Chapter 54 #2
“Don’t touch me, O’Connell. The purpose of my silence is to gather my thoughts, not to have you blow them out of my head.
” I froze, my jaw slack as he turned back to the window, resuming his stoic stare.
Unsure what else to do, I followed his gaze and saw for the first time what had his attention.
The arched window gave a perfect view of the place where our garden would be.
It was hidden by trees, but the pathway was there and the first of the stone steps.
The hopeful part of me wondered if he was imagining our Evergarden.
I decided to let him be. Despite my own turmoil and his treatment of me, I took a step back and waited until he was ready. Eventually, after many minutes, he began to speak.
“When I was twenty or so, I was in Florence with my Tellers,” he began and my breath caught in my throat.
Alfie had never, of his own volition, divulged anything of his past. “The sun was just coming up. The streets were deserted and we were making our way back to our villa after having spent some days at an event.” An event?
I was curious but decided it was probably better if I didn’t know.
I could guess what kind of event it had been.
Alfie was quiet again for a moment, his spine stiff, his shoulders like concrete.
I approached him again and leaned against the window pane so I could look at him.
He kept his gaze focused on the imaginary Evergarden.
“I only remember a few things about that night; how difficult it was to walk on cobblestones as drunk as we were, how my Tellers sang Tu Vuo’ Fa’ L’Americano in butchered Italian as we walked through the city, and the girl playing the violin.
” His eyes glazed over, lost in the memory of some girl I had never met.
I couldn’t help but feel a sharp pang of jealousy.
“I play the violin, did I ever tell you that?” He glanced at me and I shivered.
“No, but it doesn’t surprise me,” I said softly, wondering how much I would give to see Alfie Tell play the violin. It would be a heady experience, to see him play an instrument as beautifully as he played me.
“No, I don’t suppose it should.” His steel greys landed on my lips and I saw that tick in his jaw as he ground his teeth together.
He forced himself to take a breath and drag his gaze away and back out to the garden.
It wasn’t lost on me that he didn’t need to tell me this story.
He could push me up against the wall and I wouldn’t do anything to stop him, but he was choosing not to, he was choosing to let me in.
“I split off from my Tellers and eventually found her in a backstreet, hidden away as if she didn’t want to be seen, which I thought was strange for a street performer.
She had thick, black hair tied back at the nape of her neck and she was dressed very plainly.
Her violin was of very poor quality but she played Vivaldi as if she were on stage at the Teatro La Fenice.
I sat and watched her play in the shadows and when it ended, I approached her.
I expected her to act as girls usually did and I remember how surprised I was when she gave me the cold shoulder.
I told her she was talented and that made her prickle.
I told her how beautiful she was and that only made her angry.
I offered her money but she refused it and left, seeming to want to be away from me as quickly as possible.
I followed her. I’m not ashamed of that.
I was curious about her and her denial of me only piqued that curiosity.
You know how persistent I can be when it comes to getting something I want.
” A small, wry smile tugged at the corner of his lips.
“I found out where she lived and several days later I returned to her home with a violin by Carlo Ferdinando Landolphi, not usually an easy piece to find but it took one of my Tellers only a few days to procure it for me.” He smiled a little at the memory, a memory that was so bizarre to me, a memory that sounded more like fiction than fact.
“Her father answered the door. He invited me inside and I met her mother, along with her siblings. None of them had any idea what the violin was, its history or its worth, but she knew and she refused to take it no matter how I tried to persuade her. I didn’t stay long but I stayed long enough to understand why she had played at dawn in deserted streets and why she refused the violin.
Her family was not kind to her. I don’t know if they hit her or anything like that, but they bullied her, belittled her.
Her father was the worst. I’ll never forget the look on his face when he said, ‘You bought a violin for this stupid girl?’ and then her mother joined in.
‘ You had better hold onto him, Sofia, no one else would have you. ’ They tag teamed her and her brother and sister enjoyed it.
” The ache in my chest bloomed for him and I had to wrap my arms around myself to keep from comforting him.
I was understanding, I was finally understanding, if only a little.
“I understood then why she had bitten at my compliments. She considered herself unworthy of them. She had been taught that she was unworthy for a very long time.” He finished and I stood there in a cold silence, unsure what to say.
“You’re not unworthy, Alfie,” I said eventually.
“I don’t know who taught you that you were and I’m sorry that they did, but I won’t allow you to do the same thing to me.
” His eyes flashed in surprise. I wondered that he hadn’t been able to draw the parallels between the story he’d just told and his treatment of me this morning.
