Chapter Thirteen #3
Charlotte shook her head, but didn’t turn back to face him. He swore inwardly. When she reached the door, he moved quickly, pressing his hand over hers, on the doorknob, refusing to let it turn, imprisoning her body with his own.
‘Charlotte,’ he dropped his mouth to the sweep of her neck and pressed his lips there, feeling the familiar taste of her, the fluttering of her pulse. ‘I want to marry you.’
God, he hadn’t even realised how true that was until he was on the brink of losing her.
She turned then, her body trapped by his, every inch of her connected to him.
‘Why?’
He stared at her, the simple question likely requiring a simple answer, but he found he couldn’t easily locate one. ‘Because it’s what we agreed,’ he said, knowing it wasn’t right. Knowing it didn’t sum up how he felt and what he wanted.
‘Yes, it’s what we agreed,’ she spat, but with something like anger. ‘We agreed we would get married. That it would be practical and simple. That neither of us would want more than the easy relationship we’d developed.’
‘Right,’ he said, ignoring the maelstrom of uncertainty in the pit of his gut. ‘Exactly.’
‘No, not exactly,’ she retorted with an angry sound.
But why was she so angry? Because of Jamie? ‘Look, I’m sorry she came here. I’m sorry she spoke to you. But—,’
‘It’s not about her,’ Charlotte said, eyes huge in her face, as she stared at him with an emotion he didn’t understand. Like she was silently imploring him to understand something utterly foreign.
‘Then what is it?’
‘It’s about us.’
‘Us?’
Her eyes filled with tears.
‘It turns out, I was wrong.’
‘About me?’
‘About everything,’ she groaned. ‘I can’t marry someone who doesn’t love me. Someone who probably loves someone else.’
‘I don’t love her,’ he said quickly. ‘I honestly don’t know if I ever did.’
He didn’t push himself to question why he was suddenly so certain of that.
Charlotte’s eyes closed and her features momentarily crumpled, in a way that damn near broke his soul in half. ‘My father never wanted me. My mother never wanted me. I can’t marry someone who deep down doesn’t really want me either. Not enough.’
He opened his mouth to dispute that, to tell her he did indeed want her in his life, in some capacity, so long as they could control their expectations, so long as it was easy and simple.
But how could he say that? Nothing about them was simple, and it probably hadn’t been for a long time. They’d been fooling themselves that they could play with fire and not get burned.
‘I should never have suggested this to you.’ The words landed against him like blades.
She pressed a hand to his chest and sucked in a deep breath. For a moment he wondered if she was going to change her mind. But she pushed at him. Not hard, but hard enough for him to get the message. Back off.
Now that he wasn’t holding her she was able to open the door and slip through it without giving him even a second to reply.
* * *
He just stared at the door, her words thundering through him, over and over and over.
Jamie’s reappearance in his life was nothing short of bizarre.
As was her insistence that they were in love, when the truth was, whatever love they’d felt for one another had died slowly—over the course of years—leaving only the warm affection of two people who had once shared a sort of teenage love.
A childish love.
A love that hadn’t been strong enough to withstand the trials of real life.
A love that had never been meant to go the distance, whether they’d had children or not.
But regardless of whether or not he loved Jamie, the pain of their marriage was real.
All of it. Knowing that she was suffering and he could do nothing to alleviate it, watching her become a shell of her former self.
Wanting the best for her but not being able to deliver that.
The pain was something he’d been running from ever since.
The way it had made him vulnerable. How he’d hated that. He’d promised himself he’d never be in that position again. Yet here he was, staring at a closed door, feeling as though his entire body had been split in half. Feeling as though every single cell in his body was on fire.
Feeling as though his entire reason for being had just walked out the door.
Which was exactly why he didn’t chase after her. Exactly why he let her last statement hang in the air, defining and ending their relationship all at once.
I should never have suggested this to you.
* * *
The first time her mother had forgotten her birthday Charlotte had been devastated. She’d cried all day, weeping into her hands, whilst still hoping that maybe, just maybe, a phone call would come through to the school. A present, like the other boarders got on their birthdays.
Something.
Anything.
