Chapter Fourteen
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
L UCA ’ S LIFE WAS entirely different than it had been three months ago, and he was...happy about it in many ways.
Polly had begun work at the company, dealing in marketing, and she seemed to thrive in that role. He liked watching her achieve things, accomplish her aims.
He liked her.
He loved having her living with him. He loved having her in his bed.
He enjoyed watching the changes that the pregnancy was making on her body.
This commonplace thing made miraculous because it was theirs.
Because she was his.
But she told him that she loved him nearly every day, and it was creating a dissonance inside him he was having difficulty ignoring.
It was beginning to build, like a low-level frequency that began to drive you mad.
How could it not. This... This declaration of love.
It was beginning to ring so loud in his ears that he couldn’t hear anything else.
They went to another doctor appointment, and it was like something with claws had reached into his chest and speared his heart. Like it was being pulled asunder.
He couldn’t seem to find any protection for it. And it was a monstrosity the likes of which he had never experienced before.
Nor did he want to.
And it was a terrible thing, because he wanted her in his life, he wanted to claim this thing that he was certain he could have, and yet, he was undone by the feeling that he was doing it wrong.
He was different. He could think he was doing the same things as other people and discover he wasn’t, actually. He could think he knew what someone else needed and be wrong.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
His father had always told him he was wrong.
His mother had told him he was right as he was, but she had died and he had no way of knowing if she would have always thought he was okay, or if she would have seen him struggle later and...
What if he was broken?
What if he would never be able to be there for her in the way that she needed?
He wanted to be.
She had told him that he needed to show care in the way that another person could receive it. The truth was, she had said she loved him. And that must mean on some level it was the sort of care she wanted shown back to her.
What did he know about that?
But even if so, it was like having somebody watch him open presents.
He wasn’t sure if his response was acceptable. He wasn’t sure if it could ever be.
He was sure of nothing.
Nothing at all.
What he wanted to do was engage in an exploration of his own soul. Come to some kind of medical conclusion, and yet that was the problem with humans.
Nothing was half so simple. Even when he wanted it to be.
He understood that for most people, medicine and medical science was the mystery. But to him...it was this.
And he had no way of knowing if this was just him, or if it was something that could be changed. Learned. If his mother had lived, would everything be different? Would he be...not a top medical scientist, not leading the field in research and development, not a billionaire, but a man. Who understood how to have a wife, who understood how to be a father.
Was it a lack of what he had been able to see and learn and experience that created these problems now?
All he knew was that he felt inadequate. Down to his very soul.
And for her part, she seemed happy. But what if she wasn’t? And what if he could never know? What if she was simply putting on a brave face? Or what if she was blinded? Blinded by the love that she claimed to feel for him. Hadn’t her parents kept her with them, kept her unhappy, likely because she was a child who had loved them?
He hated the idea of that. Truly.
And yet, she was...
She was the greatest thing in his life.
And also caused him the most unrest. The most pain.
She came into his office that day at three thirty in the afternoon. And he was stunned by her beauty. All over again.
Because everything was May twenty-fourth, over and over again. Because everything was her, trapped in the golden light of the sun. Because everything was them.
And he supposed it would always be that way. But he wondered if he had the capacity to make it something more than what it was now. To make it all the things that needed to be.
“Do you miss Milan?”
“No.” She didn’t look confused, and she did not ask follow-up questions. She just went about her business in his office as if it was hers. He supposed she knew where everything was in it. Knew it just as well as she knew him. Which was well.
“If you could go back, would you, though?”
She shook her head. “No. I had actually somewhat decided that I wasn’t entirely happy with the job. It’s difficult to go to any other job after you’ve been doing the work that we’ve been doing. Especially when I see the strides that you’re making. It isn’t that there isn’t validity in something like fashion. Of course there is. I really do believe that beauty and art make life worth living. But you make living possible. For so many people. And that work just feels so essential. It’s difficult to leave it behind.”
