WANTED: Love of my Life

36. Sunrise

He awoke, just as the sun was about to rise. Immediately, I felt him tense in my arms, looking from left to right, then attempting to jump up. I tightened my grip on him.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” I said, trying for a light tone of voice. “Good morning.”

Giacomo's eyes found mine, and stared into them. I knew the exact moment when the memory of last night returned, because I could see the pain enter his eyes.

“Angela... where are we?” he whispered.

“Still in the park,” I replied, still trying to sound as if that wasn't unusual at all. “You weren't exactly fit for a long walk last night.”

“Last night...”

He closed his eyes.

“How much did you see.... last night?” he asked, and I could feel the effort it took him to keep his voice calm.

“Pretty much everything,” was my simple reply.

Suddenly, his arms were around me, holding me to him. My face was pressed into his hair. Oh, this felt good...

“I'm so sorry,” he whispered. “You shouldn't have had to see that. I should have checked before we came here, made sure it was safe. I was stupid, Angela. I can't say how sorry I am.” Slowly, he held me away to stare into my eyes again.

I was almost afraid to ask. Bull, I was afraid to ask. But since when had I ever been stopped from doing something by fear? So I posed the question.

“What was that last night?”

He was still looking at me, his eyes turning immeasurably deep and sad. I didn't elaborate, and it wasn't necessary. He knew exactly what I meant. I could see that he remembered the fight, and the knives, and the blood on the ground. I could see that he remembered what he had done.

“Angela, you remember that I told I had an Illness?”

“Yes?”

“What happened last night... that was the illness.”

A shiver ran down my back. He felt it, and tried to inch away from me, but I wouldn't let him. He sighed, giving up. I wasn't going to let him go because of this! He was still my Giacomo, regardless of what had happened. But a small part of me couldn't help wandering: what sort of illness made you want to kill? Because that's what had happened. He had been out to kill them – kill me, even, before he'd recognized me. Once more, his words came back to me: I swear, no harm will come to you! I will do whatever it takes. And I realized that the words didn't refer to his insane fighting fit which he had let loose on the men. No, they meant something very different. They referred to his behavior before: taking my purse from me forcibly, giving his own money to those scumbags, doing everything to prevent the necessity of a fight. Because he knew he would win that fight, and he knew what would happen to him while he did so.

The look into his eyes changed again, from sadness to puzzlement.

“But if you saw everything last night... if you remember everything... how can you still be here? How can you still bear to be here with me?”

“Bear it?” I smiled. “I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.”

He looked around, for the first time seeming to take in his surroundings. The sun was just appearing over the horizon. Dew covered the grass around and the tree above us. The ground was uncomfortably cold, not to mention wet and hard.

“You stayed out here with me all night?” he asked, wonder in his voice. “Out in the park? After what you saw? What I did?”

“Yes,” I said, giving him a light kiss on the forehead.