Once they were done checking out the frescoes in the church, they slowly wandered back to the villa, where the remainder of their first afternoon in Florence was spent hanging out in the garden and brainstorming what they might want to do the next day. Amelia and Liam's opinions were being weighed the most heavily since they were the ones visiting for the first time, so she chimed in that she really wanted to make it to the Uffizi sometime before they left town. Henry's dad suggested that if she was interested in seeing as much art as possible, it'd also be worth making a brief detour to the smaller but still significant Galleria dell'Accademia where Michelangelo's David was kept, so they decided to try to make it to both museums the next day.

After dinner, they'd decided to put on a movie in the living room and somehow stumbled across an obscure Italian rom-com, which was much too entertaining to look away from once they'd started it. Even more hilarious was the fact that the English subtitles kept cutting in and out for some unknown reason and so they made Robert and Teresa translate the pieces of dialogue that they were missing out on. Amelia was tuckered out enough from all the walking they did earlier in the day that she somehow managed to doze off on Henry's shoulder for a couple of minutes only to be awoken by the sound of Jen trying to stifle her giggles as her husband recited to her a particularly cringe-worthy line from the film. As Amelia rubbed her eyes and glanced around, she realized that everyone was trying not to laugh, including Robert.

By the time the movie ended (with the couple getting married, of course), they decided to call it a night since pretty much all of them were holding back yawns. Henry slipped into Amelia's room to kiss her goodnight once the villa was completely dark and she was already curled up under her covers.

"You don't have to sneak around just to kiss me, you know," she laughed softly.

"I know," he murmured, the edges of his lips curving upwards. "I just couldn't fall asleep without telling you goodnight. Come get me if you need anything, okay?"

She promised that she would. He kissed her forehead before tucking her back in, and it was like she could still see him there even once she closed her eyes. It took practically no time at all for her to drift off again.

Amelia got caught daydreaming.

She was watching out the window of the restaurant they'd stopped at for lunch, her gaze captured by the pedestrians who passed in groups down the sidewalk. Bundled in their hats and scarves, they laughed with one another, not appearing to be in any particular rush to get wherever they were headed.

The pace of life felt much slower here than back home. Granted, she knew that most of the people she saw milling around the streets were tourists like herself who had the luxury of relaxing, but it was still nothing at all like being surrounded by other visitors in a frantic city like New York.

She hadn't realized how much she needed this time to recuperate from all things Colton without also having to worry about her job. Although being self-employed had its perks, the boundaries between her personal and professional life were very hazy and so she often got caught in the trap of working late into the night, hunched over her laptop in her bed. The only moments when it was truly easy to push her job completely out of mind were the ones she spent with Henry.

He lightly tapped her on the shoulder. "Have you decided what you want to order?"

"Um..." She'd only glanced at the menu for a second before she got distracted, which must have been for longer than she realized. Her eyes darted back to the glossy pages. "Spaghetti carbonara."

Just because it was an impulse choice didn't mean it wasn't a good one—she'd gotten her first taste of Italian pizza the day before but still needed to try some pasta. And later, once their food arrived, she had absolutely no regrets about the mountain of cheesy pasta placed in front of her.

She tried to take a stealthy photo of her food without being too conspicuous about it. She couldn't help herself even if it was super cringe-worthy.

And without thinking, she mumbled partially to Henry but mostly to herself, "Nat's gonna be so jealous."

Oh, shit, she thought immediately. She hadn't mentioned yet to Lily that her best friend also happened to be one of Liam's exes—it wasn't as if it had come up in conversation in the short amount of time they'd been around each other. It didn't exactly seem like a prime discussion topic while Lily and Liam were both trying to regain their footing in their relationship.

In theory, Amelia should have been able to move on without saying anything else—it wasn't as if a name in itself was incriminating—but she felt her cheeks start to flush. It didn't help that she could see Liam also going pink or that Henry seemed to be holding back a fit of laughter.

The parents were enveloped in their own conversation at the other end of the table, but a look of confusion crossed Lily's face as she glanced over at Liam.