“You bullied and manipulated me. You looked down your nose at me, at my simple life and my simple clothes, and insisted that I could only please you in a ￡3,000 dress. I’m sorry, I am so, so sorry for whatever badness someone put in your head, but that’s not a good enough reason to stomp all over me.
Talk to me, or tell me you need space, but don’t ever treat me like that again.
” My voice cracked, my hurt leaking through, and Alfie studied me closely, reading every inch of my face.
I waited for his argument, for his clever words that would blow me out of the water.
“Understood,” he said and my jaw almost dropped.
“What else?” He turned to face me and stepped closer, backing me against the wall and blocking me in.
My eyes flashed instinctively to the locked door over his shoulder, my only escape.
He followed my gaze and then looked back at me, bitter disappointment clear in his eyes.
He reached into his pocket and came out with the door key glistening in his palm.
He took my hand and placed it in my own palm.
“Run if you have to. I won’t stop you.” His words floored me and I stared down at the key.
How many times had I run from Alfie and the threat he posed to my heart and mind?
I looked at the door behind him. I could go through it and be out of this heart-wrenching mess.
I could go home and have dinner with my family. I could be safe.
I tilted my palm and the key clattered to the floor, the noise obnoxious in the empty room. I wasn’t going anywhere.
I looked up at Alfie, his face a pure picture of relief. A thick wave of guilt settled in my stomach that I still wanted to run, even when he was trying so hard. But this wasn’t all my fault. He’d made this bed too.
“What else, Lola?” he asked again. What else? He was asking me what else I was upset about? I folded my arms over my chest as a fresh memory of his callous rejection coursed through me.
“You hurt me, Alfie. Really bad. And after…after last night, what I told you…you just ignored it, brushed it away like it meant nothing.” My words caught in my throat and I couldn’t bear to look at him, his gaze so piercing, so all-seeing, I had to look away. “It wasn’t nothing to me. Last night?—”
“—was the best night of my life.”
Did I hear that? Were those words truly his? My gaze sprang up to his and for once he was as clear to me as the open sky. His eyes were full of pure, undiluted emotion, shining with the vulnerability he was so afraid to set free. There was no lie there, no ulterior motive.
“I’m not ready to explain why I reacted the way that I did.
I wish I could promise you that I will never behave that way again but that would be a lie.
There isn’t much I wouldn’t do to keep you and I have no doubt that I will upset you again.
The only promise I can make is that I will endeavour to do better. ”
I waited.
I waited for the big words, the happy, fairytale ones, but they didn’t come.
“That’s it?” I asked, my voice small and uncertain.
“That’s all I have. In the absence of money or pleasure, which you’ve already proven aren’t enough to sway you, this is all I have.” He tilted his chin up, straightening his shoulders in the manner of a man whose pride was on the line. “Is it enough?” I heard the real question there— Am I enough?
Silence stretched between us as I considered his words.
He was asking me to jump and all he could promise was that he would try to catch me…
but wasn’t that how it was for everyone who fell?
You had to jump and just hope that the other person would catch you, or at the very least that they’d hold your hand on the way down.
“Yes, Alfie, you’re enough.”
I expected us to fall into one another’s arms the way that other couples did after a fight, but Alfie remained as stiff as a statue. His jaw ticked and his fists remained clenched at his sides. He was restraining himself, refusing to resort to sexual manipulation to win me over.
“Alfie, please touch me,” I whispered, my voice hoarse and needy. I could feel the pull of him with every inch of my body, every nerve ending alive and crying out for him. A low growl emitted from his chest and he reached for me, his hands wrapping around my waist like a python.
I watched as he transformed into a different animal, a creature of pleasure and passion.
He slowly squeezed me, his grip acting like a corset, his thumbs meeting just under my breasts.
This sensual asphyxiation was a strangely erotic feeling.
He’d put his hand to my throat before and the restricted air during orgasm was incredible, but this claustrophobic suffocation was something new, something dangerous, and yet I felt safe, because they were his hands and his hands would never harm me.
“Do you still trust me?” he asked with barely-restrained urgency.
My hands gripped his biceps, and my core ached so desperately for him it was all I could do not to drop to my knees and beg him to take me.
To an onlooker we merely looked like a couple about to kiss, but in truth, we were about to do so much more and I needed to brace myself.
Alfie could reach a level of intensity that was hard to withstand, but I got off on the limits he pushed me past, and with our issues aired and laundered, I felt free to let him take me.
“With my body? Yes,” I told him, leaving the rest unsaid.
“That’s good enough.” He pulled my body up against his, his hands so tight I could barely breathe for the heady intoxication of him. “For now.”