Chapter Thirteen #2
His throat tightened.
He’d seen Poppy cry before. He understood why humans cried. It was a release of emotion from the only part of the body it could escape from. But for her to do it here. For her to cry in the place where the tears—the emotions—had buckled her knees.
He was scared, he admitted to himself, that this time he was too weak to carry her. His body didn’t feel like itself.
He didn’t feel strong in this place.
He felt…undone.
‘We need to leave, Poppy,’ he said. ‘We’ll go inside.’
‘I don’t want to go inside.’
‘You are crying.’
‘I am,’ she admitted.
Something shifted inside him. And he didn’t like it.
He did not like the instinct raising his hand to her cheek.
Or the words ready to spill from his mouth.
But he did it anyway. He raised his hand, and the tremor beneath his skin, he couldn’t hide it.
He brushed his hand against her cheek—tried to wipe away the wetness, but another drop fell.
‘Don’t cry, glikia mou.’
‘But I want to.’
‘Why?’
‘I miss him,’ she admitted, so openly, so honestly.
‘The baby?’
‘Of course.’ A trembling smile, so small, teased at her lips. ‘I’m crying for all of us,’ she admitted. ‘For Isaak. For myself. I’m crying for you.’
No one had wept for him. Not his mother. Not his father. He hadn’t wept for himself. Ever.
He didn’t want her pity. He wanted to reject them—give these tears back. This softness. This intimate empathy he didn’t deserve.
‘Do you want to go to bed?’ The question was out of his mouth before he could stop it.
Her face twisted into a repulsed line of rejection. ‘I don’t want to have sex.’
‘Do you want to sleep?’ he corrected, remembering her all too many naps when the sadness had become too much. Too unbearable.
And this…it was unbearable to him.
‘What will you do while I sleep?’ she asked, her voice still uneven, rough, from too much spent energy.
‘I’ll be quiet,’ he assured her. He didn’t wish for quiet solitude. He felt nothing. Not pain. Not hurt. He didn’t need to be soothed. But he longed to give her something.
Some kind of…peace.
‘I will hold you.’
‘No,’ she rejected it. Instantly. Rejected him. His hold.
It was a kick to his knees. His mother had rejected him. His little arms. His weak arms.
‘I will hold you,’ she said.
He, of course, knew what it meant to be held.
Open arms were offered to children when they cried.
It was offered to everyone who demanded reassurance—closeness.
Intimacy of a softer nature. It had never been offered to him.
He didn’t need that kind of softness. He’d never been offered it as a child and he didn’t need it now he was grown.
He didn’t need this.
He closed his eyes, but he couldn’t stop his arms. He didn’t want to. He wrapped them around her small frame. He couldn’t control his fingers. He knew they pressed too hard into her hips. But he couldn’t tell himself to be gentler. He pulled her in close. Inhaled her.
‘Poppy,’ he breathed into her hair.
A sound broke the hum of her shallow, quick breathing. A small sound. But it was primitive. Muffled. A sound of anguish. Distress.
Konstantinos recoiled.
The sound had come from him.
Poppy heard it.
Almost childlike. It was a tiny moan. A croak.
Her fingers flexed on his back, smoothed over the tension holding him too straight. Too tall. She could feel it in his body. The tension. The rejection of it. The sound that wanted to escape. Be released.
The fire returned to her nose—demanding she cry harder.
And oh, she wanted to.
She wanted to weep the tears Konstantinos could not.
Had never allowed himself to weep. She wanted to wail for the little boy who’d lost his mother.
She wanted to weep for the little boy who blamed himself for her death.
She wanted to weep for the boy whose needs were neglected.
She wanted to weep for the boy who no one had held.
Not even his wife.
Until it was too late.
Her fingers dug into his shirt. She scrunched it tightly in her fingers, afraid that if she didn’t she’d crush him now. Hold him too tightly.
A sob bubbled in her chest. She caught it before it escaped. But a lump formed so large in her throat she couldn’t swallow it.
She closed her eyes. So tightly they hurt.
She stopped crying.
Her tears wouldn’t help him. But how could she help him? How did she teach him it was okay to feel when no one had shown him how? How did she show a man made of steel it was okay to bend? That she wouldn’t let him break?
She kept her head pressed to his chest. Listened to the loud beat of his heart in her ear.
She couldn’t. She knew this now. She couldn’t teach him how to feel. She couldn’t teach him how to accept the overload of what she knew now was inside him. But she could do this.
She could hold him.
She could be here for him.
They could be there for each other.
She raised her head from his chest, but she didn’t release him. She kept him close. She understood what they needed now.
‘Were you happy?’ she asked.
His brows knitted. ‘With what?’
‘The life you’d built for yourself? Were you happy with our marriage?’ she clarified. ‘Before—’ she raised her right hand and gesticulated in a three-sixty turn ‘—were you happy with me?’
‘Were you?’ He flipped the question. ‘Happy?’
Isaak, he’d changed everything. But he never should have pushed them apart. He should have brought them closer together. She would let her son do that for them now. She would make it what it should have been. Now.
She stepped closer to him. ‘I think we can be happier.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I understand your choices so much better now,’ she said. ‘I understand—I know you—better than I did in our marriage. I understand myself better, too.’
And she did. She hadn’t been wrong all those years ago to choose him. It had taken their separation, the reunion, the battle of marriage contracts and terms of divorce to see it.
But she saw it now. There was no one else for her. And there was no one else for him.
‘All those choices I made before,’ she started, and a single tear slipped free.
It hurt her now. The truth. Their marriage…they’d never really let it begin.
If only they’d realised sooner the battles they were fighting on their own to maintain those too high walls, they could have fought them together.
She wiped the wetness from her cheeks. Demanded they stop. ‘I can’t undo them,’ she admitted. Owned it. Her mistakes. ‘But I can make different choices now because of them. I can choose to fight. And I want to fight,’ she admitted.
Puzzlement flashed in his black eyes. ‘What do you want to fight about?’
‘I want to fight for us.’
She released him. Let go of him and took a step back, because he needed to decide this was what he wanted too.
She’d thought she needed closure. In a sense, their conversations had given her that. But it had given her something else too.
It had opened a door, and she had a choice if she wanted to walk through it. If she wanted to claim the marriage they had wanted all those years ago. But this time it would be stronger, she knew this. Because she was stronger. She was different. Changed.
It would be different this time.
‘I want to try again,’ she admitted. ‘I want to be your wife. Forever.’
A pulse flicked in his cheek. ‘Forever is a long time, Poppy.’
‘It’s what I’m willing to commit to.’
‘Why the change of heart?’
‘Isaak never should have pushed us apart. He should have brought us together. Let our son do that for us now.’
The hard lines of him dipped with the slow expulsion of air. ‘So much has happened, Poppy.’
‘It has.’
‘Do we still want the same things? A marriage based on loyalty, respect, without the complications of love?’
Love had always been such a dirty word.
It didn’t feel that way now.
It didn’t feel dirty when he spoke it.
It felt…right.
It was too late.
She’d fallen for him long ago, hadn’t she?
She’d run away not because of her father, but because Konstantinos had broken her heart by pushing her away. Her fury—her rage—it had all come from a place of love.
She loved him.
She could see that now. Feel it.
He couldn’t feel it, could he? This love?
He wasn’t in the same place she was.
He wasn’t ready to talk about Isaak.
He wasn’t ready to…feel.
Maybe if she gave him time…
He stepped closer. ‘Do you want a fresh start with the same rules?’ he asked, his voice urgent, as if her silence made him anxious.
She nodded.
That would be enough, she told herself. For now.