"She's, um," he mumbled and Amelia realized he was about to do the explaining for her. "She's friends with Natasha."

"Natasha..." Lily's eyebrows shot up once it dawned on her. "Oh, you mean like Natasha Natasha?"

"The one and only," Henry remarked, looking amused. Amelia elbowed him.

But Lily only shrugged a little bit, looking unbothered. "Huh...small world, I guess." She took the first bite of her pizza, then through that bite mumbled, "I always kind of wanted to meet her. She sounded feisty."

It was Amelia who cracked first, a small laugh spluttering out of her lips. If there was one word to describe Nat, feisty was definitely it.

Their lunch stop had been near the cathedral, about halfway between the Galleria dell'Accademia and the Uffizi, and they now finished the walk with much fuller stomachs than they had before. Henry's dad was asking her what she thought of the Accademia, and she told him that she really liked it—the David was actually more impressive to her in person, which surprised her considering how iconic it was. She'd heard way too many depressing stories of people who had gone to the Louvre just to see the Mona Lisa and found the experience to be incredibly underwhelming.

The Uffizi was going to be a much longer endeavor than the Accademia, but Amelia was practically bouncing with excitement about it as they returned to the Piazza della Signoria and approached the museum. Three floors tall, it was shaped like a long rectangle with one of its narrow ends left completely open to the plaza. Across the courtyard, the two wings of the gallery were connected by the windowed hallways than ran through the other short side of the rectangle, but the bottom floor of it wasn't enclosed either. Instead, an open archway gave her a glimpse of the Arno River and allowed pedestrians to easily cross through the courtyard as if it were just any other street and not home to some of the most famous artwork in the world.

Robert had bought their tickets online the night before while trying to dodge his responsibility of narrating the cheesy movie for them, so they only had to wait in a very brief line to show an usher their tickets before they were let inside. Although foot traffic wasn't strictly one-way, visitors were advised to start on the top floor and work their way back downwards, so they got to start their self-guided tour by trekking up a very large staircase.

"Does it bore you to visit the same museum multiple times?" she whispered to Henry, partially because she didn't want to be overheard and partially just because she was running out of breath already.

She'd been mildly self-conscious for the entire trip thus far that they were repeating a lot of activities from previous trips for her and Liam's sakes, though no one else had seemed outwardly uninterested in any of it.

Henry shook his head. "I think you could probably spend a lifetime unpacking everything in here if you wanted to."

And Amelia imagined that wasn't an exaggeration. She had learned long before stepping foot through the museum doors—years before—who just a handful of the artists whose works were housed in here were. Michelangelo, da Vinci, Raphael, Botticelli, Dürer, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Titian, Giotto, Cimabue. To anyone who knew even a smidge about Western art history, it was pretty boggling to think that it was possible to just stroll into a single gallery and see work by all of those masters within the span of a few hours.

She had certainly never thought it would happen to her. But here she was, with her boyfriend and his dad who conveniently happened to be a walking European history textbook. She had thought she might seem like she was pestering him if she asked in every single room for what context he knew about the time period they were looking at art from—it was his winter break from being a teacher, after all—but she very quickly got the impression as they arrived at the first room, a hallway of Roman sculptures, that he very much wanted to get to ramble about the history to anyone who would happily listen.

And as they made their way from room to room, moving from the almost comical yet lusciously gilded medieval depictions of the Virgin Mary and Jesus (looking very much like a baby-sized man) to The Birth of Venus to about five million depictions of the Annunciation; as she listened to him spin stories about Firenze and Roma and Venezia and Napoli, about the rise and fall of the Medici family, it slowly dawned on her just how different it felt from her formal education on the same topics.

She'd loved her art history classes in college, adored them, but those professors never could have possessed the same insights as someone who had spent their formative years here. It didn't compare to hearing from someone who could have told you the shade of the Mediterranean Sea first thing in the morning when the sky was still foggy; where to find the best tiramisu in all of Lazio; that the best time to visit the Piazzale Michelangelo and look out over Florence was actually at night because that red tiling that was used throughout Tuscany made it look like all the roofs in the city been set ablaze once the streetlamps flickered on at dusk.

