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limp on the table as she stepped away from him. She walked back across the courtyard, tears now streaming freely down her cheeks, but she did not look back even once as she returned to the street. The terror inside her begged her to return, to try to force him out of action with her presence, but she knew that she could not. This was the only way and her courage demanded it of her. Piero would have to decide for himself and if he did the wrong thing then she would never forget the pain he had forced her to endure. She was sure at least that he knew that now.
    She walked back to the bus stop, a short distance that felt like miles with legs that seemed crafted from concrete. She walked back to the bus stop and there she waited.
     

10
     
     
    The nights were warm in Sicily, balmy and soft as if the sky was a dark blanket that covered the world. Rebecca’s heart raced and the tears still fell but as they slowed and dried on her face she felt a kind of numbness take over her. It was as if there were simply no more emotions to drain from the well of her soul and an approximate sense of peace—one that held with it still the dull ache of anguish—began to fill her body. Now there were no thoughts, no words in her mind, it was just her and the bus stop and the night.
    She did not turn to the sound of footsteps that she soon heard approaching from behind her. Instead she continued to look out at the brown and purple tapestry of the island at night, the twinkling lights of the towns and villages and houses below like a mirror to the ancient stars in the sky above. In the distance she heard the sound of garbled laughter from back at the café, carried and distorted on the wind as if the voices were ghosts from some distant age, long forgotten in the mists of the past. The footfalls slowed as they approached her, her breath catching in her chest as they stopped behind her. She felt a hand, soft but firm, reach out to take her own.
    “I could not say goodbye to you,” Piero said, “my voice had disappeared. I could not bear to lose you, to live in that loss, even if it would only be for five more minutes on this earth.”
    She turned as he pulled her gently around to face him, the guidance of his touch soft but determined.
    “I couldn’t say it either,” she answered, looking up into his beautiful solemn gorgeous face which was, like hers, also streaked with the dust of tears that sparkled in the moonlight like the reflection it cast on the ocean. “You have to know that I don’t blame you, that I understand. What you’d been through…”
    “I know,” he said and the smile that lit up his face banished all numbness, all anguish, all pain from her soul like the blinding light of the sun after winter, like a fresh sparkling oasis after miles and miles of aching desert. “And I cannot say goodbye to you now either,” he said, “I will not.”
    Without thought, she threw herself into his arms, wrapping herself around his slender well-toned body, breathing in his cool, masculine smell, and squeezing, squeezing so tight that she almost felt like her body would meld into his from the force. He reached up underneath her flowing hair, caressed her back, his sparkling fingertips meeting the nape of her neck and driving sparks alive inside her. His soft, strong fingers gently brushed up her jawline, tilting her head as she leaned back with his guidance and then, instead of kissing, he simply looked down at her, his eyes into hers as she did the same back to him and, like that, the two just stared into each other, knowing each other, understanding each other, committing to each other now and for the long haul.
    And finally, when she thought she couldn’t wait any longer, when every fiber of her body trembled for his taste and tongue and lips on hers, finally then he kissed her and darkness was banished forever from the night.
    The bus was empty when they boarded and Piero told her that it was likely they would have it to