Chapter Seventeen #2
Mara shrugged. “It isn’t though. I have watched you all these years, have I not?”
“And have read into something in some way that isn’t true. I spent much time with both my mother and Felipe over the years.”
“Time is not the same as sharing yourself. Not to mention, as the person who has organized and scheduled your life for the past two years, I am aware that all the time you gave them was at their request. Or in Felipe’s case, at his demand. You never initiated contact. Not once.”
He glanced at Julia, but his face didn’t soften as it usually did. He was only looking at her so he did not have to meet Mara’s gaze. “I do not see what that has to do with anything. I am a busy man.”
“I know you love them. It is evident in how you are with them, how you treat them. I know Felipe’s death hit you harder than you even let yourself accept.
I know, because I have been there, and I have seen it.
So I have also seen you tread lightly, when it came to them.
The people who are important to you are the people you keep at arm’s length. ”
But she was not important. Useful? Yes. Indispensable? Certainly. She’d made sure of it. But she was like a sturdy beam. The foundational support of everything else.
He didn’t love her.
Julia let out a squeal of delight, having rolled back over onto her stomach and grabbing at the toys laid out around her. Agustin’s gaze finally softened a little.
She couldn’t deny that he might love Julia, and he did not keep her out of sight, but that was different. This was a child, a baby, with no way to verbalize any opposition to him.
Mara had watched him for two years. She had organized the relationship he had with his family. She knew what love looked like to him. They often found fault with him, and rather than deal with that, he avoided it.
She found fault with him, and he did not avoid it. He met it head on. Because she didn’t matter the way they did.
Whatever he felt for her wasn’t love, couldn’t be. Because if it was… She pressed a hand to her stomach, not because she felt sick as she so often did, but because she yearned for this to somehow be true. Everything about the past few weeks had been lovely and wonderful…
Except keeping herself separate from him. That had caused pain. Even in the midst of feeling poorly, she’d wanted him. Wanted him to want her.
And knew better. She knew better.
She shook it all away. She only needed a plan to fix this.
He could be so stubborn, but she knew how to get around him.
She just had to think, not…panic. Certainly not feel.
Not yearn and want and need. Love was too dangerous.
Love left. Love wasn’t what either of them really wanted, so she had to be the sensible party here. She just needed a plan.
But he spoke first, his gaze hot and fierce on her now.
“And what of you?” he asked in a tone she recognized. It was the tone he used in a meeting as he went in for the kill. To get everything he wanted in a deal and leave everyone else in stunned acceptance of their loss.
She was more confused than anything by what he could possibly think he had to turn this around on her. “What of me?”
“You think you are the only one who is able to know others? I know you. Why should you be so damn terrified of love, Mara?”
“I am not terrified.” She straightened. Yes, going on the attack was a fine business strategy, but she knew his strategies. “I love that baby, and this one, with my whole heart.”
“Yes, but babies are easy, aren’t they? Vulnerable. They need protection. They need. You are very good at being needed, aren’t you? Perhaps the best.”
She couldn’t find her breath for a moment. Yes, she liked to be needed, but…but…
“What does that stem from? This need to be needed. Useful. And a fear of anything less than that?”
She shook her head. “You can try to turn this around on me, but—”
“You mentioned not having a father involved in your life.”
Her mouth dropped open. Yes, she had mentioned that when she’d been trying to talk him out of this idea they must marry, but… “Agustin, let us focus. You think that you—”
“No, we are talking about you now. I am quite certain in my feelings, in myself. You are the one who is panicking. Why are you panicking, Mara, if you do not worry that you might feel the same? I do not think I’ve ever given you any reason to believe I’m fragile or cannot handle a difference of opinion.
So, your reaction makes no sense. Unless… ”
“Love isn’t some tangible thing we can argue, Agustin. It’s an emotion. It is fleeting. And no one…”
“No one what?”
Why did he keep pushing at her? Why was he insisting on having this conversation? He was supposed to listen to her.