Henry's dad was telling her of real people and real places, places he knew, places that shaped him. And because art was such a fundamental part of Italy's history, the history that he had grown up with, the art had shaped him too. Even his voice seemed to come out a little more accented than usual while he was hearing the sounds of his first language around him so constantly, and judging by the tender look his wife gave him when he wasn't looking, she seemed to find it very cute.

Upon entering a new, darker room, they were greeted by a grotesque painting of a man being decapitated with a sword, and yet Amelia started to smile. She knew the artist without even having to look at the plaque beside the painting—Artemisia Gentileschi, one of the few successful female painters of the Baroque era. She'd painted many of the same Biblical scenes as her contemporaries, such as this one, Judith Slaying Holofernes. Her technical skills rivaled and even surpassed those of her male counterparts, but the women in her paintings were never shown as meek, dainty, or submissive. They actually looked strong and determined enough to pin down a war general and chop his head off.

"I know this one," she murmured. "Artemisia always seemed like a badass."

Robert quietly laughed from next to her and when Amelia glanced over, she realized that Jen had drifted over to her husband's other side. She leaned in and whispered something to him and he smiled, almost as if they had some sort of inside joke—though what inside joke they could have about a painting of a guy with blood spurting out his neck like a Gusher, Amelia didn't know.

And she didn't want to ask. She stepped back and watched the two of them looking at the painting for a moment, wondering how many times they might have wandered through a museum like this together over the decades. She imagined that he'd always ask Jen what her opinion was even if he knew more information about what they were looking at than she did, and she'd smile a little coyly and point out a new perspective that he'd never even considered. Her mind floated around in the realm of the theoretical; his stored thousands upon thousands of facts and drew them together to make connections. They balanced each other out rather nicely.

Jen rested her chin on her husband's shoulder for a second before taking his hand and tugging him along, and in that precious sliver of time they hardly seemed much older than Amelia and Henry.

And as she watched, Amelia knew that was what she wanted with him. That in thirty years from now, no matter how much everything else in their world had changed, she'd still feel just as giddy with him as she did at twenty-four.

That night, once it was already late, she sat on the edge of her bed and rubbed her sore feet with the lavender-scented lotion she'd somehow managed to fit into her suitcase with everything else. They hadn't even made it through the entirety of the Uffizi before their legs were too tired to keep going and the museum was about to close for the evening, but they still had two days left in Florence and so, sensing her disappointment, Henry's dad had promised to take her and anyone else who wanted to come back to the gallery first thing in the morning.

The sensible thing to do now would be to fall asleep, but her mind didn't feel quite ready for that yet. It crossed her mind to go out onto her balcony, to look up and see if there were any stars in sight, but while that would have been a lovely idea in the summertime, she'd freeze if she went out there tonight. She stood up and paced the length of the room, then sat down again at the foot of the bed. Flopped backward and sprawled out as much as possible on the mattress, tried to imagine herself gently slipping off into sleep.

She sat up again, this time looking down at her pajamas. A gray tank top and white flannel pants with little hearts on them. Amelia didn't know whether she looked cute, but she didn't think it mattered—it wasn't as if she was about to strut into Henry's room and seduce him.

And yet she really did want to be with him so badly. She couldn't even remember if she'd told him goodnight. Back home, every night they'd spent under the same roof they'd eventually wound up in the same bed, bodies folded into one another. She would have curled up inside him if she could, let all her edges disappear.

Her feet touched down on the floor. She walked over to the switch to turn the overhead light off and click her phone flashlight on instead. Amelia cupped her hand over the lens, only allowing as much light through as she absolutely needed to see where she was going.

The door creaked when she opened it, then pressed it shut behind her. A cold draft of air made her bare arms prickle with goosebumps, but she still forced herself to go upstairs slowly, cautiously.

