Call Me Crazy (Bellamy Creek #3) - Melanie Harlow Page 0,106

around to the passenger side, and helped me out. Taking my hand, he led me up the church steps.

“Enzo, what is this?” I whispered as he pushed the heavy wooden door open, and we stepped into the vestibule. It was dark and silent and smelled like incense.

“Come on.” Speaking quietly, he kept my hand in his and we walked up the nave toward the altar, our footsteps echoing in the empty space.

Shivers swept up my spine. The sanctuary was dimly lit, and I saw no one else until we reached the crossing, and he gently pulled me to the left, into the north transept. There, in front of some beautiful stained-glass windows lit by the moon from behind and flickering votive candles on a table below, stood Father Mike.

He smiled at us. “Welcome.”

“Thank you for this, Father,” Enzo said.

“Of course. Are you ready?”

“Give me one second.” Enzo turned to me, taking both my hands. “I know we’re technically already married. But we did that for a piece of paper. For an audience. And definitely for the wrong reasons. I wanted to do something more meaningful.” He glanced up at the stained glass. “My great-grandparents donated these windows when the church was being built a hundred years ago. I’ve looked at them a thousand times and never thought twice about them. But now when I see them, they remind me of the importance of family, of putting down roots, and of having faith in something bigger than ourselves. And that’s because of you.”

I wanted to say something, but my throat was too tight.

“I asked Father Mike here tonight to give our marriage a blessing,” he went on. “I didn’t want to do it before—neither of us did—because it would have felt wrong. And it would have been because our parents pressured us into it. This is just between us.”

“And God,” Father Mike reminded.

“Oh, right,” said Enzo. “Him too.”

I smiled through tears. “I love it. And I love you.”

“I love you too.” Leaning toward me, he pressed his lips to my forehead and rested them there for a moment. Then he straightened up and turned to Father Mike. “Okay, we’re ready.”

After we left the church, Enzo drove me by the Center Avenue house, as promised. Hand in hand, using the flashlights on our phones since many of the lights had been disconnected, we walked through the house. I was impressed with the progress that had been made in the last two weeks, but sad that I’d missed out on seeing it happen.

“Don’t worry,” Enzo said, squeezing my hand. “There’s a lot more work to do to get this place livable.”

In the middle of what would be—I hoped—a child’s bedroom, I turned to face him. “We’re really going to live here?”

“Of course we are.” His arms came around me.

“And have a family?”

“Of course we are. If biology isn’t on our side, we’ll adopt. I don’t care how we get our family, I just want to have one with you.”

Slipping my arms around his waist, I rested my head on his chest and closed my eyes.

“We’re going to be happy here, Mrs. Moretti,” he said, rocking me side to side. “We’re going to fill this house with a bunch of noisy, messy kids who are going to drive us crazy, but we’re going to be happy. I can feel it.”

I held him tight, breathing deeply. “I feel it too.”

Walking into his house again—his hand on my lower back—felt like coming home. Falling into his bed again, feeling his skin on mine, watching him move above me, was like a dream. Taking him deep inside me, hearing his quickened breath and his low, thick growl, set my body on fire the way only he could. And when we came together, our bodies in perfect, blissful harmony, it was like recompense for everything I’d been through.

“God, I missed you,” he whispered in the dark, raining kisses over my face and neck and chest. “Don’t ever leave me again.”

“I won’t.” Laughing, I rubbed his back and wrapped my legs around him. “You’re stuck with me now. God says. And the state of Michigan.”

“Good.”

“Plus my ring says a hundred years. So I figure I should at least honor that promise.”

He picked up his head and looked down at me. “You better. I don’t want to be without you. I don’t even feel like me without you anymore.”

I smiled. “You couldn’t even smolder?”

“I couldn’t even fucking smolder.”

Laughing, I grabbed his face and kissed his lips. “That is a clear