Page 107 of Operation Sunshine
Franco whispered back, his breathing ragged, “Always yours.”
Ben lay there inside him, trembling with the aftershocks, sweat cooling on his skin, their kisses slowing into tenderness as urgency bled into something quieter. Ben rolled onto his side, pulling Franco with him. Their legs intertwined, their breaths syncing, the world outside shrinking until it was just the two of them in the dim light.
For a while, they simply breathed, touching, holding, as though the words they’d finally spoken had opened a door between them that no amount of silence could ever close again.
It was Franco who whispered first, his voice rough but steady. “What happens next?”
Ben brushed his fingers through Franco’s hair, tracing slow patterns against his temple. “You finish the stage. You finish what you started. And I…” His lips curved faintly. “I keep the restaurant running so you’ve got somewhere to come home to.”
Franco looked up at him, his eyes wide and luminous in the half-dark. “Home?”
Ben swallowed, his heart kicking against his ribs. “If you want it to be.”
The corners of Franco’s mouth lifted into a smile that undid Ben completely. He burrowed closer, pressing a kiss to Ben’s throat. “You know I want it. I want to be wherever you are.” His words trembled, but they rang with certainty.
“Early December,” Ben murmured, as if anchoring himself to the date. “That’s when you’re back?”
Franco nodded against his chest. “I’ll be on that plane the second I can be. I don’t care if it’s snowing here, if I’m jet-lagged out of my mind… I’m coming back to you.”
Ben exhaled slowly, the knot in his chest loosening enough for hope to seep in. “Then I’ll be waiting. But not just waiting… planning. We’ll figure out what this looks like. How we fit together.”
Franco tilted his head, meeting his gaze again. “Promise me something?”
“Anything.”
“Don’t shut down while I’m gone. Don’t go back into that shell I first found you in. Stay open. Stay… you.”
Ben let out a quiet laugh, pressing a kiss to Franco’s brow. “No danger of that anymore. You opened me up to the world again, Franco. And I don’t think I could go back, even if I wanted to.”
Franco’s hand splayed across Ben’s chest, over his heart. “Good. Because I want to come back to this. To us.”
“You will.” Ben covered Franco’s hand with his own. “We’ll pick up right where we leave off—together.”
They lay there, exchanging soft kisses and half-whispered promises, until exhaustion pulled them under. And for the first time since the email had arrived to change Franco’s—and Ben’s—life, since the fear of losing Franco had taken root, Ben let himself sleep with peace in his heart and Franco in his arms.
Chapter Thirty-One
Ten days here isn’t enough.
Ben had expected Florence to feel like a postcard, too perfect to belong to the real world. But walking its cobbled streets with the pale Tuscan sun spilling over ochre rooftops, he realised it was alive, flawed, chaotic, and impossibly beautiful.
Franco left early most mornings, his chef’s whites slung over his shoulder, and Ben watched him disappear into the labyrinth of streets that led toward Gallo’s kitchen. Each time, Ben’s chest swelled with pride, but there was also a raw ache. Franco was exactly where he belonged: learning, thriving, dazzling.
Ben was learning too, although in a quieter way.
He gave himself over to the city. He drifted through the Uffizi, standing so long in front of Botticelli’s Primavera that a guard eventually nudged him along. He lingered on bridges over the Arno, letting the breeze carry the faint tang of river water and roasted chestnuts from street vendors. He climbed the winding steps of the Duomo until his legs trembled, and then stood in awe at the sea of terracotta rooftops rippling out to the horizon.
But every afternoon, as shadows stretched across the piazzas andbells tolled from church towers, his steps circled inevitably back to Franco.
It became their rhythm: the city by day, Franco by night.
They strolled hand in hand along the Arno at sunset, the Ponte Vecchio glowing in the last light, shop windows glinting with gold and silver. Franco made fun of the way Ben’s phone filled up with pictures of buildings, but then snapped photos of Ben when he thought he wasn’t looking: Ben laughing, pistachio gelato dripping down his wrist, Ben squinting against the sun, Ben staring at him across a tiny table lit by a single flickering candle.
He’d have made a lousy secret agent—Ben caught him every single time.
Dinner was never extravagant. Sometimes they ate at a bistro tucked into a side street, where the tables wobbled and the wine was poured generously by a grandmotherly owner who winked at Franco as if she’d already adopted him. Sometimes it was takeaway pizza, eaten sitting on the steps of a church while Franco narrated the history of the piazza in dramatic, mostly invented detail until Ben laughed so hard his stomach hurt.
One night, Franco led him up to Piazzale Michelangelo, where the city unfurled beneath them in a blaze of lights. They stood side by side, their breath misting in the cooling air, while Franco pointed out the buildings he’d already come to love: the squat fortress of Palazzo Vecchio, the perfect dome of Brunelleschi, the slender bell towers scattered like exclamation marks.