A tiny trickle of light seeped out from underneath Henry's door, yet it was still possible that he'd fallen asleep with it on. And so she rapped on the door very lightly, lightly enough to not rouse him from his sleep if he'd already dozed off.

"Hello?" his voice asked from inside.

"It's me."

"You can come in."

She pulled the doorknob only as far as was necessary, careful not to let too much light into the hall. But he only had a bedside lamp on and its glow didn't quite reach the far corners of the room.

In that instant, as she took in the sight of him—the warm hue touching the skin of his bare torso like he was golden, the blankets from a bed that had gone unmade this morning tangled around his legs, his eyes drinking in the sight of her even though she was in these silly pajamas—she suddenly wished that she was an illustrator like Natasha, that she could touch a pencil to a page and bring this Henry to life on it, put him in her pocket and carry him around with her forever.

"Hi," he said with a small smile, but she caught the way his fingers lightly brushed against the blankets by his side like he wanted her there next to him.

That was all the invitation she needed. Amelia came and lowered herself onto the mattress, crawled over to his side as he pulled back the blankets to cocoon her under them with him. A small, content sigh left her lips.

"How was your day?" she murmured only once she was in the circle of his arm, her head resting against his shoulder.

"You were there for all of it," he reminded her, grinning.

"I know," she admitted. "I just...is it too insane to say that I've missed you? I know I've been with you constantly, but–"

"But we've hardly had any time alone," he finished for her. His voice was low in a way that made her cheeks feel warm, her mouth dry, and he reached over to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear. "I was actually thinking about that today—that I could take you on a proper date sometime while we're here. Even if it's just going out to dinner."

"It's never really just dinner when it's Italian dinner," she pointed out. "That sounds nice."

"That's true," he smiled. "And I think I've finally had enough practice speaking the language that I don't need my dad chaperoning us everywhere."

"That's good. It's not like I can really make out with you in front of your parents," she said stupidly, without thinking, and it made a laugh tumble out of him.

But it was a sound of agreement, and her nose was already brushing against his as he hummed, "What I'm hearing is that you really just snuck up here to make up for lost time, then."

His lips parted willingly against hers, warm and wanting. Henry was pressing soft, gentle kisses on her mouth as she wound her fingers up into his hair to feel the silkiness of it against her hands, but the want rapidly flamed into need.

He made a pleased sound from the back of his throat when her grip on him tightened, as she started to return his kisses with more urgency, and his skin was increasingly hot beneath her as she slowly slid her hands down to his bare shoulders, then further down his chest. The day before, at the leather market, Amelia had wanted so badly to touch him, to trail her fingertips along the spot on his shoulder where his sleeve of tattoos began. Now, simply touching him wasn't nearly enough, and she dipped her head down to kiss him there instead. This wasn't like her usual self—she was usually more reserved than this, always nervous about going too far too soon—but a pang of desire shot through her as soon as her mouth touched his skin.

Perhaps she had come up here to seduce him.

His voice was tight as he breathed her name against her hair and she thought that he might be about to stop her, to tell her that he didn't enjoy what she was doing, but the reality was actually quite the opposite. She'd positioned herself rather clumsily and Henry, realizing that she'd found a rhythm that she liked, guided her legs to either side of him—(Can I touch you here? he'd asked in a whisper before he put his hand on her thigh)—so that he was reclining further back against the pillows and she was straddling his hips.

The rise and fall of his chest was uneven, his eyes wide with surprise and dark with desire all at the same time. One of his hands was on the small of her back, the other still stroking the underside of her thigh, and even though she knew they couldn't do much more than this even if they wanted to—not with his parents and aunt and uncle sleeping under the same roof—she couldn't bear to stop it either.

She leaned down to feel his lips against hers again and murmur that she loved him and hear him say it back to her over and over and over. His fingers slipped under the hem of her tank top, exploratory as they ventured along the skin there at the base of her back but not roaming elsewhere without her permission. He toyed with the fabric, almost as if to satiate a repressed desire he had to take it off of her. And Amelia suddenly thought—why not?

"You can do that if you want to," she said softly.

