Chapter Eleven #2
Ann-Sophie froze as the word enough twisted yet again inside her, its sharpest edge finding its way straight to her own wound, the one that had never gone away.
Alessandro’s question was so raw, so full of honesty.
So full of the same unhealed hurt she had been running from.
He wasn’t hiding it anymore, and somehow it made the devastation of his decision even worse.
“You are enough,” she said as desperation spread its tendrils through her.
“I saw what happened when your parents provoked you, and I’m not scared.
I want to be there for you, the way you were there for me through this birth.
But you’re pushing me away when we both need more.
We can be so much more for each other. You have to know that. ”
He lowered his hands but said nothing. She searched his expression for some sign that her message was getting through to him, but all she found was a haunted emptiness in his eyes.
And in that moment, she could feel the future of the path they were on taking shape.
They would break each other’s hearts, over and over again, if she compromised.
Ann-Sophie swallowed, trying to ignore the lump in her throat. “I can’t do this halfway. If you cannot commit to this—to us—then everything between us is over.”
He kissed the baby on the forehead and stroked his cheek with a gentleness that took her breath away, and then he walked out the door.
Alessandro stormed through the front door of the villa, determined not to let his unruly emotions get the better of him for the second time today.
He was angry at himself. He was frustrated with Ann-Sophie for stubbornly refusing to understand the reality of their situation.
And he was overwhelmed by this tide of fear and intimacy and joy that had flowed at the birth of his son and then seemed to drain from him the moment he had walked away. But he had no other choice.
Alessandro gritted his teeth and reined in that out-of-control feeling inside him.
He would not lash out again. This was straight out of his mother’s playbook, and he would not be like his mother.
Not at any price. How could Ann-Sophie be sympathetic after the cruelty that had slipped out of his mouth before he had gotten a chance to think better of it?
He didn’t deserve sympathy. He had failed himself and he had failed to protect her.
And yet, she told him that she loved him.
“Hormones,” he muttered to himself as he walked up the stairs.
Yet she had looked at him with a seriousness that he couldn’t dismiss so easily.
Maybe he should send Catarina to bring her belongings, as she and Ann-Sophie seemed to have bonded at the wedding.
Or maybe he should call her mother again.
Because if he saw Ann-Sophie and the baby again when he was so wracked with… emotions, he wouldn’t be able to leave.
Alessandro reached the top of the familiar staircase and turned toward the master bedroom, where he and Ann-Sophie had spent one magical night together.
Until his parents spread their poison through the house.
Alessandro frowned. His stomach clenched as he thought of their tiny baby, so helpless.
Alessandro had wanted to take that baby and run as far away from his parents as he could get.
But that was the heart of the problem, wasn’t it?
He had been running for his entire adult life, and he still could not escape his parents, not when they were so deeply embedded in him.
It was why he had to separate himself from Ann-Sophie and the baby.
But he refused to play that last heartbreaking scene over in his head again, so instead he focused on the tasks in front of him. But as he turned the corner, toward the master bedroom, he came to a stop at an open door. The door to his own childhood bedroom.
He stood at the threshold and peered inside it.
Who had been in there? Certainly not his parents.
They had rarely entered the room, even when he slept there as a child.
He stepped inside, this forgotten relic of his past. On the walls were posters of football greats, now long-retired, and on the bookshelf was a collection of cars of all sizes, hiding the few books, their spines unbroken, given to him before the family had given up on his reading.
He had avoided this room, not wanting to go back to the time when his parents had so much more influence on his life.
But as he wandered inside, a different set of memories floated through his mind.
They transported him back to a time when he felt a strange kind of peace.
A time before he was always angry at his parents, back when he was glad when they would disappear and leave him and Massimo with Olivia and her sister, Natalia, who were so good at allowing the twins to simply be themselves.
They swam and kicked the football and wandered into the town for bakery treats, climbing scraggly olive trees along the way.
Alessandro hadn’t come back here, not wanting to kick the hornet’s nest of childhood memories, but as he looked around, he remembered a kind of freedom.
A time when his negligent parents had not steered his life.
The real question is what you will choose to do now.
Ann-Sophie’s voice came back to him, as if she had been there, next to him all along.
Alessandro heard footsteps in the hallway and turned, hoping that somehow she would appear.
But it wasn’t Ann-Sophie that walked into his bedroom. It was Massimo.
His brother raised his eyebrows. “I saw you and Ann-Sophie leave, and she was clutching her belly. What’s going on?”
The question shook him back to the present. “She had the baby. A boy.”
Massimo frowned. “Is everything okay?”
Not remotely. But he said, “They are both healthy.”
His brother looked at him with a gaze sharp enough to make Alessandro look away.
“Why are you in my old room?”
The corners of Massimo’s mouth quirked up. “I was telling Catarina about that time I spent a good six months sleeping in this room.”
Alessandro hadn’t thought about that in a long, long time. “I forgot about your nightmares.”
Massimo had awoken, night after night, crying inconsolably, until Olivia had finally moved a second bed into Alessandro’s room to see if it would help.
It worked so well that Massimo stayed there for months, until Olivia had found them awake at four in the morning, building an enormous racetrack for their cars on a school night.
Massimo had returned to his bedroom, and they had all moved on.
His brother was such a stoic, determined man that Alessandro, who didn’t make a habit of thinking about the past, had allowed incidents like these to fade away.
“Why aren’t you with the baby and Ann-Sophie?” His brother was as irritatingly direct as he was persistent.
“We do not have the kind of relationship that warrants my presence. Now that the baby is here, she will likely go back to Stockholm. I will visit them, to make sure I’m a part of the child’s life, of course.
” He delivered this all in a matter-of-fact tone that only confirmed his decision.
His voice was under control, even if it felt as if a knife twisted in his gut each time he thought of them.
His brother’s eyes narrowed. “I heard every word between you and our parents this morning. I am pretty sure the entire household did.”
“Then you must have heard the way I lashed out at Ann-Sophie, too.” That knife twisted again, cutting deeper. “I was angry and the words just came out. At her.”
He closed his eyes. Even saying this was painful.
“I had forgotten how awful Mother could be to you,” said Massimo softly. “I think I just blocked it out, but when I heard her, it all came back.”
“Poor little rich kid,” he said, trying to lighten the mood a little.
Massimo didn’t bite. “I should not have agreed to tell them about the wedding.”
“They didn’t come for it,” he said, his voice filled with bitterness. “Their appearance was just a happy coincidence.”
His brother shook his head. “They shouldn’t be in our lives. At all.”
“It’s okay. I’ve solved the problem.”
Massimo frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Ann-Sophie and I are over. Their poison won’t reach her and the baby, and neither will mine.”
“What?”
Alessandro glared at his brother, who was making this conversation more painful than it had to be, but Massimo just glared back.
“It’s better if I disengage,” he said with a finality that marked the end of the topic.
Massimo ignored it. “I heard what she said to our parents. She was fighting for you.”
“I can’t give her what she wants,” he said, biting out the words. “It’s that simple, so drop it.”
His brother, of course, ignored him.
“Has she told you she loves you?” Massimo said it in that voice that suggested already he knew the answer.
“It was the hormones talking,” he grumbled.
Massimo let out a huff of laughter. “Even I know not to say that to a woman.”
Alessandro scrubbed his face with his hands. “I didn’t say it.”
“But you wrote off her words just the same.” His brother’s voice was more serious.