Chapter 18
18
I T WAS BOTH A WEAKNESS and inevitability that Emilia relented and allowed Dante and Georgia to take her back to the hospital. At least she’d had a chance to sleep and shower, and dressed in a fresh outfit—a pale linen dress that fell to her ankles. She’d swept her hair into a loose bun, and even applied a layer of lip gloss. But all that had been in preparation for her flight home. Not this.
And yet, when Dante and Georgia had shown up at her hotel and begged her to come and see Salvatore before she’d left, she heard herself agreeing. In truth, she wanted to see him awake and conscious, to convince herself, once and for all, that he really was going to be okay.
The car trip to the hospital was silent, besides a few polite enquiries the Australian Georgia made, in an effort to ease any awkwardness. Emilia found she couldn’t bring herself to answer more than a single word. Not because she bore the other woman any ill will, but because she was far too much ‘in her head’ about what she was about to see and do.
Once at the hospital, they walked through the familiar corridors, towards his private room, and Emilia caught a glimpse of the other Santoro family members, in one of the lounge rooms. She didn’t say anything, beyond a small nod of acknowledgement.
It was only at the door to Salvatore’s room that she hesitated, turning to Dante and Georgia, who hovered a few feet back. “You’re not coming?”
Dante shook his head. “You’re the one he wants to see.”
Her stomach fluttered with butterflies, but she forced herself to be brave, twisting the doorknob and pushing it inwards. The image he made was chalk and cheese to how he’d been the other day. For one thing, the ghastly tubes had been removed, and he was now dressed, sitting up in the bed. But he was still far, far too slim, his face gaunt, his jaw covered in too much stubble. While she was worried about him, and the way he looked, she couldn’t help but recognize that if anything, it only made the beauty of his features more obvious—the depth of his eyes, the strength of his brows. She fidgeted her hands as she crossed the room slowly towards him, but hovered a little distance from the bed. Out of touching range, so she wouldn’t accidentally forget that he no longer loved her, or belonged to her in any way, and reach for him.
“Thank you for coming.” His voice was raspy and a little slow. Uncertain? She swallowed past a lump in her throat, hating how emotional she felt. Then again, it was only a matter of days ago that she’d thought he might not survive—or if he did, know what condition he’d be in.
“I needed to know,” she finally managed to say, unable to look away from his face. She saw the way his throat shifted as he swallowed, as though it physically pained him. She understood; her throat hurt too, but from the acid of tears rather than the grazing of a tube.
“To know what?”
She hesitated. “That you were okay.”
He nodded slowly. “The thing is, I don’t think I am.”
She glanced from him to the monitors, then started moving towards the doors. “I’ll get a doctor.”
“No, Emilia, that’s not what I meant.” His voice was firmer now, more like normal. So much so that she stopped walking and turned to face him. Her heart almost leaped out of her chest.
“Salvatore,” she whispered his name, but it was a plea. A desperate plea to let her go, because being here with him under these circumstances was an agony. She felt herself withering inside; it was excruciating. “Please…I can’t…”
He closed his eyes then, those thick, dark lashes fluttering down over his cheek bones so everything ached.
“Just tell me this.” His words rasped once more. “Are you okay?”
She bit into her lip. “How do you expect me to answer that?”
He opened his eyes and stared at her. No, stared through her, deep inside her soul, to every twisty, turning pain and hurt. “With a yes, or a no.” Again, his throat shifted visibly as he swallowed. “If you’re really okay—if you’re fine—then just tell me. As much as I miss you—miss you so much I truly cannot bear it—I’ll be okay. Just knowing you’re okay. But either way, please tell me. Please, I have to know.”
The desperation in his voice was what sold her, yet she stayed standing where she was for a long time, her mind and heart in conflict, her brain torn between what she wanted to say and what she knew was right to tell him. In the end, the truth won out. They’d been through too much to lie. Besides, for all he’d fallen out of love with her, having been through this trauma in the last few days, she couldn’t bear the fact of anything happening to him and his not knowing how deeply she still loved him—and always would. If ever there was a moment for absolutely honesty, this was it.
“No.”
Silence crackled between them, static and powerful.
“No?” he finally responded.
She held one hand out, palm up to the ceiling. “I mean, what do you think?” She tried to keep her voice calm. He’d been through so much. She didn’t want to stress him, or do anything that might put him at risk. But how the hell could she respond? How could she adequately explain? “You broke my heart, Salvatore.” Her voice cracked, despite her best efforts to keep a level head. “You broke my fucking heart. You tore it right out of my chest, you know? I loved you. I chose you. I chose you over everyone else I knew and loved. I chose you, our future, the life I thought we would live together. And you just…you just ended it. You actually told me monogamy wasn’t for you, so I’ve had to live, for the last however many weeks, with the idea of you sleeping with god knows how many other women, just like you used to.” She wasn’t even aware of the tears that were slipping down her cheeks. “You promised me the world, and then changed your mind. I mean…how do you think I am?”
