Chapter Thirteen #2
Amelia felt it like a body blow. She shook her head, as if that could dispel his words, and the awful cloud of jealousy that was permeating her spirit and soul. ‘When?’ she asked, finding it almost impossible to believe he’d kept this from her.
‘Before my father left. We were young. Her parents were strict—they expected my commitment. So, I proposed. But when my father’s scandal broke, she dropped me faster than you can imagine. I believed we were in love, but it was a mistake.’
‘That’s so shallow,’ she said, angrily. ‘To desert you when you needed her most.’
‘I didn’t need her, though. I was wrong. About her, us, about our future.’ He cupped her face, then, his expression earnest. ‘Just as you’re wrong now.’
‘No,’ she denied, quickly.
‘I’m not the man for you.’
‘How can you say that?’
He ground his jaw. ‘Because I will never be able to give you what you want, what you deserve.’
‘What if all I want is you?’
‘I’m not available.’
‘But you are,’ she said, surprised when a sob burst from her. She hadn’t realised how close she was to crying. ‘Can’t you see that? You have shared yourself with me, ever since we met, and I have loved every single piece of you. Doesn’t that mean anything?’
He shook his head once, his jaw tight. His whole body tight. As if he was holding himself together with the force of iron.
‘Massimiliano?’
‘Fu-u-uck,’ he groaned. ‘Stop.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You know how I always said you could ask me to stop, any time? That you needed to have that safe word? That boundary? Well, this is my boundary. I’m asking you to stop.’
‘Why?’ she pushed, certain she was getting close to something real and raw. Something he didn’t want to express. Something that mattered, deeply.
‘Because you’re asking for the impossible.’
‘Does it feel impossible? Does anything about us seem out of reach? Or is it everything we deserve?’
He ground his jaw. ‘It’s never going to happen.’
‘Why not?’
‘I told you—’
‘Just tell me why,’ she pleaded. ‘If you’re going to bloody pack me away like some box, send me back to England, at least have the courtesy of explaining to me why you won’t even give this—us—a chance. A real chance.’
His eyes bored into hers, and she saw the plea in their depths, the visible sign that he was done with this conversation.
She loved him. She loved him completely, with all of her heart, so, on the one hand, she was tempted to let him off the hook.
To accept his plans without arguing. But she loved their relationship even more, and their future was one worth fighting for.
‘I didn’t have you pegged as a coward.’
His eyes flashed with emotions she didn’t comprehend, and she relished that. She knew she might have been pushing her finger hard into whatever emotional bruises he carried, but she didn’t—couldn’t—care. She had her own bruises, and right now he was hurting each and every one of them.
‘Don’t,’ he said, closing his eyes.
‘What’s wrong? Too scared to have this conversation?’
‘Yes,’ he said, opening his eyes there, surprising her with the intensity of his gaze. ‘You’re right. I’m a coward. Does that make you happy, Amelia? Is that what you want to hear?’
It wasn’t. It hurt her. It hurt her to see him face up to his own vulnerabilities, to cloak himself in that weakness.
‘I need you to go,’ he said, the words ground out, heavy and dark. ‘I will not let you love me. I will not let you stay here, offering me that, all the while knowing that at any point, on a whim, you can take it away again. And I will sure as hell never let myself love you.’
There was so much emotion in his words. So much feeling, and past hurt. She ached for him. For the people he’d once loved, who’d turned their backs on him. His fiancée, the society crowd he’d considered friends, and, worst of all, his own father.
‘I don’t know if there’s anyone else on earth who would understand why you feel that way as perfectly as I do.
’ She moved forward again, wrapping her arms around his waist, looking up into his face.
‘There is a specific emptiness that comes from being abandoned by your parents. A hole in your chest that opens up when you have to accept that one of the two people who should have been biologically hard-wired to love you has let you down so catastrophically.’ She lifted one hand to stroke his stubbled jaw.
‘But from the moment I met you, that hole has started to zip closed. Parts of me I thought would be for ever empty are all full up, because of you. Tell me it’s not the same. Tell me you don’t feel that, too.’
His nostrils flared as he expelled a breath.
Fierce and sharp, full of rejection. ‘You are unlike anyone I’ve ever known,’ he said, finally, but even then, the words were laced with a dark anger.
‘If anyone was going to make me forget, it would be you. But I have lived with this a long time. Longer than you can image. I will never allow love to weaken me again, cara. Not for you, not for anyone. If you love me, if you understand me, then you’ll know I’m telling the truth. ’
Another sob bubbled up inside her then, because he was right. He was being honest, and she knew that. In a million years, Massimiliano Moretti would never change. Not for her, nor for anyone, just as he’d said.
‘I’ll organise a car to take you to the airport.’