His eyes flew open, startled. "Is that what you want?"

She nervously nodded, chewing on the inside of her lip. She was well aware that her cheeks would be bright red by now and terrified that she was actually coming on way too strong, that he secretly didn't want any of this, but he couldn't have concealed the rawness in his expression even if he'd tried.

But his eyes didn't drift down from her face while his hands fumbled for the hem of her top. She giggled a little bit and led him there, covering his hands with her own. And then with one, careful motion, the shirt had been lifted up and over her head.

She wore nothing else beneath—she'd changed into it with the intention of going straight to sleep.

And now she was here, completely topless in front of Henry for the first time. Amelia had always been self-conscious about her small chest, how pale her skin was and how it flushed in bright, blotchy spots from her cheeks all the way down to decolletage when she was excited or nervous. But if she had expected her chest to be heaving with anxious breaths, she was now surprised at how steady she felt. Despite how often negative thoughts about her own body followed her around, it hadn't even crossed her mind that he might find her unattractive, unappealing.

"Henry," she said in a small voice.

"Are you okay?" he whispered to her, his lips barely moving, and when she nodded and told him yes, he nuzzled against her chest and kissed her there.

She bit down on her lip to stop any noise from coming out of her mouth, but when she looked down at him, she realized that his eyes were closed, dark lashes brushing against his cheeks even as he murmured things to her that made her go hot all over.

The realization struck her like a lightning bolt: he hadn't even looked at her. He hadn't looked at her at all.

For a split second, she was embarrassed. Did he not want to look at her? Was he scared he wouldn't like what he saw? But no—that wouldn't explain the muffled noise that came out of him when she shifted slightly, inadvertently arching her body closer to his.

But he knew her past, that getting physical with him could accidentally become triggering for her if they weren't careful, if they rushed into things. That's why he was closing his eyes—he wasn't going to let himself create the possibility that she could regret this in the morning when her brain wasn't clouded with desire. Because no matter how she felt in the morning, he wouldn't have seen a thing.

Oh, sweet Henry. His lips titled into a little smile when she stroked his hair, and there was something so unabashedly tender about him simply resting there that she could have cried. She wanted to take him in her arms and hug him.

So she did. Amelia drew his chin back up towards hers so that she could place one last, slow kiss on his lips before she buried her face against his shoulder, her arms circling around his back. And he held her there close to him, his palms flat against her spine, and oh, it was a more blissful feeling than anything else in the world. She could feel his heartbeat so well, the way their lungs moved in tandem as they caught their breath after all of that. But this, this simple skin to skin contact without hiding themselves in each other's kisses, felt infinitely more intimate.

If she tried to, Amelia could still remember that panic of being trapped under Colton's body, that feeling in her gut when she knew that he was about to violate her, but it had never felt so far away, so incapable of touching her, as it did right now.

Her eyes fluttered shut and for a very long time, they were silent. She was soothed more and more as she felt the repetitive motion of his palm drifting up between her shoulder blades, sometimes stopping there to play with a strand of her hair, and then back down again. Even the cream-colored paint on the walls, different than the shade in her room, had a calming effect, lulling her to rest. Eventually, he pulled the blankets further up her back to keep her from shivering under the draft of the ceiling fan. She felt soft fabric against her skin, but nothing else was nearly as pleasant as his warm and steady hands.

"I'm not tormenting you right now, am I?" she whispered, lifting her fingers to lovingly stroke the hair at the nape of his neck.

She couldn't see his expression, but she hoped he felt the same way she did—that he didn't want anything in the world more than this.

"Tormenting me?" His voice, right next to her ear, sounded surprised. "Amelia, this is heaven."

____________________

A/N:

this chapter really took a turn but you know what i'm not apologizing for it.

sorry (no i'm not) if the gallery scene dragged on too long but this chapter is 1000% a callback to another chapter of the same title in one of my books that's still one of my favorites i've ever written. we love rob and jen in this household.

also—there's just one more chapter left! it's a pretty different last chapter than we had in the first draft and i hope you'll enjoy it :)