The second she finished her tirade, she regretted it. His face was paler than it had been, his eyes more haunted.
“I’m sorry,” she said, spinning around, fumbling for the door. “I have to go.”
“Damn it, no, Emilia, please, don’t go,” he called after her, but she couldn’t stay. She wrenched the door handle inwards. “Please,” he called after her, and then cursed loudly. “I hate this goddamned cast. I can’t come after you, please, just?—,”
But she slipped out of the room, purely so she could press her back against the wall and slowly drop down to the floor, to rest her tear-stained face against her knees. She could hardly draw breath, she was so utterly spent, so emotionally drained. So devastated and agonizingly bereft. In that moment, it felt almost impossible to contemplate pulling herself to her feet again, let alone walking out of the hospital, so she just stayed where she was a moment, not caring who saw her collapsed like that, so long as it wasn’t Salvatore.
There wasn’t a lot Salvatore was grateful for in that moment. Except, he supposed, that the opposite arm and leg were broken, meaning with a monumental effort and a fair amount of discomfort, he was able to leverage himself out of bed and steady his frame against the edge of the bed. In the back of his mind, he recognized that it was probably a futile effort. Emilia was likely in the parking lot by now. But how could he not try?
You broke my fucking heart.
You promised me the world, then changed your mind.
No, he should have shouted. I didn’t. He should have found a way to make her understand, but he’d been so moved by her obvious devastation, by how much he’d hurt the only woman he’d ever loved—loved so much he’d done what he thought was right for her, to absolutely his own detriment, he’d lost the ability to speak at all.
Inwardly, he cursed everything and everyone as he hobbled across the hospital room, towards the door. His body hurt, all over. He didn’t care. At the doorframe, he had to rest a moment. He pressed his unbroken hand against the timber and stood, catching his breath, glancing down.
And he saw her. So vulnerable and perfect, so broken, because of him. So completely and utterly his other half. “Emilia.”
Her head moved so fast, turning to glance up at him. Their eyes met and every cell in his body exploded.
“Oh my God,” she moved with the speed of lightning, standing and putting her hands on his forearm. The second they touched, he felt it. What had once been a lightning bolt of awareness, and had morphed into a certainty of ‘forever’. It was part of them. This chemistry, this love, this everything. “You need to get back in bed. What are you even thinking?” And then, her hands moved higher to his shoulders, and her eyes dropped to his chest. “Salvatore, what’s happened? You’ve lost so much weight. Are you sick?”
His laugh was a hollow, thin sound.
“Come back to bed.”
“On one condition.”
“No,” she shook her head, but he held his ground, and she didn’t force him. Though it would have been easy enough for her to push him to bed in his current state.
“On one condition,” he repeated, moving his good hand now to curve around her elbow. “Stay five more minutes, please.”
Her lips parted, gaping, as though she could barely fathom what he was asking of her.
“Five minutes,” he pleaded, betting everything he cared about on the fact she’d flown halfway across the world to see him, and that had to mean something.
“You’ll get back in bed and stay there until a doctor tells you that you can move?”
He dipped his head once, though inwardly, he suspected he’d keep chasing after her, for just as long as it took to make her understand why he’d done what he had. It might not change her mind, and that he’d have to accept, but he at least needed to explain, until she knew the truth.
“Let me help you,” she murmured.
He wanted to refuse. His pride almost had him saying ‘no’. But Emilia’s idea of help was to sidle up against him, lift his good arm around her shoulders, and attempt to take his weight as they made their way back to the bed. He could manage—with difficulty—on his own, but it was so good to be close to her like this, that he leaned into and held her right where she was. When they reached the bed, she helped him sit on the edge of it. Instead of laying back, he stayed right where he was, so she could stand right in front of him, at his eye height. It wasn’t how he wanted to have this conversation, but it was better than being basically prone on the damned bed.
“Five minutes,” she reminded him, so he had no choice but to quickly gather his thoughts.
What he wanted to say, immediately, was that he loved her. But he suspected she’d turn around and walk away, so he took a slightly more subtle approach.
“All I want is for you to be happy.”
She took a step back, wrapping her arms around her torso as though she needed the comfort, but at least she was staying where she was.
He knew the truth was best, but he suspected that in telling her about Leandro and Max’s insistence that he end things, he’d be throwing them under a bus. If there was a way to get what he wanted without burning all the bridges to her family, he wanted to secure that.