He nodded slowly. “Yes.”
This office was sacred. Their working relationship was sacred. It was a rule. And yet, suddenly things did not feel neat inside of him. They felt like too much. Too big. And the gall of her saying she loved him sounded inside him over and over again.
He was overcome by it. Overwhelmed by it. He could hear nothing else.
And this was the thing he would always have a hard time explaining to other people.
Sometimes the noise inside of him was so great that the noise on the outside added to it was unbearable. That what was soft to them was overwhelming to him. That what felt like a breeze to them could become daggers beneath his skin, because the world within him was so overwhelming, so insistent, and he did not know how to share it with another person. Didn’t know how to let anyone else know.
And he had tried with her. He was still trying.
But the way that he could most effectively communicate was through touch.
Not in the office. It was against the rules.
And then he found he could not hold himself back. She lived with him. Shared his bed with him. He had upended his routines for her. His life. And it somehow still didn’t feel like enough. The unfairness of it all weighed down on him. Heavy and insistent and intense.
He wrapped his hand around the back of her neck, and he pulled her in for a kiss.
She gasped. Shock, but not displeasure. He knew her well enough to know that. He could trust that.
That, somewhere deep within him became a rallying cry.
He kissed her, and suddenly, it didn’t seem to matter quite so much that everything was everything. That everything was overwhelmed. That everything was foreign.
Because she wasn’t.
She was just the right amount. Just the perfect thing to take him out of his own head, and ground him in his body in a way that felt real. In a way that felt right.
So he kissed her, because it was the only thing that could quiet this noise inside of him.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him back, and even though he hadn’t said anything she seemed to understand. That he needed her. That he needed to demolish this last wall.
The sacred space of work.
Rules. What were any of his rules?
What did they mean? He didn’t even know anymore.
He had lived his life by them, and they had only gotten him so far.
Yes, he had made all of these advancements in medicine. He had been part of so many wonderful things, but as a human being, as a man, he did not feel as if he understood anything new. Anything real.
Anything deeper.
But there was her.
And she made the life he’d built for himself feel inadequate. He had been certain that he’d built up a kingdom, he had accomplished great things. He had made all he did well so big that his inadequacies would seem like nothing, and yet.
There was her.
She made him feel like he had to find a different way to be. A different way to feel, to breathe. She made him feel like he needed to be new, so that he could have her.
Her.
He had her now. She was his wife.
Dammit all, she was his wife. Not his assistant. She couldn’t simply quit. She was having his baby.
And he needed her.
And so he kissed her. Lifted her up and set her down on the edge of his desk.
And then, in a wild fury, he stepped away from her, went to his door and locked it securely. Her eyes widened.
“I need you,” he said.
“Okay,” she said.
He wanted her to say that she needed him too, but hadn’t she already said the most?
Hadn’t she already said that she loved him?
“Tell me,” he said. “Tell me that you need me too.” It wasn’t fair. He needed it all the same.
“Of course I need you,” she said.
He was... He could see through her eyes. How little he made sense. Asking her if she wished that she could leave, and then locking the door, putting her up on the edge of the desk. Demanding that she tell him how much she needed him. Of course. He made no sense at all.
Not even to himself.
But he couldn’t stop himself now.
So he claimed her mouth again, and again. Stood between her thighs and pushed her skirt further and further up her legs. He pressed his hand to her slick flesh, teased her until she was gasping with pleasure. Until she cried out for more. More of his touch, more of him.
And he gave it to her.
He undid his belt, the closure on his pants, and claimed her in one decisive thrust.
He hadn’t believed her the first time she had told him that he had forgotten a condom.
Such foolishness now. He couldn’t even imagine the man that he had been then. The one who had been so convinced he could never lose control.
A loss of control was life with Polly.
It was just life.
And so he took her. Over and over again. Letting himself feel everything.
The tight, hot clasp of her body. Her hot breath in his ear as her pleasure grew. As she began to whimper with need.
