Chapter Nine #2
‘I don’t deal in hypotheticals,’ she volleyed back, with a small smile. He rewarded her with a flicker of his own lips, and her heart stammered. But she wouldn’t be misdirected by a simple smile. ‘How long were you on the streets for, Theo?’
She sensed it again; that immediate withdrawing, like he was physically erecting a structure between them. ‘Long enough.’
‘A year? Two years? Four?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Yes. I think it matters a great deal to you, and it matters to me, too.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s a part of who you are.’
‘I left that boy behind a long time ago.’
‘Did you?’ she pushed, pressing her elbows to the table and lacing her fingers together beneath her chin. ‘Are you sure?’
His eyes bore into hers. ‘What are you suggesting?’
‘In the same way my life to this point has shaped me, so too has yours. It’s incredibly naive to suggest that you can just shirk the bits of yourself you no longer want.’
‘It’s amazing what willpower can achieve.’
‘Don’t be glib.’
His nostrils flared. ‘Did we come to lunch to examine my biography in detail?’
‘Partly, yes,’ she said honestly.
‘Damn it, Annie, this isn’t our deal.’
‘It’s not expressly prohibited by our contract,’ she pointed out, then tried a different tack. ‘What are you afraid of?’
‘Nothing,’ he denied.
‘Then why not answer my questions?’
She’d laid a trap and he’d stepped right into it. She could see him weighing that up, considering it and she just hoped and prayed the waiter wouldn’t come and interrupt, giving Theo an easy excuse to change the subject to something banal like the quality of the olive oil.
‘I was in foster care from when I was three until I was seven, when I ran away for the first time. After that, I was mostly on the streets, except for a few occasions when I was arrested and returned to care. It never lasted long. By then, my manners were not particularly conducive to being looked after,’ he said.
‘What does that mean?’
‘That I was very difficult. Aggressive, defensive, untrusting, angry. On the street, those qualities served me well, but in someone’s home, it didn’t tend to go over too well.’
‘Oh, Theo,’ she said, her heart breaking for the little boy he’d once been. ‘Why did you run away, when you were only seven years old?’
For the briefest moment, she could have sworn he looked afraid. Desperate to end the conversation. And she was tempted to take pity on him and let it go. But this was all so crucial to understanding him, to understanding the decisions he made, even now, that she held her ground.
‘Why do you think?’
‘I couldn’t say.’
‘It’s better to leave it.’
‘Why?’
‘There’s no advantage to reliving that time.’
‘Were you hurt, Theo?’
His eyes stayed locked to hers. ‘It was not the first time I was hit, but it was by far the worst.’
She gasped, tears filling her eyes.
‘See, Annie? Sometimes the truth is not really what you want.’
That was accurate. She didn’t want this truth for him, but the fact it had happened made her ache to comfort him.
She pushed up out of her chair, going around to him, uncaring that they were in a restaurant.
She needed to be close to him, and perhaps he felt that too, because she wouldn’t have been able to sit in his lap without Theo pushing back from the table a little.
Her heart was splintering apart for that boy. Seven years old. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered, catching his face in both hands, staring into his eyes. ‘You should never have known that pain.’
‘No,’ he agreed. ‘Nobody should.’
She dropped her head forward and pressed her lips to his forehead.
‘I can’t imagine what it was like,’ she said, after a beat. ‘Living on the streets…’
‘For a start, that’s a very sanitary euphemism for what it was like. Every day was a baptism by fire.’
She pulled away so she could look into his eyes. ‘In what way?’
It was abundantly clear that Theo didn’t want to have this conversation, but to his credit, he didn’t hold back.
‘The first month was the hardest. I was large for my age, but still just a boy. Skin and bone, and scared of the dark,’ he admitted, lips twisting in a self-deprecating grimace.
‘I begged, but one night, was mugged for what little I had, including my only pair of shoes,’ he said.
Annie’s heart cracked apart. ‘But a few weeks later, I met a man—little more than a teenager, actually—called Simon. He took me under his wing, along with a few other kids. He showed us where the good corners were to beg, how to steal from shops without getting caught.’ Theo’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.
‘I hated stealing. Even then, I knew it was wrong, but I was so hungry. And Simon—while he cared for us, he also had the potential to lose his temper—spectacularly—if we didn’t bring enough food or money back to him.
After a few years, he and I fell out. We fought. I had to leave.’
‘Leave?’
‘I went to the other side of town. It was darker. Poorer. Rougher, but by then, I was at least able to take care of myself. I heard that Simon died a few months after I left,’ he added, clearing his throat, so Annie knew, without him having to say it, that he somehow blamed himself.
‘He got in a fight with someone bigger. He always had more bark than was wise, for someone his size. But I used to be there, to help. To defend him,’ Theo admitted.
‘But you were so much younger.’
‘I was a quick learner. You have to be on the streets. I knew how to fight, to the death, if necessary.’
She gasped. ‘Was it ever necessary?’
‘Are you asking me if I have ever killed another person, Annie?’
She blinked, the thought one that had never occurred to her. She nodded slowly, but held her breath, and only let it out when he shook his head to indicate no.