“I came to think you would never be happy without your family in your life. I know what we said. But with each day that passed, and the absence from your life, I felt it. I felt your pain. I just…wanted to make it better.”
The sound she made was barely human. “By leaving me? By telling me you didn’t love me anymore? By implying you were itching to go back to fucking anything in a skirt?”
The pain was instant, right in the side of his head. He felt as though he’d been thumped. It was just a response to her hurt, a physical reaction to the way her words cut through him.
“If that’s what it took, yes.”
She stared at him with a look of absolute shock, then held her hand up, palm outwards, in the universal gesture of stop. Silence fell. He sat still, and he waited.
“Are you trying to tell me you were lying? That you did that out of a misguided belief it was best for me?”
He tightened his jaw. Hearing it from her, he recognized how stupid it sounded. Of course, she was missing a vital piece of information. He’d gone to her brothers to win them over, and had gone away with only one possible path to win Emilia her family back. To fix what he’d ruined, by falling in love with the wrong person.
“I just wanted to fix it,” he muttered, lifting his undamaged hand to drag through his hair.
“But you didn’t,” she said, with disbelief. “You broke it. You broke me. You broke us.”
That was so final. So devastatingly absolute. “I didn’t want you to wake up one day and resent me. To realise you’d made a mistake.”
“Bullshit,” she said, tearing her hand through the air. “You just panicked. You’re so scared of hurting someone that you go through life acting like some big, alpha male protector, and you took away all my agency. I chose you. I chose you, and that was my right. I knew what I was doing. I knew what I was losing. And I accepted that, because I got to live my life with you. The man I loved. The man I chose to be with. How dare you take that away? How dare you override my decision?”
“I know. I know. I fucking know. Don’t you think I see that? Don’t you think I’ve regretted that every minute since I left? But I thought you were okay. I thought you were okay. Better than okay, I thought you were fine. I thought…I really thought it was only me that was suffering.”
She turned her face away then, sucking in a deep breath. In profile, she looked so utterly wounded. So disbelieving.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t,” she whispered. “Please don’t apologise.” She turned back to look at him, her jaw shifting as she glared him down. “Why did you think I was ‘okay, better than fine’?”
Damn these pain killers. He would never have usually made such a stupid mistake. Not with someone as intelligent as Emilia.
“Because I wasn’t okay, but you sounded so confident…”
“I just presumed…”
“If you lie to me,” she said, holding up a finger in the universal gesture of warning. “I will walk out that door so fucking fast you will never catch me.”
The world tilted. He felt desperate—more desperate than he’d known he was capable of feeling.
“I asked about you,” he said, a little hesitantly. He was still trying to work out how he could get through to Emilia without sabotaging her relationship with her family.
“You asked who?”
“Your brother.”
“Max?”
“Leandro.” To hell with it. He had to be honest. Emilia was right. It was her life, her family, and she had agency. She could do what she wanted with all the information. He wasn’t going to hold anything back. “I went to see him, that day,” he muttered, holding his hand out, wanting her to take it. But she didn’t. She stayed where she was, resolute, and his whole body throbbed with a soul deep need to fix everything. Not with her family, but with them. At one point, they’d been a team, unified against their problems. He’d split them up, and it had been completely wrong. He would never make that mistake again, if he could be lucky enough to get her back. That felt like an incredibly long way away, but he didn’t care. If it took years, he’d keep trying.
“I went to him, that afternoon,” he said, slowly. His throat hurt like the devil, but he wouldn’t stop talking.
“Which afternoon?”
He didn’t need to answer. He saw the moment she realized.
“The day you came home and said you didn’t love me?”
Shame curdled in his gut. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“To try to explain. To convince them to give us a try.”
She closed her eyes a little and swayed. Despite his leg cast, he moved so fast, standing and putting a hand around her waist. It jolted her back to the present. “I’m fine,” she said, but instead of stepping away, she put her hands on his hips, as though to steady him. “You went to Leandro?”
“They were both there—Max and Leandro. At the time, I thought it would mean I could win them both over at once. But they very quickly convinced me that there was no way you’d ever be happy without your family in your life. The thing is, at the time, I really did think I was doing the right thing. I thought about coming home and being honest, but I knew you’d just insist you wanted me, above anyone else. I didn’t think I should let that happen. So I told you I was leaving.”
She shook her head slowly. “I can’t believe it.”
“Can’t you?”
“You’re right. I can believe it. I’m just so angry. This was my choice. It’s my life.”
“But could you really bear living it without them?”
“If I had you? Yes. If I had you, I could bear anything.”
He dropped his head a moment, so their foreheads were impossibly close, but Emilia bristled, pulling back. She was naturally, understandably wary.
“I wanted you to be happy,” he said. “I didn’t trust that I was enough for you.”
