CHAPTER FIFTEEN
FRANCESCADIDNOT know where to go. She only knew that she had to go.
“If we plan it out, we could have a child.”
How could he hurt her so much without even meaning to? Because for all his faults, she knew there had been something genuine in that offer. Not about having a child but giving her something he thought would make her happy. He hadn’t meant for it to hurt.
And she wanted it so badly, it nearly cut her in two. But she couldn’t stand the idea of sobbing in front of him right now. She needed to make this stand. They could not keep hurting each other if he was not willing to grow. To be brave.
She had not been to Aristide’s London apartment before, and she did not know her way around. She should march back out the front door, but one of the staff members had taken her things and put them somewhere. She at least needed her purse so she needed to find...someone to tell her where to go.
But the apartment seemed deserted, and every room she stuck her head into offered little help, until she came across the strangest thing. A wall of glass, and on the other side of it...a pool.
So surprised by this, she went for the door. When she stepped inside, the air hit her, heavy and warm, like an embrace. Big potted plants were clustered in different corners of the room so that it was a bit like a tropical oasis. The pool was not large, but it was blue and flashed invitingly under the overhead lights.
She moved forward until she was standing at the edge of the pool. Somehow swimming had become the first beacon of her freedom. This wasn’t the ocean, but...she just needed to do something. Act.
Feel.
She jumped in. It was foolish. Worse even than skinny-dipping as she was probably ruining her clothes. What would she do when she emerged? She had no towel, no change of clothes.
But she had found her joy in the water. In throwing herself into the waves that first week of freedom. She had felt baptized and sure and made new, and she needed something to make her feel that again. Even if it was the most nonsensical thing she’d ever done.
Falling in love is the most nonsensical thing you’ve ever done, some harsh voice in her head whispered.
And fair enough. It was certainly why she was here. When she should have known better. Should have somehow predicted he would make the most insulting, hurtful offer he could muster.
“If we plan it out, we could have a child.”
Like it was a bargaining chip. A bribe. Only she couldn’t decide what he wanted from her. Not love. Not a true wife. So what?
He thought she’d done something to him, but he’d rejected her. Set her aside. Made it very clear his lines were all he wanted. And he couldn’t love.
What rot.
She let herself submerge under the water completely. Ruining her makeup, no doubt. Her careful updo. Ruining everything.
She welcomed it. Never in her life had she been allowed to ruin anything without consequences, and so this was just another freedom. She resurfaced once her lungs couldn’t hold any longer, making sure her hair was swept off her face as she stood again. If she was crying, she couldn’t tell because she was now wet straight through.
But the ragged breath that came out of her sure sounded like a sob that echoed around the room. But after that echo there was...another sound. She looked over at the entrance to the room.
Aristide.
Looking like some sort of avenging god as he strode across the tile to the stairs into the pool. Her breath caught in her throat, even though she did not want to fight with him any longer. She didn’t want this any longer. She wanted...
Oh, if only she knew what she wanted that didn’t involve him.
He didn’t stop his approach. He didn’t demand she get out of the pool like Francesca expected. He walked right into the water. Suit and all. Right toward her. Strong, impatient strides like the water was nothing. “I do not like who I am when you are away,” he bit out like an accusation. “I do not like who I am when we are fighting. I do not like the idea I have...hurt you.”
She wanted to swim away but found herself rooted to the spot by his hot gaze and angry mouth and the fact he had not left her. He had...come after her. Like there could be change, growth. Like maybe... But his words... My God, the man was dense.
“The idea? You did hurt me. You hurt me on purpose.”
He shook his head, moving closer still. “On purpose would mean I did anything to hurt you, but all I keep trying to do is to save you.” He held out his hands, palms up. “Don’t you see?”
But his hands were empty, and even though he looked anguished, she very much did not see. She knew she should turn away. Knew she shouldn’t let him do whatever this was.
But she loved him, for good or for ill, and she did not know how to turn her back on this love even if it would save her from more hurt.
Maybe, just maybe, the hurt was worth it if love was the end result.
“I do not know how to hold the people I love without...sending them away. Without them sending me away,” he said, each word a pained confession from deep within.
Love. Her heart leaped, even though it had no business doing so. “Do you think I would?” she managed through a voice little more than croak.
“You already have!” he all but shouted, his voice echoing with pain in the small room as water lapped around them.
“Because I didn’t thank you for your pity dog or take you up on the offer for a pity child?” she demanded, wounded that he could possibly claim these things were him trying.
“It isn’t pity,” he growled.
“Then what is it?” she returned, wondering why she was letting this conversation happen. Why they were standing in a pool, for Heaven’s sake.
“Penance!” he roared, loud and painful, like an admonition that had been wrenched out of him with great force and pain.
And she had no idea what to say to that, how to wrap her mind around such a thing. “Aristide. For what?”
“I have tried. To make it up to anyone. I tried to be as good as Valentino and I could not be—my father wouldn’t let me be. I was...a tool to hurt his real son, at best. I have tried to get her to leave, to find her own life. But I could not convince her.” He didn’t need to say who. Francesca knew he meant his mother.
And she had known his parents pained him, but perhaps she had not fully understood the scars they’d left. Because he was very careful not to let that show. And could she blame him? Hadn’t she hidden her father’s abuse from everyone?
Everyone except him.
“As for Valentino...” he said roughly.
But he never finished his sentence. Never seemed to find the words to verbalize what he felt about his brother. Francesca couldn’t help but wonder if it was because there was still some hope there. That half of his anguish was the continued hope that the family who had hurt him might change.