“This conversation is over. It is unproductive and silly. We have a business arrangement, and that is all.” She tried to move past him, but he wouldn’t let her go. He held onto her arm and blocked the exit bodily.
“You sound like a child throwing a tantrum,” he told her, so calmly, so detached, something inside of her just…broke. All those ways she’d mediated any bad situation for nearly her entire life deserted her.
“But you are simply a woman lying to yourself,” he continued, like he knew so much more than her. “You cannot simply determine it’s business and have it be so when it is not. Something terrifies you about love, but—”
She jerked her arm out of his grasp. “No one stays!” she yelled.
Poor Julia startled, then began to cry. Mara rushed over to her and scooped her up into her arms. Tears were pricking her own eyes, but she murmured apologies to the baby. “We’ve upset her. This is enough,” she managed to say through the lump in her throat.
“No, it isn’t. Not until we get to the bottom of this,” he insisted. “Is leaving what you are so afraid of? That I will abandon you because your father did?” His tone was so calm. So reasonable. “I have signed documents that say I cannot.”
She wanted to punch him, but this at least centered her. She was well versed in steadying her own emotions so as not to…not to…
Be left.
She took a deep breath and pushed that away, the swirling thoughts and emotions and instincts that would ruin everything.
“No, it isn’t that simple,” she said, hoping for calm.
Holding Julia helped center and anchor her and make her able to meet his gaze.
“You are trying to make this simple, and it is not.”
“It seems simple to me. I will not abandon you. You have already contractually obligated me to this. I love you, and I believe that somewhere underneath this reaction is the fact that you might also love me. So I do not understand—”
“Everyone steps away. My father. Julia’s mother.
Yes, they abandoned children. But you—you stepped away from your mother, your brother.
When Felipe died, you did not go to your mother.
You kept your distance. This is what you do with the people you love.
When it becomes too much, people cannot bear down and stick. ”
He did not speak for so long, she felt compelled to raise her gaze from Julia and look at him.
His gaze was dark, earnest, and there was a softness in them he only ever showed when he was looking at Julia. But he was looking at Mara now.
“Except you,” he said.
She stood there, feeling like she’d run a marathon. Yes, she was always the one who stayed. And it was never enough. To be needed. To be indispensable.
She thought she’d found the answer in being needed, but he was standing here taking it away. She felt as lost and abandoned as she had at twelve.
“Perhaps you are right that I have kept myself separate from those I love. I have never thought of it as stepping away from my family,” he said quietly.
Seriously. In a tone she had never once heard from him.
There was vulnerability in his words. “I considered it…protecting myself. Mother and Felipe could never understand me. It is not love that keeps me separate. It is how difficult it is to be misunderstood by the people I love most. If not purposefully, somewhat willfully. I was not like them, so they could not understand.”
An ache started at the center of her chest, for the man who held himself separately because he could not be understood. She had never figured out what caused that wall he kept between him and his family when she knew he cared for them as much as he did, but this explained it.
It surprised her, but she couldn’t even dwell in that surprise, because he was still looking at her as though she had gravely wounded him.
“I thought you saw me, Mara, for who I really am.” He spoke with such quiet calm. “You seemed the only one, so I understand how keeping it all business feels safe. I think I was doing it with you all this time without even realizing it. But now I am saying… I do not want to be separate.”
It terrified her, what those words meant. She did understand him. She did love him. She’d been here before. Devoted to someone who claimed to have the same devotion to her… In her father’s case it was genetic instead of romantic, but how could it be that different?
“I want to be separate,” she managed to say through a too tight throat.
He looked from her to Julia, his brows furrowed, as if he could not understand that he would want something that she did not. “Then I suppose I will give you what you want,” he said. And turned on a heel and left the room.
Leaving Mara with a pain she had not felt in some time. And never quite like this. Her heart had been broken before.
But she’d never been the one doing the shattering herself.