“You’d better be careful,” she said. “I’ve been taking lessons since I was three. Do you even know how to dance properly?”
In response, I pulled her tight so she was flush against me and I could catch her waist with my other hand.
“Oh!” Nina gasped.
“No more questions, beautiful,” I ordered. “Just let me lead.”
A waltz picked up on the radio, and I started to whirl her around the room as best I could.
To her credit, Nina was actually a really good dancer. She probably had been taking lessons since she was three, since she could clearly keep up with me and then some. Nonna’s simple instruction to Frank Sinatra standards was no match for Nina’s teachers. Still, by the end, we were both shouting with laughter and delight, out of breath and clinging to each other once the music ended.
“Oh!” Nina cried as I dipped her again. “Oh, that was fun. Matthew, I’m shocked—you can actually waltz!”
I grinned down at her. “And foxtrot and jitterbug and swing dance, if you’re up for it.”
“Oh, I love to foxtrot!” she said, holding up her arms for another round like Sofia begging for a piggyback ride. “Eric was always terrible at it, but it was my favorite step. He was my practice partner, you know.”
I chuckled. “No, I didn’t know that. But I’m definitely going to give him some shit for it.”
I was about to take her on another gallop around the room, but the music shifted, and a different, much slower tune filled the air. Pavarotti’s rendering of Turandot, it sounded like. Its most famous aria, “Nessun Dorma.”
Just like that, I was transported back to the Met. Sitting with Nina in that warm, red box at Lincoln Center. Whispering lyrics of passion into her ear while I brought her another kind between her legs.
“Do you remember this?” I asked as I pulled her close once more. I pressed my nose to her neck, inhaling her sweet scent. “Do you remember that night?”
“Of—of course,” she stuttered, even as her arms encircled my neck, and one hand automatically began playing with my hair. “I could never forget that night. The good…and the bad.”
I swallowed. Of course. I remembered the best parts of that night and had done my best to block out the worst. The way she’d discovered my previous fling with one Caitlyn Calvert Shaw. The way she’d run into Central Park only to throw herself to her knees and forced me to take the pleasure she thought I wanted from her body. Used her like she thought I had used others.
And I did it. Fuck me, I did it. Because at that point, I would have taken her any way I could get her. Angry, happy, sad, delighted. Nina was Nina to me, back then. Whatever form she took.
But now…now I could see what that selfishness had brought me. She had never fully trusted me. And just when she was finally thinking about it…I’d thrown it all away.
“But do you know what it’s really about?” I asked her as we began to sway gently back and forth to Pavarotti’s vibrato. “The song, I mean.”
“I remember the lyrics you whispered,” she said. “‘None shall sleep.’ After he claims the right to marry her, she begs for a way to get out. So they come to a new agreement, correct? If she can discover his name before sunrise, he’ll die. And so…none shall sleep while she searches for the means to her freedom.” Nina pressed her nose into my neck, as if the idea of freedom was too much for her. “A bit bloodthirsty, isn’t she?”
I held her all the more tightly, enjoying the way the curve of her slim waist fit perfectly to my palm. “I think most people would kill to be free. They’d do just about anything.”
She didn’t respond.
“My sympathies are more with Calaf, though.”
She lifted her head. “The beggar who wants to marry her? Why? All he does is trick her.”
I shrugged. “Only to show her the farce of the whole system. And remember, at the end of the night, when she realizes she’s doomed to marry him…he gives up his name of his own accord. He’d rather die anyway than entrap the woman he loves. He would do anything to make her happy.” I stroked her hair, gently. “I understand how he feels.”
She stopped swaying, pressed her hands to my chest, framing the cross and San Gennaro token that dangled between her fingers.
“Oh, Matthew,” she said softly. “But he’s wrong. Don’t you know that? He’s completely wrong.”
“How do you figure?” Opera was the language of love, wasn’t it? If Puccini didn’t get it, what hope was there for anyone else?
“I didn’t understand this until I met you, but love isn’t about sacrifice. It’s not about clipping your own wings so your partner can fly, hoping desperately they’ll carry you with them. It’s about…” She chewed on her bottom lip a moment, trying to sort it out. “It’s about making it safe to soar together.”
My heart thumped like a drum at the truth in her voice. Oh God. Oh my fucking God. She was so damn right it hurt.
“And do I?” I asked, my heart now stuck in my throat as I tried not to hold her too close. “Nina, do I make you feel safe? I want to, baby. I want to so fucking badly.”
She touched her nose to mine, her eyes squeezed tightly shut.
“You did once,” she whispered. “I believe you will again.” When she opened her eyes, they were shining. She hiccupped slightly. “I have faith, you know?”
It melted my cold, scarred heart.
“God, do I ever,” I murmured, then captured her lips with mine.
We swayed together a bit longer, body pressed to body, mouth brushing
