Chapter Eighteen
Olympia
Rafael’s dark eyes look black despite the sunshine coming through the windows and the lines of his face are taut. His fingers are digging into my hips and he looks as if he’s been pushed beyond all endurance. He must be if the prospect of me not being Ulysses’s heir doesn’t matter to him.
In contrast to the tension pulled to singing point in him, I feel a curious sense of freedom in myself. It’s as if I’ve been wearing shackles, and I didn’t realise, and now they’ve fallen off, and I feel so light I could almost rise into the air and fly.
I’ve always hated how much of a tie I was to Ulysses, how he made me a monument to his guilt and how I resented being his responsibility. Yet I hadn’t realised how heavy my own feelings of responsibility have been towards him.
Because I did feel responsible for him. For how his life had wound around mine, the both of us growing together so tightly that we didn’t have lives of our own.
But now he has someone else, someone he loves desperately, I saw the glow and pain of it in his eyes, and all I feel is happiness for him that he’s found someone.
Someone who can give him all the love and joy he deserves, and who isn’t bound up in his own failure the way I am.
And now I feel free in a way I’ve never felt before.
Ulysses has gone to reclaim a life for himself, and I need to do the same for me.
Except while I feel free from the bonds my brother inadvertently laid on me, my life is now bound inextricably with that of the man standing in front of me. Who is gripping me so hard it’s as if he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he lets go.
He’s fierce and intense, and desperate. For years he’s been following this one goal, this dream of revenge, and now that I’ve taken it away from him he doesn’t know what to do.
I was furious with him for not telling me that Ulysses was coming and for making it so clear that he’d never had any intention of dropping his plans.
That he didn’t listen to me, that he didn’t care what I wanted, and the ghost of that anger is still there.
Except now I’m looking up into Rafael’s eyes and I see his desperation and his fury, and I realise suddenly where it comes from.
He said he thought I’d go with Ulysses and I can see that he truly believes that. He really did think I’d go with my brother and that made him afraid. Why else would he be this furious and demanding? He’s a man who cares and cares deeply, and now I wonder if he feels that for me.
He certainly stayed where he was as I told him to, despite his fear that I would leave.
He didn’t come out, didn’t try to stop me, even when I hugged my brother.
It cost him, though, I can see that so clearly.
It cost him to stay here, to let me make a choice, and I realise that now: it was a choice I could have made.
I could have gone with Ulysses, but I didn’t. I stayed here. Because of Rafael.
He obviously hasn’t registered that I’m likely to be Ulysses’s heir no longer, or, if he has, it truly doesn’t matter to him. Why was he so afraid I’d leave? Why did it matter that I choose him over my brother? Is it just because of the baby? Or is it about something more?
Ignoring his command, I stare up into his dark eyes. ‘I was never going to go with him, Rafael. I was always going to stay here with you.’
A muscle leaps in his strong jaw. ‘Why? Because of the child?’
‘Not only that. I promised you I’d stay, remember? That I’d live with you, be your wife.’
‘And if you weren’t pregnant?’ he demands. ‘Would you stay then?’
There’s a desperate note in his deep voice and I realise suddenly. Of course, he’s wondering the same things I am. ‘You mean, would I stay for you?’ I ask.
His gaze is edged as an obsidian blade. ‘Yes.’
It costs him to admit this too, I can see. And he’s afraid of the answer.
You’re afraid, too.
I am, but if I’m tired of hiding, I’m also tired of being afraid.
Tired of locking away all my emotions, of putting up a facade.
Of worrying about someone else’s feelings, when all I want is to embrace my own.
So I give him the answer I’m afraid of, the one that has been locked deep inside me ever since we met.
‘I would stay for you,’ I say. ‘Even if we didn’t have a child. ’
The flames in his eyes leap and a savage smile twists his mouth. His fingers on my hips firm and I can feel the press of him through the fabric of my dress, hard and hot and ready. ‘Then do as I say, dragonfly. Take off your dress and prove it to me.’
There’s raw need in his voice and it tugs at my heart and makes me ache.
When has anyone ever needed me the way Rafael needs me?
For my brother I was something to be protected and kept wrapped in cotton wool.
