He'd gone beyond his player ways for her.
She'd grown beyond her traumatic past for him.
Together, their love was beyond.
Until one fatal accident.
__________
When she loses the love of her life in a car crash, Althea has nothing left in California...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
*ALTHEA'S POV*
October 22, 2023.
"It's your last chance to turn back," Asher announced as I cut the engine, his cocked eyebrow making me roll my eyes.
He was right though, because as soon as we got out of the car, we only moved forward, beyond the white picket fence, the wooden pillars of the front porch, the five letters by the door, and it wasn't the Californian Fall air that pulled us in.
Rather the warmth of the two arms wrapping around me before I could even reach for the bell.
"Mamma Mia! You're really here, carina!" Giada leaned back, cupping my face as her moss-colored eyes studied me with an all too familiar acuteness. "You look so tiny! And you don't have glasses anymore! And your hair... Oh, you're still bellissima!"
"Grazie, you too." I smiled, although Giada pulled me so quickly into another hug that I barely had time to see her face.
What I noted, however, was that she still had the same liveliness while at the same time offering the most gentle embraces, and when, after telling me how happy she was to see me, she moved all her motherly love towards her son, I could confirm that despite a few more wrinkles, she was still a gorgeous woman.
Asher had inherited her brown strands, her confidence, her excessiveness, and this kind of fiery, sun-like charisma.
When they were together, it was quite something, and I was so captivated by the melodious Italian words she used to wish him a happy birthday and the roll of his sparkling eyes as she brushed his 'finalmente' styled hair and shaved jaw that I hadn't realized I was still standing awkwardly by the door until she called,
"Oh, come on in, carina! You're probably getting cold."
I hadn't even felt the chilly breeze brushing a few goosebumps on my bare arms, maybe because it was still far from the biting wind I'd left behind in New York, or maybe because of another kind of warmth around...
"You know you're still at home here."
Home, it was the word for the warmth that had filled my chest before I even stepped in, inhaling the hints of garlic, tomato, and other inviting aromas in the heated air, for the comfort I found in the faint hubbub coming from the TV in the living room and Giada's apologies for 'the mess around' the neat hallway, and for the familiarity of the fragile vase sitting in a precarious balance on the console table at the end of the long room.
