Chapter Fifteen
She didn’t go to New York. Instead, she went to London. She went to Catherine.
“Oh, my friend,” Catherine said, pulling her in for a hug.
“I’m pathetic,” she said.
“You’re not pathetic. Well. You are a little bit. Tell me what happened.”
“I demanded his love. And when he refused to give it to me I left him. Because I believe that he does love me. And I’m sort of just playing chicken with his fear now.”
“Well. It was strong of you.”
“What if he doesn’t love me? What if he doesn’t come after me?”
Catherine sighed, and brought her into the kitchen, where she immediately began to heat up the electric kettle. “Oh, he will come after you, my dear. The question is only in what capacity he will do it. Because he is not a soft man. Which means he’s going to chase you down.”
“He didn’t. He just let me leave.”
“Well. That means he’s more scared of you than you are of him.”
“But I don’t understand… I don’t understand how. I don’t understand why it’s so scary to him.”
“It’s scary to you too. But also he’s a man, so it’s going to take him longer to get there.”
“But I was brave.”
“Because women are. Think of everything your mom went through, and she still fell in love with your stepdad. Not just because it was advantageous to her. She really fell in love with him. And think about what Romeo put you through, but you still have a greater understanding of what your actual feelings are than he does. Honestly. Men have greater physical strength, but we…we have stronger hearts. And we have to, because if we didn’t, why would we keep falling in love with those creatures? ”
“I’m being selfish. I could let them be comfortable.
But then I wouldn’t be. And I just don’t think we can thrive that way.
I really don’t. I think it would explode eventually, and it would be a mystery as to why.
But I see it now. I see it clearly. I know why.
Because if he keeps building walls, I’m going to keep trying to push them down.
And he will resist harder, and… We can’t keep doing that. ”
“No. But of course the man is going to want to see his baby.”
“Of course. And I want him to see his baby. I’ve never said otherwise.
But…my mother lived for me. For years. I’m grateful.
We were all happier when she began to live as a whole person.
Well, except Romeo. All of this is such a sore subject for him, and I think it’s difficult for him to talk about, or maybe even understand. ”
“You tried. And in the end, if that’s the best you’ve got, then it’s the best you’ve got. You tried.”
It was a lovely sentiment. She thought about it while she went to sleep in Catherine’s guest room.
But she didn’t want to try and fail. She loved Romeo Accardi.
With everything she had in her. And if after all this time, all this pain, all this pleasure, they couldn’t find a way to call it what it was, then she had failed.
She was strong. And she would go on. She would be the best mother to her son.
But part of herself would be lost. The part of herself that had fallen in love with Romeo all those years ago.
He was going out of his mind. She wasn’t there. He had gone all the way to New York to find her, had gone to her penthouse, and discovered that she wasn’t there.
It made him want to tear apart her home, but even he had limits. It made him want to lash out, at everyone. And everything.
This was love for him, unchecked. Painful. This was him. The absolute truth of who he was. And he despised himself.
He stopped right where he was standing, in her living room. And for a heartbeat he was silent. He was still.
And instead of fighting the feeling, instead of lashing out at everything around him, he let it roll over him.
This feeling that he had been running from all of his life.
Love.
He could remember the first time he realized that love had a cost. The first time that in order to get his mother’s attention he had to make her feel better.
The first time he had heard his father say cruel things when his mother was in the middle of a meltdown.
Oh, Giuseppe had not been able to be there for her.
He had been cruel in her lowest moments, and that had always made everything feel complicated.
Because sometimes Romeo felt that same cruelty, but he would never say it.
He believed in his heart that his father was a good man.
But a complicated one. As his mother was a good woman, but a complicated one.
And so it wasn’t as easy as saying that love the way they expressed it wasn’t real.
It was the most real love that they were capable of with one another. And with him.
And what real love was Romeo capable of?
You have loved her without exhaustion for years.
Yes. His mother. He had always been willing to do what he had to in order to make her feel safe.
Even if it compromised his own happiness.
He had not been sacrificial with his father.
But maybe it was because he judged him. Because he felt like his father should be able to handle what Romeo had taken on.
And then there was Heather. It had always been her.
She had always been the only one. The only one who had engaged more than just his body. But his heart.
And he had rewritten that. Had told himself that it was hatred. With the fire of a thousand suns, so that he wouldn’t have to…live with the extraordinary, magical, devastating miracle of love.
He knew how strong love was. How complicated.
But when he looked back over the years with her, he didn’t feel exhausted. He felt foolish. Because how could he have ever believed that he hated her? He felt small, because he had taken his own fear and fashioned it into a weapon used to keep her away.
But it hadn’t worked. Maybe she was right.
There were all these complicated loves. But maybe theirs wasn’t. Maybe theirs was the one that was meant to be. Maybe theirs was the one that was stronger than anything else. Maybe theirs was the one that would actually heal, and not hurt.
Because God knew a life without her wouldn’t do a damn thing to fix him. But he had to stop running. He had to stop fighting.
He had to stand there, and let in the light.
Eventually she would go back to New York.
Eventually she was going to have to tell him where she was.
But not right now. Right now she was happy to just live with her best friend and try to piece together some semblance of a routine.
She could feel the baby move now. She was so happy about it.
And so mad at Romeo that she couldn’t share it with him.
She had gone grocery shopping so that she could cook tonight. Something to make her feel alive.
Someday she would inhabit her strength fully.
It was not this day. The streetlights were beginning to come on, and she simply couldn’t make herself walk faster as she approached Catherine’s town house.
And then, beneath the glow of the light, she saw a tall, imposing figure.
All in black. A man that she would know anywhere.
A man that she knew better than anyone else.
“‘Wherefore art thou, Romeo?’”
He stepped into the light fully. “I haven’t had any poison.”
“I’m thankful for that.” Her chest tightened. “Why are you here? Because if it’s for your wounded pride, to enforce a document or to try and have your way I—”
“It’s not. It’s not I… I came for you. Not because we signed papers.
Not because of my pride. Because of my heart.
It would’ve been so much easier if I could have believed that what my parents had wasn’t love.
The problem is, it was. My father loved me.
My mother loves me. Their best version of love left me scarred.
And the intensity of my own feelings…it terrified me.
That if I ever love somebody I would hurt them, the same way that my parents hurt each other.
That I would hurt a child the same way my mother hurt me.
When I met you, it felt like it was confirmed.
All of the feelings that we have traded back and forth, it seemed to confirm that.
That I would be a danger to you. To me. I kept renegotiating the boundaries, because I wanted you.
It isn’t going away. It isn’t going to change.
So I surrender, Heather. To you. To this.
To love. If this is how I die, then it’s how I die.
By loving you. And I would rather experience it that way than to live all the years ever without you. ”
She didn’t have words. So she just stretched up on her toes and threw her arms around his neck, her grocery bags hitting him in the back. “I love you.”
“I love you.”
“It won’t be the death of us,” she whispered.
“How do you know?”
“Because it has kept us going all this time. Even when we called it something else. So let’s have this now. Let’s have each other. I love you. I love you so much it hurts. And I love that it does. Because it also brings me joy. And so do you.”
“Heather… I’m not worthy of that.”
“You never had to be. You simply had to be you. That’s all it’s ever been. It was you from the beginning. And you all the days after.”
“And it will be us forever.”
She stretched up on her toes and kissed him. She kissed him with all of the love in her body. “Do you know that love has a flavor?”
“What is it?”
“It’s you.”