‘Don’t tell me what to do, where to go.’
‘It’s your life,’ he pointed out.
But she rejected that, with a deep sense of despair.
Since she was a little girl, she’d had one clear idea of what she wanted.
To be a doctor; to make people better. But how much of that came from trauma?
How much of her aspiration was really the result of a little girl who’d known loss and felt powerless to help?
And then, she’d met Massimiliano, and parts of her had healed without her realising it, so she wondered if what really needed fixing, all this time, was herself.
It didn’t mean she wouldn’t pursue medicine, it just meant it was no longer the sole aspiration in her life.
It no longer felt like her purpose for being.
Because there was Massimiliano as well, and this marriage they’d been creating. But was it all a fake? Was he right?
She shook her head, silently rejecting that, but her fingers toyed with the ring she wore and a lightning bolt of clarity split through her.
‘It’s all fake to you,’ she whispered, blinking across at him. ‘Just like this.’ She slid the cut-glass ring from her finger and held it out towards him.
He shook his head once. ‘Please, keep it.’
‘I don’t want it.’
‘Keep it, in case we need—’
‘To keep fooling everyone?’ she said, in a manic sense of disbelief. Even then, he was being pragmatic, thinking about their fake marriage. He was letting her go, but still clinging to the idea of this. The charade, as he’d called it.
‘Fine.’ She pushed it onto her finger as her stomach rolled with pain.
‘I never wanted to hurt you,’ he said, quietly. ‘This was not my plan.’
‘Yeah, well, life doesn’t always go according to plan, Massimiliano.’
‘I’m aware of that.’
‘You just have to roll with it. So what if this turned out to be more than either of us expected? So what if we fell in love—’
‘That’s not—’ He cut himself off with a curse, then strode across the room, pulling her into his arms. ‘That’s not what this is.
’ And he kissed her, hard, passionately, his body melding to hers, big and strong, so her insides hammered and her heart thumped hard to her ribs.
Her hands curved around his back on autopilot, and she tasted salt in her mouth from the tears that were in freefall.
‘That,’ he said, pulling up from her, ‘is what you’re mistaking for love.’
She shook her head quickly.
‘You have never been with a man. You are overwhelmed by the sex, nothing more.’
‘How dare you?’ she spat, pushing him away then, stepping back at the same time. ‘Don’t tell me what I feel. Don’t tell me I’m not smart enough to know the difference between sex and love.’
‘With all due respect, how could you have any idea?’
Her lips parted on a rush of air.
‘You have been so starved of love, you are desperate to find it here, now, with me,’ he said, cutting her deep.
Because on the one hand, he was right. Her mother’s desertion had starved her of maternal love, and then her father’s death had left her completely alone.
But he was also wrong, because, before that, her father had adored her, and she’d known the uncomplicated sense of security that came from understanding herself to be safe in someone’s heart space.
‘I was right before,’ she whispered. ‘You are such a coward. Not only do you refuse to admit how you feel, you can’t face up to the reality of what I feel, and, worse, you’re using what you know of my life against me, trying to make out I’m some damaged little orphan that couldn’t possibly know real love.
’ She sucked in a ragged breath. ‘Well, you can try to make yourself feel better by saying I’m misreading what I feel, but you’re wrong.
You’re so damned wrong. This is love. All-consuming, heart-filling love.
’ She stalked back towards him then, jabbing a finger in his chest. ‘And whatever happens in your life, when you’re old and lonely and thinking about things, I hope you look back on this night and realise you had a chance to do something real and meaningful.
That you had a chance to live a life that was full of significance and love, but that you were too scared.
I hope you feel the weight of this decision for the rest of your goddamned life, Massimiliano, because letting me go is the biggest mistake you’ll ever make. ’
And she stalked out of their room, dashing away her tears as she looked around blindly for her handbag.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked, right behind her, voice satisfyingly raw and husky.
‘That’s none of your business.’
‘You are still my wife.’
She whirled around then, fury spreading through her. ‘Don’t be such a jerk. I’m not your wife, any more than I am a doctor. Wanting something doesn’t make it happen.’
His jaw shifted as he ground his teeth. ‘You are my wife, to the rest of the world. Wherever you go, you are under my protection.’
‘You’ve made me wealthy,’ she pointed out. ‘I can hire my own damned security, Massimiliano. I don’t need anything from you,’ she said, tilting her chin defiantly. ‘Except the one thing you’ll clearly never give me.’
‘You are acting like a child.’
She glared at him. ‘And you’re acting like an asshole. I know which one I’d rather be.’
She stalked to the door and wrenched it inwards.
‘At least take my car—’
She sent him a withering look. ‘I want nothing from you. Got it?’