Yes. He needed her.
What if he always did? Like this.
What would be left of him?
He blotted that out. He gave himself over to his body.
To this radical feeling of being entirely in the moment. Of being entirely in himself.
He clung to her hips and held her fast as he thrust, hard and wild.
She clung to his shoulders, and cried out his name.
And he found himself falling. Tumbling over the edge into the abyss. His pleasure was all-consuming. But then suddenly, it was just Polly. A bright and brilliant sunrise that overtook his soul.
Her name was a prayer on his lips, and he shouted it into that sacred space of his office. Which was now no longer given to work. But given to her.
There were no longer any barriers left within him. And when he pulled away from her, to look into her eyes, the intensity of the pain that he felt was so absolutely overwhelming that he couldn’t breathe.
“Polly,” he said, his voice rough.
“Oh, Luca,” she said, touching his face.
He pulled away from her. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“But I lost control.”
“Luca, you live every day of your life with such control I find that I enjoy being the thing that makes you lose it.”
But he didn’t. Yes, it felt good in the moment, but he found himself less and less able to claw back some of his agency. He found himself given entirely to the feelings that she created in him, and he couldn’t simply come back to himself.
And if he couldn’t do that, then he could maintain control. And if he couldn’t maintain control...
He didn’t even know who he was.
He pushed the dark thought away, and looked at her. At her wide eyes.
“I love you,” she said.
It was like a knife blade wedged beneath his skin.
“No,” he said. “I don’t want you to love me.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s impossible... It was impossible for me to give you what you want. It is impossible for me to care for you in the way that you need to be cared for.”
The words were like flame, migrating up his throat, making him feel useless. Worthless.
He hated himself in that moment. More than anything.
He hated himself.
But it was true. It wasn’t fair, if he could never love her in the way that she needed to be loved in order to feel it.
If he could never care in the way that it would matter to her. He had strong-armed her into marriage. And she felt things for him that...no one else had ever claimed to feel.
She felt things for him that he hadn’t imagined anyone could.
And what fool was he but he could not return it in equal measure.
He ignored the burning pain at the center of his chest. He ignored everything. Everything but this one clear truth. He would take her. He would use her, as he had done when she was his assistant, and in the end it would be no different. She would leave him. She would be wise to do so.
When he was not able to give what she needed him to give, when he could not make her feel what she wanted to feel.
When every moment of their lives was her giving him the most wonderful, thoughtful present imaginable, but she couldn’t look at him and understand the way that he felt. And he couldn’t find the words to tell her.
He would fail her.
As he had failed to be the son that his father wanted.
He had perhaps lied to himself. That he could become the father his own child would need.
He had a purpose. That purpose was medicine.
It was clear. It was clear. He knew exactly what to do with the human body, but the mysteries of the human soul were beyond him. His own most of all.
How could he have thought to bring her into this mess?
It was wrong.
He had to let her go.
He had to.
“Polly, we cannot continue on like this.”
“What are you saying?”
“I will never be able to feel the things that you want me to. I will never be able to show you the sort of care that you want, and I fear that it will be the same with our child.”
“Have I expressed disappointment in what you have given me?”
“No. Sometimes.”
“And when I have, I have asked for clear change, haven’t I?”
“Yes, you have. But... With this revelation of love and my inability to return it...”
“Have I asked you to? Have I told you that it is unbearable for me? Have I told you that I need you to say the words back to me right now?”
“No. But you will. You will, and there will come a time when I have to figure out how to be this thing for you, and I don’t know how. I don’t want to spend half a lifetime failing you until you get to the point where you have no choice but to leave.”
“Luca, what have I ever done to give you the idea that would happen.”
“You quit the job. And whatever you say, you quit it because of me. Because of how I made you feel. Someday that will be true in our marriage. Someday... Someday you will do with me what you had to do with your parents. You had to walk away because they did not love you in the way that you needed to be loved.”
