. But something, some instinct without a name, urges me to check it. I reach over in the dark and grab my phone, blinking in the bright light as I read the text message on the screen.

My stomach turns and I start to feel dizzy.

Another message from my mother, finally a reply! But the words make my blood go cold.

Hope you’re well. I went out to dinner tonight. Walnuts in the salad.

To most people, this would mean nothing at all. But to me, it’s a time machine back to when I was a little kid, to the first time my mother first sent back a plate of food to the kitchen at a fancy restaurant, complaining that there were walnuts in the salad. I was seven years old, and I asked her what the problem was. She explained that she is allergic to walnuts, and so she can’t eat them. For some reason, in my child’s mind, I took this as some kind of code word for when I didn’t like something or didn’t want to go through with something.

From then on, whenever I was scared, whenever I was in trouble, I would use “walnuts” as a code word, a clue to my mother that something was wrong. One time, when I was at a sleepover and I got scared and wanted to go home, I used my friend’s parents’ phone to call home and whisper, “Walnuts,” to my mother. She immediately understood what I meant. She came and picked me up, took me home, giving some believable excuse to my friend’s parents about why. My mother and I were never as close as I was with my father, but this was our thing.

The day that my first crush was mean to me in eighth grade during gym class, I sent my mom the text message: Walnuts. She checked me out for the day, took me shopping, taught me about how boys can be awful sometimes, but I shouldn’t let them control how I feel about myself.

Even when I was in high school, trying to get through classes without crying because I was still reeling from the death of my father, I would send my mom the “walnuts” code word to tell her how the day was going, how much I was struggling. When I got older, I used the word less and less often, needing my mother to take care of me less and less.

X was the code word we’d agreed on.

Walnuts was the code word we’d always used.

I know something is wrong. She’s in trouble, and she wouldn’t use that word without knowing exactly what it would signify to me. I jump out of bed and start getting dressed, not even sure what I’m planning to do. Bruno wakes up and looks over at me, confused.

“What’s going on, dolcezza? Are you okay?”

With tears in my eyes, I look back at him and answer, “We have to leave. My mother is in trouble, and I have to help her. Now.”