Chapter Twenty-One
Beatrix
I’m sitting on the window seat in the little sitting room, my stomach knotted, my throat aching. I thought I might at least start to feel better, as it’s been a couple of days since Santiago walked out, but I don’t. If anything I feel worse.
I’m trying to read a book right now, but my thoughts keep drifting, and I can’t take in any of the words I’m reading. All I can think about is Santiago, wondering where he is and what he’s doing, and what will happen when our baby is born.
I can’t leave him, though, no matter how unpleasant he makes himself. I want him to know that love doesn’t require him to do anything or to be anyone other than who he is. It doesn’t make demands or ultimatums.
I do want him to love me, I can’t deny that, and it hurts that he doesn’t.
But I’m not going to do to him what that family of so long ago did to me.
I’m not going to get rid of him because he doesn’t fit into my life, or because he’s too rigid or demanding, or finds it difficult to express himself.
I’m not going to get rid of him for any reason.
I can’t. He’s too important, both to me and to our child, and besides, love isn’t that petty.
I’m trying to read the same page of my book for the fourth time when suddenly the door to the sitting room bursts open, and Santiago comes in.
Every muscle in my body tightens in shock as I look up.
His hair is all over the place, as if he’s run his fingers through it one too many times, and his black eyes are burning like hot coals. He’s carrying the rolled-up piece of paper that he drew his plan on, but it looks as if it’s been ripped apart then put back together with sticky tape.
I stare at him coolly, determined not to make a fuss. ‘So, you’re back. Will you be here for dinner tonight?’
‘Fuck dinner,’ he says roughly, going over to the coffee table and heedlessly pushing everything off it.
Then he carefully lays down the piece of paper on the tabletop, before coming over to where I’m sitting.
He pulls the book out of my grasp without a word, then takes my hand and draws me off the window seat, and over to the coffee table.
‘Santiago,’ I say breathlessly, ‘what are you doing?’
‘This,’ he says and points at the plans. ‘I want this.’
They’ve very definitely been torn apart, and then painstakingly pieced back together again. I stare at it for a moment and then look at him.
His eyes are burning brighter, the look on his face fierce in a way I don’t recognise.
‘You tore it up?’ I ask, a little lump rising in my throat.
‘Yes. I was angry.’ He reaches for my hand and holds it in his, sliding his fingers through mine and gripping me tightly. ‘I was angry with you for telling me what you did. For breaking what we had.’
My throat is constricted, and I want to draw my hand away, but his grip on me only tightens even further. ‘I know you were,’ I say. ‘But I’m not sorry and I don’t take it back.’
‘I don’t want you to be sorry,’ he says, focusing on me with the kind of sharp intensity that takes my breath away.
‘I don’t want you to take it back. In fact, what I want is to keep hearing it from you every day of my life for the rest of my life.
I want you to love me, Beatrix. I want all of your love, and I want it forever.
And…’ he pauses a moment, looking into my eyes ‘…I want to love you back.’
Everything in me freezes, the breath catching in my throat. ‘But you said you didn’t want—’
‘I know I did.’ Slowly, he pulls me in closer and closer.
‘But I was wrong. The truth wasn’t that I didn’t love you.
The truth was that I did. I do. I just didn’t want to acknowledge it.
All my life my love has never been enough for my father or my mother.
They were always too wrapped up in their own emotions to consider mine, and I thought love was the issue.
My love. But…’ he pulls me even closer, his other hand sliding to the small of my back and pressing there, so I’m up against his hard, hot body.
‘…I think in the end love wasn’t the problem. Love was the solution.’
I’m trembling all over now, barely able to take in what he’s saying, because he can’t be saying he loves me, can he? Or maybe only that he wants to?
‘I don’t understand,’ I say shakily. ‘What do you—’
‘I love you, Beatrix,’ he interrupts, even more fierce now.
‘You showed me what love could be, and I didn’t understand until just now.
All I ever saw were the downsides, only the lies and the pain.
I never saw anything good in it. But there’s good in it.
There’s your smile and your bravery, and your stubbornness.
There’s your passion and your wit, and your care.
You showed me what it could be and I want…
I want to try and give you the same in return. ’
My throat has closed up completely, my heart inflating behind my ribs like a balloon, filling up with all the love in my being.
All the love I have for him. ‘You don’t have to try, you idiot,’ I manage to force out, my voice husky.
‘What you’re doing already is enough, as I keep telling you.
’ I pull my hand from his, and raise both of mine to his beautiful face, cupping it between my palms. ‘I love you, Santiago, and not in spite of your flaws. I love all of you, even the parts of yourself you don’t like.
Because they make up who you are, and without them you wouldn’t be you. ’
His eyes glow, like dark stars at midnight, and I go up on my toes and press a kiss to his hard, beautiful mouth.
‘I love that plan, too,’ I whisper. ‘Even in pieces.’
He smiles and it’s like the sun coming out. ‘I can draw it again.’
But I shake my head. ‘No, I like that you put it back together. It feels as if that’s what you did with my heart. You broke it, then put it back together again.’
His arms come around me, pulling me in close. ‘I will never break it again, pretty Bea. Never again.’
And he never did.
Even now, he keeps it as a treasure, as I do with his.
We’re binary stars, he often tells me, orbiting each other forever. Except I disagree about one thing. Binary stars never touch, and we do. A lot.
But the forever part is true.