“You don’t trust me.”
“I do trust you. That is the problem. That choice, it would be the right choice. It would be the correct decision. And I would not be a good man—I would not be the good man that you have said you know me to be if I didn’t...if I didn’t take the first step in letting you go. Rather than wasting your time.”
“You promised me,” she said. “You promised me that you wouldn’t manipulate me. You promised me that you would be there for me.”
“I’m trying. With all of the limitations of my soul, I am trying. But I do not want to be the villain in this story.”
“It seems to me you don’t want to try to be the hero either.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I do understand. I understand how difficult it is to open yourself up, to try to...clear away all the debris that gets stocked up inside of us because of life. Because of the ways that other people have hurt us, because of the way they make us feel about ourselves. I understand. I understand that this is you, being trapped in the pain that you’ve experienced, and maybe even pain you feel you’ve caused. But if you care about me at all, then listen to me. Believe me. When I tell you that I am willing to be in this marriage as long as it takes for you—”
“As long as it takes for me to learn how to love you,” he said. “Come now, Polly. Do not play these games. You have no intention of being in a marriage where you’re not loved. You want me to change. You need me to change.”
“You need you to change,” she exploded. “Because you want this. I know you do. You want to be a good husband, and a good father.”
“I can’t do it,” he roared. “Because... Because it never stops echoing in my head, because I can’t make it stop. Because I’m trying to do my job, and it’s you. It’s only you. And the things that you said to me, and the way that it makes me feel when I look at you, and I cannot turn it off. It’s with me all the time. All the damned time, Polly. And I cannot... I don’t know how to be this way. I don’t want to be this way. I want to be myself, however incomplete that is.”
“Who told you that you were incomplete.”
“You know who did. Do you want to know what happened to my cars after my mother died?” He suddenly felt charred. Hollow. He was going to give her this memory. But she wouldn’t understand why it was so terrible. Except... She had told him. About the things her parents had done to her, and how nobody had listened.
“He packed them all up in big black garbage bags. And he took them away. He said that my preoccupations, my obsessions were not healthy. My mother was gone, and then my cars were gone. And I had nothing. Nothing to hang on to. I knew everything about them. And they were... They were like a point on a map to me. A way for me to see my place in the world, and I understand that they were toys. I understand that it shouldn’t have eroded something inside of me, not the way that my mother’s death did. But it was like my world wasn’t safe. It was like I could trust nothing. And all I could do was cover my ears and cover my head, and lay on the floor and scream. And I didn’t know how to come back from it. I hate...that feeling. I hate caring like that. And I can’t ever do that again. I can never be that boy who lost everything. Ever.”
She reached out and put her hand on his arm. “You aren’t afraid for me. You’re afraid for yourself. And that is why I want different for you. It’s why I want better. Because you remember the loss so severely. But what about the love?”
She righted her clothes, and moved away from him.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m leaving. For however long you need me to. You are right. It is a good idea for us to exist in the middle. It would be best if we...figure this out all the way. I’m so sorry that those things happened to you.”
“Aren’t you going to tell me they don’t matter?”
“No. They do. But I’m asking you to try and care anyway. I’m asking you to try to love anyway. Not because I don’t think those things wounded you. But because I know they did. Because I think we both deserve more. And better.”
She didn’t shed a tear. She didn’t cry or beg. He knew that she wanted to. Because he had always seen beneath her mask. But instead she smiled, a sad smile. A constellation of happy and sad. Layers. Complexity.
And then she walked out of his office and closed the door behind her.
And something threatened to break apart inside of him. Something threatened to put him right back on the ground where he had just said he never wanted to go. So he took a breath, but he thought of his purpose.
He thought about medicine. And how his life had been complete before Polly Prescott had walked into his life and shown him he might be missing something.
He would think about what was next. He wouldn’t think about her. His life had been just fine before.
And it would be just fine again.
He would see to that.