‘But back then, I would have, if I’d needed to. Maybe if I’d been with Simon, that afternoon, I would have, to save his life. I don’t know. It was a different time, and I was a different person. Hunger, poverty, desperation—they change you.’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, lifting a hand and curving it around his cheek. ‘I don’t think you’re capable of it.’
‘Don’t you?’
She shook her head. ‘Of defending someone, absolutely. But you’re not violent, Theo.’
Their eyes held for a long time, and the longer they looked at one another, the more Annie felt a sense of conviction deep in her gut. She knew the real Theo. She always had done. She saw beneath whatever he projected and saw what was in his heart.
At least, she thought she had.
‘I have never spoken about Simon,’ he said, slowly, as if only coming to that realization himself.
Warmth spread through her. ‘I’m glad you told me.’
‘I have felt a sense of responsibility for a long time. I walked away from him, and I shouldn’t have. I should have stayed. I knew what his temper was like. But by then, I had my own feelings and thoughts…’
‘You couldn’t have been with him twenty-four-seven.’
‘No,’ Theo agreed, but quietly, as though he wasn’t convinced.
‘You cared for him,’ Annie prompted, remembering Theo’s assertion, the day they’d left the island, that she, Annie, was the only person who’d ever inspired that emotion in him. Maybe that hadn’t been entirely accurate.
‘We were part of a team,’ he said, with a small shake of his head. ‘It’s different. For all I felt it my obligation to defend him, to protect him, I expected nothing in return. I did not rely on Simon, I did not need him to need me. But I would have given my life to spare his, if I could have.’
Annie shuddered at the very thought of Theo having died as a teenager. ‘What happened next?’ she asked. ‘Did you find another…team?’
‘No, Annie. After that, I was resolutely alone. Until I met the Georgiadeses, and then, until I met you.’
Silence fell, heavy with the weight of their past, their difficulties, the hurt that each brought to this.
And yet there was also a strange sense of peace flooding Annie, because for the first time, they were really connecting honestly and openly, about something of substance.
He wasn’t trying to shield her from the brutal reality of his childhood, and in hearing this truth, she felt like she would crack other parts of him open, too.
Annie stayed there, on his lap, as close to him as they could be in a public space, even when the waiter brought their food. She wasn’t ready to relinquish this, and she was relieved—and delighted—that he evidently felt the same way.
But the longer she sat on his lap, the more her feelings morphed, from sympathy and concern to something far more grown up, her awareness of him, as a man, flooding her body.
She dropped one of her hands to his chest, and pressed it there, feeling his warmth and strength, the hard beating of his heart.
‘Why don’t you not work late tonight?’ she murmured, her eyes dropping to his lips. ‘In fact, why don’t you take the afternoon off?’
One side of his mouth lifted in a mocking half smile. ‘Would you like to go shopping? Or perhaps to see a movie?’
She pulled a face. ‘Neither of those things holds much appeal.’
‘Then what were you thinking, Mrs Leonidas?’
Her heart turned over in her chest to hear him call her that. ‘I was thinking we could go home,’ she said, letting her hand drift a little lower.
‘Are there some more books you wish to read?’
She laughed. ‘You’re enjoying this.’
‘Having my wife demand I take time off work to make love to her? Yes. I think I actually am.’
‘Is that a “yes”?’
He looked at her long and hard, and she held her breath, wondering if he might be going to turn her down, despite the way the air was sparking with a mutual and consuming awareness.
‘I have to work,’ he said, gently easing her from his lap. At least she could hide the disappointment that was all over her face. ‘But I will see you tonight, Annie.’
He had been so terrifyingly tempted to turn his ordered life on its head and go home with his wife.
Not after lunch, either, but then and there.
To toss a few hundred euros down on the table, throw her over one shoulder and storm his way to the waiting car.
Hell, he wasn’t even sure if they’d have made it home.
Once in the confines of the back seat, he’d have probably wanted to sink right into her.
If he was honest with himself, he’d thought of little else since that morning on the beach, which was why he’d spent almost every waking minute hiding out in his office, avoiding her. Because if he couldn’t see her, he couldn’t reach for her, and beg her to come to bed with him.
It was just the same as always. Annie had a power over Theo that he refused to allow to take hold.
Not again. Not even when she’d revealed such heartbreaking details about her life, explaining something he’d never quite understood: why her parents had such a hold over her.
Why she’d simply agreed to break up with him, and let that be the end of it.
Then, talking about his past had only served to stir up the feelings that were the root cause of his approach to life.
Every day had been loaded with danger and risk, uncertainty and insecurity.
He hadn’t known if he would find food, be in a fight, end up in jail—it had been a constant gamble.
He’d needed to use all his wits to stay alive, and as much as he’d worked as part of a team led by Simon, he’d still retained his independence and autonomy, refusing to grow close to the other children, refusing to be comforted by their presence.
It really was only Annie who’d ever made him weak there, who’d drawn him in, made him think—for a brief year—that maybe life could be different after all.
And yes, he wanted her physically—and he would have her again, he accepted—but it wouldn’t be because she asked and he came running.
It would be on his terms. It had to be—it was the only way he’d make it out of this marriage unscathed.
He had to call the shots, to know that he was part of their strange, transactional ‘team’, but that he was just as autonomous and independent as he ever had been.
And most importantly, he could never forget who she was, who her father was, and how they viewed him. Nothing there would ever change.