Proof of love.
But nothing had arrived. And the bricks of acceptance had begun to form inside of her. So too the ability to take hurt and rejection and calcify it into something strong and permanent, adding to the wall of strength that she knew she’d need in life.
This pain, though, was something else. Despite her best efforts, despite everything she knew about life and love and all the warnings she’d given herself, she’d fallen hard in love for Dante San Marino. And he didn’t love her back.
He liked her.
He respected her.
He loved sleeping with her.
But where she had failed in the pledge she’d made herself, he’d held fast to his, keeping his relationship with Charlotte in the exact same box it had been in all along.
When she’d got home from his place, she was utterly exhausted and it was only as she flopped into her lumpy bed that she realised she’d left her bags at his place. With her toiletries, her toothbrush and the beautiful teardrop diamond necklace Allegra had insisted she have.
Tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes, as she accepted yet another failing. Another person who’d found a chink in the wall she’d thought was impermeable and worked her way into it.
Because Charlotte had come to love Allegra, too, and their beautiful home in Tuscany. Damn it, at some point, she’d started to love them all. To love the life she thought she and Dante might share.
Pain seared her, familiar but foreign, because she loved Dante more than and differently to anyone she’d ever known.
And she could never, ever be with him.
* * *
All night, Dante thought about Charlotte. All night, he tossed and turned, and fumed, and swore, and then tossed and turned some more, because nothing made sense and everything was wrong.
Everything.
Sometime around dawn, he gave up on even attempting to sleep and made a strong dark coffee, carrying it onto the terrace, staring out at the street with a heaviness in his chest he couldn’t shake.
He drank it and thought about Charlotte.
He also thought about Jamie and the mistakes he’d made in his first marriage.
He thought about how he’d tried to be the husband she needed, instead of thinking about if he was the husband she deserved.
Because he hadn’t loved Jamie enough—not to withstand what life had in store for them—and she had deserved so much more.
Just like Charlotte did.
But whenever he considered that and contemplated Charlotte being with someone else, someone who could love her without hesitation and reserve, his brain practically exploded. His heart, too.
How could anyone else love her more than he did? How could anyone else give her more than him, when Dante was willing, he realised, to give her his entire life and soul if she’d accept it.
He cursed into the early morning air, draining the last of his coffee as he turned and stalked back into his house, pausing only to pull on some clothes, before storming out onto the street and towards—he hoped—his future.
* * *
Charlotte had slept hard in the end. She supposed because she’d worn herself out crying and feeling and bitterly regretting everything.
Wishing she hadn’t said anything to Dante.
Wishing she’d stuck with their marriage plan.
Wishing she’d just gone through with it and kept her feelings hidden, because at least then she would have been with him.
And surely that would have made her happy, on some level?
Except it wouldn’t have. Because she’d done enough of that in her life—loving someone and walking on eggshells because you knew their feelings for you were conditional.
She couldn’t do it again.
Not with Dante.
Not with a man she loved as she loved him.
How stupid she’d been to let it get so far.
Then again, what choice had she had? She realised now that she’d probably fallen in love with him that night they met.
What else explained the uncharacteristic way she’d gone home with him?
And then hooking up with him again and again and again.
Throwing caution to the wind and craving someone as if her life depended on it.
She’d told herself it was just physical because she’d needed to believe that. She’d told herself she couldn’t stand him, because that had felt safe and sensible. But both of those things had been lies.
She had to put this behind her. She had to start fresh. She had to prove to herself she was strong. That this wouldn’t break her—even when it felt as if it was pulling her apart completely.
As the sun rose, she pushed out of bed, showered and dressed with care.
Her bags were at Dante’s and while she could have sent someone for them, she wanted to prove to both of them that she was okay.
Or maybe she just wanted to give that to Dante, because she knew how he’d be beating himself up, worrying about her, worrying that he’d hurt her like he’d hurt Jamie and even though it was true, that her heart was breaking, that wasn’t his fault.
He just didn’t love her.
It was as simple as that.
Ignoring the aching in the centre of her chest, she left the apartment and looked left, then right and lifted her hand to hail a cab.
* * *
He ran.