Meant To Be

By S M DeLong

He always put her first.

Stepheno Zarino learned that in Crotone, in a kitchen where his mother prayed before the coffee cooled. He carried it across an ocean. He practiced it in Wooster Square, in a Hartford house, in every quiet mile after.

Megan was the one the prayers had already named.

They found each other the way faithful families do - slowly, then all at once. They drifted. They came back. He knelt in the snow outside Saint Michael's and asked the question he had always known was coming. She said yes in the voice she used when she had already prayed the answer.

What followed was not a slogan. It was espresso carried carefully. A workbench and three children. War years and porch years. Niagara mist in both their eyes. A baby in 1945 who had his grandfather's face. A woman in Missouri who cried leaving Rome and then came home to Calabria. A clock in Lexington. A bottle on the rocks with a name at the bottom: Geno. A shop. A morning at 11:11.

This is one novel.

The first vow. The long marriage. The return to Crotone.

A love rooted in Calabria, carried across the water, and kept by God until the morning it was complete.

Ti amo. Sempre.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0HK71PY8T
• ISBN13: 9798237928181
• Release Date: September 2026
• Publisher: S.M.DeLong
• Length: 300 Pages
• Weight: 0.77 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.5"