I didn’t give him anything, I only took from him.
I was a source of fear and guilt, and nothing I did made any difference.
But I can make a difference to Rafael. I can be more than a source of fear and guilt.
I can be a source of comfort and pleasure, and I want to be.
For him, I want to be. He’s lost everyone he ever loved, everyone who mattered to him, and he’s still grieving.
But he hasn’t lost me. I’m here. I’m here for him.
But that’s not all you want.
No, it’s not. I knew it the moment I saw my brother’s face.
There was a light inside him when he told me that he’d met someone, and I knew immediately that he was in love.
I told him that he was free of me now, that he had to go get the woman he loved.
I told him that I was happy and that he needed to find his own happiness, but… I lied to him.
I’m not happy. Because Rafael has told me that love will not be a part of our marriage, and I thought I was okay with it.
I thought it didn’t matter, but watching Ulysses leave to find the woman who captured his heart has made me realise that I want that too.
I don’t want a marriage without love. I don’t.
That’s not the worst part, though. The worst part is that I’m starting to realise that the person I want to find love with is my husband. A man still in agony from the love he lost and who doesn’t want another.
‘Let me go,’ I say softly.
He doesn’t want to, I can see that, yet his hands fall away all the same. That muscle flicks in his jaw, the lines of his tall, powerful figure taut.
A heavy, dense silence falls between us and I can feel the distance in it. A distance that’s growing wider and wider no matter how much I don’t want it to be there.
‘I don’t think I can do this, Rafael.’ I have to force myself to say the words.
The look in his eyes flares, a fleeting agony then gone. His expression hardens like stone. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘I’m talking about us,’ I say. ‘You and me.’
One of his hands has curled into a fist and his mouth is hard. ‘What about you and me? You’re my wife now, Olympia. You can’t say you can’t do this, not half an hour after we got married.’
A thread of shame creeps through me, because he’s right.
My wedding vows were a promise and I’m breaking them already, and it’s not fair.
Not when he already told me that love couldn’t and wouldn’t be a part of our marriage.
It’s not as if I wasn’t warned. And yet…
Ulysses has gone off to claim a life of his own and I want to claim mine.
I want love too, yet I’m afraid. Horribly afraid of asking for it, of demanding it.
Ulysses has to love me—I’m his sister—but Rafael doesn’t.
I’m his in every possible way, but I want him to be mine, too.
I have chosen him, but has he chosen me?
That night in Singapore he seduced me for revenge, then he kidnapped me for our child.
Now he’s demanding I stay because I’m his wife, but is any of that about me?
Or am I merely a symbol for him the way I was for Ulysses?
I don’t want to be a symbol or a monument, or a doll kept in a high cupboard. I want to be a woman. I want to be loved for myself, not for what I represent, and I want to be loved in return.
I lift my chin. ‘I know. And it’s unfair of me when you told me very clearly what our marriage will be. But…my brother is in love, Rafael. And I…want that for me. I want that for us.’
His expression hardens even more, his features carved from granite. ‘I told you, I don’t want any part of that.’
I swallow, my mouth dry, my heart aching. I should stop talking and accept what we have now, not ask for more, and after all, who’s to say we might not have it one day? Given time?
But deep down inside me, I know that to accept it would be a lie, and I can’t lie to Rafael.
What are you going to do, then? Leave him? Take his child away from him? How selfish would that make you?
Is it selfish? To want love? To require it from someone? To possibly throw away what I have now just because he won’t love me? Then again, what kind of marriage would we have without that? And what kind of environment would that be like for our child? And do I really want to risk it?
‘Why not?’ I ask him straight out. ‘Would it be so very bad?’
He looks away from me a moment, that muscle in the side of his jaw flicking and leaping.
‘I loved my father,’ he says into the weighty quiet.
‘I told you that, and I thought he loved me. I thought he loved my mother too.’ Rafael glances back at me, his gaze like black ice.
‘But in the end he chose his own humiliation, his own pain, and he left us to pick up the pieces.’
My throat closes at the anger and bitterness in Rafael’s voice, and at the pain that lurks beneath them. He didn’t listen last night, did he? Not to a word I said. ‘Rafael,’ I begin.