23. Chapter 23
A ria
She felt brittle, hollow. Her chest ached like a crater had appeared, deep and unseen. But her voice, when it came, was steady.
"I want a husband," she said, staring at her knees. "Someone who looks at me the way my Babi used to look at my Mami."
Crispin didn't move.
"They were traditional. They didn't hold hands, they didn't kiss in front of us. But he looked at her like she was the sun."
She paused. "I didn't understand what that look meant back then, but I do now."
Her voice thickened, just slightly. "I wanted a son like Erjon. Kind. Brave. But maybe with curly brown hair and deep blue eyes."
Crispin's breath hitched.
"And maybe a daughter, too. Like Lule. Confident, unafraid. Loud, if she wants to be. She'll be loved so much she'll never learn to doubt it."
Aria's jaw tightened. Every word was a stab to the heart .
"She'll always be the first choice, not someone's shame."
She looked down at her fingers, her voice low and sharp with rising emotion. Absently, she rubbed the calluses of her index finger and thumb together.
"For the longest time, I thought I wasn't worthy of you. That I wasn't good enough." She looked up. "And now I understand...it wasn't me, it's the other way around."
There was a flicker of fire in her eyes now. A flash of anger woven into grief.
"Cris..."
He startled. She rarely called him that.
Her voice was like the brush of a duckling feather. "I need you to do me a favour."
He nodded, hesitant.
"I need you to keep your promises to Helga."
A myriad of expressions crossed his face-confusion, disbelief, hurt.
"This thing between us," she said. "It has to end. "
"Aria-"
"Please," she said, more firmly. "Please don't make this harder than it already is."
Crispin's mouth opened again, but no words came. He stood slowly, raking a hand through his hair, stepping away like the ground had given way under him.
She couldn't watch him go.
Instead, she sat perfectly still, listening, as he walked away.
Waiting for the door to close.
But it didn't.
Instead, she heard the click of the kettle.
Then the clink of a teaspoon.
She turned her head.
Crispin stood in her kitchen, opening the tea tin-PG Tips, she noticed absently. It had been on sale last week .
He moved like he had done a hundred times. Quiet. Sure. Water poured, milk warmed, two sugars added.
Then he came over with shadowed eyes and pressed the mug into her hand. Her fingers curled around the warmth before she could even think to resist.
He sat beside her, slow and heavy, his elbows on his knees, staring at nothing. Their thighs touched. The heat of him seeped into her like something she no longer had a right to.
After a long silence, he said, "That would be easier, you know."
She didn't answer.
"Marry Helga. Take over from my father. Say all the right things. Do what's expected."
He turned to her, voice like sandpaper. Her eyes involuntarily flicked towards him.
"When you and I were still dancing around whatever this was," he went on, "I fooled myself into thinking it wouldn't go far. Couldn't go far. That I'd marry someone like Helga. That you...you'd be my secret." His voice shook a little before he controlled it.
"My father has someone-a woman he's loved since school. She never married. She shows up at charity galas sometimes but never stays too long. My mother pretends not to notice. "
He gave a hollow laugh. "He calls her 'an old friend,' but who is he fooling? We all know."
He looked up at her now. His navy eyes were full of conflict. "I thought that would be me one day. That I'd end up like him-two lives, split down the middle. The public one for the family and the private one for me. The wife and the one I actually loved."
Aria's face was frozen with pain, but a furious light flickered in her eyes.
"You promised..." she whispered around the lump in her throat.
"I thought I could have the best of both worlds," Crispin said softly. "You, and everything else I was expected to be." He swallowed, voice rough with emotion. "But I was wrong."
"A few days after I first saw you at the office, I went out with someone. An ex. You were like a ghost in my head. I wanted to banish the way you made me feel."
He glanced at Aria, nervous now, like he wasn't sure how much he was allowed to admit.
"It was meant to be a tidy, forgettable night. Good food. Polite laughs. Sex, maybe. Something clean and detached. "
A bitter, almost embarrassed smile pulled at his mouth. "She gave me all the right signals. I ended up at her place. She poured wine, put on something low and jazzy. She was already unbuttoning her blouse before I'd even taken off my shoes."
He hesitated. "She started touching me...kissing me. Saying all the right things."
He looked down at his hands, jaw tight. "And then suddenly, I didn't want it. Not her. Not anymore."
He paused, the memory flickering through him like nausea. "I pulled my shirt back on, mumbled something about a forgotten appointment, and left."
He looked at Aria fully now. "I didn't need to feel guilty. Nothing had happened between us yet. But in my head...in my heart...something already had."
"That was the moment I knew I didn't want to live a life in halves. I wanted you. But I was still too much of a coward to say it out loud."
A shuddering breath.
"You need to understand, I was never going to marry her. I just..." He looked away, ashamed. "I just didn't want anyone to know about us. About you."
Aria's fingers curled tighter around the mug.
"The repercussions... I thought if I just had more time- "
"Time," she echoed, almost to herself.
"Yes, time," Crispin repeated. "I need a few more months, Aria. Just to make it safe. You don't know what my father is like, but I do. I know how he thinks. Just a little longer-"
She wasn't listening anymore.
She rose slowly, placing the mug on the side table. "I need to get ready for work."
He stood, his breath catching. "I haven't told you everything. There's more I need to say."
"I just can't right now," she said, not looking at him.
He reached for her, gently, but she took a step back.
He hesitated.
Then she quietly added, "Leave the keys on the table, please."
It was the finality in her tone that did it.
Crispin's shoulders slumped .
Without a word, he pulled out his keychain, removed the little silver spare, and placed it on the table beside the tea.
"I'm not giving up," he said quietly.
She couldn't respond, couldn't even look at him.
He waited for a beat before reluctantly walking to the door.
This time, it closed behind him.
Only then did the first tear fall, and then another.
She thought she was all cried out, but it seems there was more.
Until she was bent over on the couch, her robe pulled tight around her, her chest heaving silently.
The tea sat untouched, growing cold.