“How can you say that?” she demanded. Not softly, either. She was angry. Furious. “At any point, did I give you a reason to doubt how I felt?”
“No.”
“You were my everything, Salvatore. My absolute all. And then, you were just…gone.”
“When my car was hit, and I was out of control, skidding across the road, presuming I was about to die, all I could think of was you. I made every deal with God I could think of, if he would give me one last chance to see you. To tell you that I love you. That I’d lied to you, when I said I didn’t want to be with you. My God, Emilia, if you had any idea how much I love you…you think I destroyed you, by leaving? I destroyed myself. I haven’t known how to function, without you. And still, I stayed away, because Leo said you were fine, and I thought I had done the right thing.”
“I wasn’t fine,” she said, but now, the anger was gone, and the words simply throbbed with feeling. The hands that been holding him steady slipped, moving around behind his back and holding him there. “I wasn’t fine.” They stared at each other a long time, and then, she blinked away, her eyes moist. “You need to sit down.”
This time, when he sat on the bed, he pulled his broken leg up, and laid back down. But when his eyes held hers, he said, “Come here.”
He lifted his good arm, to create a space for her. It was more than an olive branch: it was everything. In that simple request, he was asking her to forgive him, to be with him, to move forward with him, no matter what.
“You are my everything,” he said, and then, she was moving, climbing up on the bed gently, careful not to hurt his broken leg, and curling herself against his side.
“What’s happened to you?” she asked, running her hand over his chest, where the bumps of each ridge were tangible.
“Well, let’s see,” he drawled, feeling more like himself than he had in months. “I don’t think I’ve eaten more than a handful of chips in about a month, so…”
She laughed, but it was a devastatingly sad sound. “Salvatore…”
“I was so stupid. So incredibly stupid and weak. What I should have said, that day, is this: our families will always be that—our families. They are a part of us, a part of our past, and they made us who we are. But the only person I need in my life, the only person I want to spend my life with, is you. If you feel that, then we need to accept this reality. And one day, if we are blessed with children of our own, it would be the sum total of my life’s wishes—to create tiny little baby Emilias for us to dote upon and adore. You are my family, and if you agree to let me be yours, then I will be the happiest man on earth. What I should have said, that afternoon, is that I want us to marry, just as soon as we can arrange the paperwork.”
He felt her body shudder on a deep sob.
“I should have said that.”
She shifted so he could see her face. “You just did.”
Something tripped in his chest, as though his heart had just short circuited. “Yes.”
“Did you mean it?”
“What do you think?”
She bit into her lower lip.
“Emilia, I want to marry you and never let go. I want you, with all of my heart and soul. I cannot care, any longer, about the families that would not care enough about us.”
And then, she was smiling, and it was the most beautiful, incredible sight he’d ever seen.
“I love you,” he added, for good measure, so she was nodding, and wriggling up the bed a little, to press a chaste kiss against his lips. But how could he leave it at that? He held her there, moving his good hand to her cheek, tangling his fingers in her hair as his mouth claimed hers properly and all the sparks in the world exploded between them. As though fate and destiny had lit their own fireworks for Emilia and Salvatore, and the fact they’d finally recognized that they were in love.
“I love you, too,” she said against his mouth. “I was not fine without you, and never would have been. How could you think that, even for one second?”
He groaned as he pulled back, because despite his physical incapacity, he wanted her with the force of a thousand suns. That, though, would have to wait.
“What happens now?” she asked, gently.
“We get married.” There was no indecision, no doubt. Just a desperate need to cement this legally. To tell the world that while the Santoros and Valentinos might have been determined to carry on their ludicrous feud, Emilia and Salvatore were not.
“Yes,” she said, smiling that beautiful smile again. “And then what?”
“We live happily ever after.”
She rolled her eyes, but on a laugh. “Yes, but where?”
“Wherever you want, my darling.”
She bit her lip. “Anywhere you are.”
“Good answer,” he growled. “I did buy an amazing place here, in the middle of the rainforest. Private, secluded, and just about as far from our families as you can get…”
“Sounds like heaven,” she admitted, reaching down and lacing their fingers together. “But there’s something you should know.”
He could hardly think. The sensation of having her here was beyond perfection.
“Your family has actually been very good, these past few days.”
He shook his head. “Let’s not talk about them,” he said. “Whatever happens with the Santoros, or the Valentinos, should have no bearing on us. With or without them, we are our own family—you and me. And I couldn’t be happier.”
She sighed with obvious, blissful contentment. “Me neither.”
And she placed her head on his chest, snuggled to his side, as all the pain for their separation ebbed from his body, and hers, and finally, they were just as they were meant to be. Blissfully contented, and certain in the knowledge of having each found their perfect other half.