But while he waited, hoped, he had fashioned his life in the shadow of what they’d done to him—purposefully or not—and she understood that too well to keep her heart hardened to him.
She reached out and took his outstretched hands, still both of them standing in this warm pool with their dinner clothes on. “You cannot judge yourself on other people’s choices, Aristide. Do you not think I hear my father’s voice in my head sometimes? That I am worthless? That I deserve whatever hurts come my way?”
He made a noise of protest as he gripped her hands, but she continued on.
“Of course I do. Of course I feel that sometimes, but I refuse to let the harm he caused me define me or my life.”
“Francesca.”
But he said nothing else. Just her name as if it was pain, as he held her hands tightly in this pool. She wanted to laugh. She wanted to cry. But what they needed, she knew, was an answer.
An end, some little voice whispered at her. And maybe she would have listened to it just a few moments ago, but being reminded that sometimes the voice in her head was not her own, not about her best interests, she shoved it aside.
“Come. Let us...go have a rational conversation. Somewhere dry.”
Aristide helped her out of the pool. He could not fathom how they had come to such a ridiculous situation. Soaked and fully dressed. It was out of control and solved nothing. How could this solve anything?
Except here she was. Touching him. Letting him dry her off. He moved the towel over her hair, her shoulders, while she watched him with those careful dark eyes.
He hated that she was careful with him. Hated when she put on that mask. And yet when she’d dropped it, that night all these weeks ago now, he’d hurt her. On purpose, he supposed, even if he’d been thinking more of saving himself than hurting her.
He had hurt her.
To save himself.
And that...cut him to shreds. On top of all the other things swirling inside of him, because even now, looking a bit like a wet poodle, she made him feel all of these things he had so carefully eradicated from his life. She made him face them, all because...
All because he loved her. Beyond any kind of reason he could find. That thing he’d been so careful to avoid. Love and need and the inevitable end of the things he cared for.
But the things she said...like ends were not inevitable. The things she’d been through and could still come out on the other side believing... She was good and whole and worthy. She was, of course. So good, his angel.
She couldn’t really believe... Not when she was this driving force.
She had been trying to understand him, get to the bottom of what he wanted. And she wasn’t perfect. She hadn’t always used good means, but she was trying.
What had he done? As she’d accused him, just thrown things at her that might make her happy in the hopes he would not be called upon to do so.
He blotted her face with the towel, then dropped it and let his hands cup her skin. Damp and soft. Warm and his. Oh, how he wanted her to be his. But...
“Francesca, mio angioletta,I am afraid that everything I feel will hurt you.”
She studied him with those serious, dark eyes. A study that spoke of great contemplation. She was weighing his words, and it hurt that she did not have an immediate response, and yet this consideration made him think that whatever she said would be true and important and deep. Not just a knee-jerk reaction.
“Maybe your feelings will hurt me, but...as you said, this is not a hurt that is meant, that is done at each other. Life...hurts. Cruelty and hurt are not the same.”
“Is the bar so low that not being cruel is all you expect of me?” he murmured, brushing wet strands of hair off her face.
She shook her head, her mouth almost curving. “Aristide, I have been so angry with you, so frustrated, but it wasn’t until I told you why, directly, that anything changed. That you walked into that pool with me. Perhaps the trick is not...worrying so much about hurting one another, but being brave enough to tell each other when we are hurt, and...jump in the metaphorical pool and work it out.”
“I would give you anything.”
She sighed, clearly not happy with those words, but she reached out and touched her fingertips to his cheek rather than step away. “I do not need your gifts. I need you. Not in the way your mother spoke of need. I do not think that is love, because it is one-sided. Whatever she does for your father, is one-sided. Perhaps she gets something out of it, but it isn’t from him. I need you.”
He did not know how to give himself. Or maybe, he knew. However, he had never been rewarded for such a choice. But this was Francesca. Even amidst a fear born of a tempestuous childhood, he knew she was somehow the beacon of light through that.
And he would have to tell her, really admit it. Because trying to separate from her didn’t work; it only made this pain worse. “I love you, and I worry that it will be the end of me. The end of you.”
“Change doesn’t always have to be bad, Aristide. I have changed my life for the better. Even jumping into that pool fully clothed, even fighting with you, even having my heart shattered, this is better.”
He closed his eyes in pain. That so little could be better.
“And maybe it will be an end. An end of a you or a me that no longer serves us.”
He scowled a bit at that. “You sound like my mother.”
“I like your mother. I might not agree with her on everything, but she is... She loves you, Aristide.”
“Yes.” It was hard sometimes, because she had made choices that had valued his father over him. It was hard, because she was not perfect. She had deep, meaningful flaws.
But...perhaps the point was that he did not have to make the same mistakes. Perhaps the point was that the love Francesca offered him was love, and that meant...
Here she stood, saying she loved him. Trying to reach him. No one had ever done such a thing for him before, and he didn’t want to trust it.
But he trusted Francesca. How could he not?
“Say it again,” she said, her fingers in his hair. Her eyes large and luminous. And the warmth of her—body and soul—seeping into him. Yes, it turned out, he would risk anything for this, fight anything for this, even his own deep-seated fears.
“I love you, Francesca.”
Her mouth curved, so beautiful. So perfect. His angel.
“I love you too, Aristide.”
“Then we will build our life from here on out. On that love. On that promise. And I will learn how to be strong. From you. I promise you, Francesca, I am yours. Forever. If you will be mine.”
“Forever,” she whispered, and then pressed her mouth to his. A promise. Hope. All those things he thought were the enemy, but all they’d ever been were...
His for the taking. Just like her.