The Secret Between Us
Chapter 53: The End

One year later

Our journey during this last year has been incredible, living Tiziano’s pregnancy from minute one was a unique experience that filled me with new feelings that caused me to fulfill one of my biggest dreams; to become a writer. I don’t even know how it happened… I started to write some lyrics the morning after I found out I was going to be a father again, and from there a series of narratives was born that little by little I was joining together and that tells the story of a man and a woman who were very much in love, but that love was practically impossible, and therefore they met secretly in a flat in the centre of a very busy city in the United States.

Nobody knows because I didn’t use my name or mine, but in that book I told our story, I revealed our best secret to the world and it became the best seller of a car that everybody wants to know, but he doesn’t want to be known. I realised over time that Mia and I’s love story is one that deserved to be told and I did….

-Daddy,” my little girl interrupts me and I am forced to put my pen aside as well as the books I was autographing.

I turn in my chair to see her and I love that she looks more like her mother every day. “Tell me my princess,” I say stretching my arms to sit her on my lap.

I turn around in my chair to see her and I love that every day she looks more like her mother – Tell me my princess – I tell her stretching my arms to sit her on my lap.

She grows so much every day that I’m afraid of missing a single moment of hers… I don’t know how to explain it, and maybe that’s why I fill entire memory cards with pictures of her and her brother -Shall we watch the movie?

-Of course we are, let’s go with your mommy to see the movie,” I tell her and I carry her to the living room where I see the love of my life with our son in her arms, completely asleep.

-He’s finally asleep,” she says smiling and I sit down next to her to see our baby.

-He’s a little angel,” I murmur.

-Can we stop time? I don’t want them to grow up anymore,” she jokes and smiles.

-I’d love to, but you know how it is… the cycle of life,” I say, quoting the Lion King movie, which we’ve seen so many times as it’s our daughter’s favourite.

-We must stop watching that movie,” she comments amused and carefully gets up from the sofa with our son in her arms to take him to his cot, “I’ll be right back,” she says and I just look at her as our daughter settles down next to me with her popcorn and favourite juice like every Friday night.

Our lives are long gone from playing hide and seek, from the adrenaline of being discovered, from the danger of our families, from running away to live our love… it’s just us with our children and that restaurant we love so much. We may no longer bear our real names, or at least not to the people we know here, but the feelings are still the same as when we were that man and that woman who saw each other in that flat and loved each other with everything they were. Love has not and will not change… We know very well how difficult it was to get to this point, we also knew the pain of being far away, and of course the relief of being reunited.

From our best secret our two children were born, those that many nights we dreamed of and that so many times we thought were impossible, but they say that nothing is impossible if you fight for it and I faithfully believe in that; especially now when on this sofa she sits next to me once again and hugs me while our little one hugs me on the other side and I feel like the luckiest man in the world.

END