Chapter 19 #2
“Rosa was pregnant around our wedding, so she’s four?”
“She’ll be four in November.”
She’s learned to control her expressions when it matters. Her features are unreadable. Grabbing a beer, she twists off the cap and passes it to me. “How’s it been? Are you close?”
“I try to see her once a week. Sometimes it’s not always possible, but it’s more than I used to manage.” I contemplate how much I want to tell her and how much I can say without reminding her of what she told me on the beach—the baby. I struggle to think about it for too long. “She’s wonderful.”
Whereas Sophie couldn’t stand the words yesterday, her smile today is genuine. “Tell me more.”
“In the public eye, I can’t claim her. The family doesn’t know she’s mine. Not even my consigliere.”
Her smile fades. “Bo? Dante?”
“They do. Zeke also… Courtney, too.”
Her gaze sweeps over me, her defenses dropping at the mention of her former housemaid—a mother to her above that. Sophie bites down on her lip, but I notice the tremble anyway. “Courtney? You’ve… you’ve seen her?”
“Often.”
She’s visibly relieved. “How is she?”
“Until this morning when Bo told her you blew through the estate in a whirlwind, she’s been beside herself.”
Sophie grips the railings of the chair. “I need to see her.”
“She’s expecting us in a few days… unless you want me to call her, have her come here.”
As much as I know she needs her, I’m selfish enough to want this brief time for ourselves.
I’m not sure if Sophie sees that or craves the seclusion as much as I do, but she settles, reaching blindly for something.
I curse myself for sitting so far away when she grabs her beer, downing nearly half the bottle.
The patio umbrella billows in the wind as a gust blows through the beach. The tall grass sways along the dunes, the fragrance of the gardens fraternizing with hot sand and foamy sea spray.
The questions cease while we eat, occasionally studying each other from across the table. She blushes when I catch the ketchup on her chin before she wipes it away, muttering under her breath in embarrassment. It reminds me of a simpler time.
We were so convinced we were in hell. We had no idea that those moments would be our easiest. The effort we must put into our marriage now is tenfold compared to that childish bickering we did so well.
In many ways, we are more strangers now than we were before.
“What did this Isaac teach you in Reykjavík?” There’s no controlling the churlish dip in my tone mentioning his name. I don’t know the guy, but I already fucking hate him.
“It would be easier to show you.”
I smile broadly. “Not even a day back and you’re thinking about wailing on me?”
Her eyes. I catch them sparkle with mischief. “Remember that when you tease me.”
“I want specifics.”
“I can throw a punch. I'm especially good with knives. I’ve spent the most time with them.”
“He trained you?”
“Day in and day out.” She chuckles, admiring the brightness around us. “It feels strange to be doing anything but that. I’ve gotten used to it.”
“Getting beaten into the ground? ”
“Don’t let these bruises fool you, baby,” she says, not noticing how my chest tightens at the endearment. “I won that match.”
There she is. “I’ll sleep with one eye open then.”
“Good.”
“And this man? He just took you in as a good Samaritan?”
Sophie’s eyes slant. “You know I like you jealous.”
“He’s had you for a year.”
“He never had me.”
I think she emphasizes the never for my sanity. “Well, he’s a fool not to want you. I'm okay if he’s a fool?—”
“I never said he didn’t want me.”
She laughs, amused by how quickly that irks me. Still, irritation feels impossible when she’s looking at me with clear eyes.
As I continue to gaze, that playfulness in her shifts into something much more serious.
“How can I look at anyone else… when I’ve had the best?”
Fuck .
After a sleepless night and a day of battling emotions, those words are powerful enough to save me. To overpower the incessant voice in my head convinced she could do better.
“That’s my line, cuore mio.”
Hours have slipped by.
Blissful hours spent on the sand, her face nestled against my chest. We chose not to bring books, music, or any distractions. It’s been over an hour since she last said anything, but the movement of her hands shows she hasn’t been lulled to sleep by the heat.
Neither of us mentions the phone lying on the sand that hasn’t stopped vibrating.
Eventually, I’ll have to take the call, leave this seclusion, and answer for my absence.
I’ll have to show her the parts of me she couldn’t possibly love and hope she’ll stay—but for now, I need this.
The corners of the quilt underneath us waft, held down by our shoes.
“You’ll burn,” I say, grazing my knuckles over her skin, as soft and as pale as the sand we’re lying on. She answers me by squeezing tighter, unaware of my tired smirk.
“You’re bigger,” she observes eventually, nuzzling into my shirt. “Wider here, I mean.”
“I work out often. It’s the only time of the day I'm alone.”
She falls silent again, and I instantly wish I hadn’t said it. I should have held back my honesty regarding life outside this beach. I can’t lose her. I can’t ?—
“You’ve given up so much.” She lifts her head, resting her chin on me. That lost look has returned to her eyes.
“I wasted the freedom you gave me,” she whispers.
I shake my head.
Anything was better than where she was.
Maybe it hasn’t hit her that I’ve seen how thin she got, how rare it was for her to leave the apartment in Madrid. I’ve witnessed firsthand how my father destroyed her. Hoping that she would live a decent life after that was merely wishful thinking. “You’re in pain.”
You’re in pain.
Not was.
It’s still very much thriving in her.
“I didn’t want normalcy without you. Not knowing what you went through to give me it.
” She closes her eyes, tormented by whatever she sees.
“I know you. You’ll never tell me what he did, but this?
” She reveals my torso. The sun highlights what was hidden in the subdued light of the bedroom.
The small linear scars—and the ugly twisted ones—gleam brighter than the rest of my skin.
She pays no attention to the unsavory texture, tracing them in silence .
I don’t know what to say to make it better. Because I did go through hell. It was sheer hatred that kept me alive, not love. Not the need for justice.
I’ve often told myself it would’ve been better to tell Dante to leave me, to let me bleed out in that warehouse that haunts my dreams.
“When we married, some of these were already here.” She taps the ones she memorized, not mistaking a single one. “I told myself I’d make you forget them. Stupidly, I convinced myself I could. But here you are, mangled, and it was because of me .”
“I chose to run. I talked you into it.”
“You wouldn’t have even considered the idea if I hadn’t made you feel like there was no hope for us. I told you our marriage would be over, that I didn’t want kids with someone who could do that. What did that naivety get me? Was saving her really worth the price?”
I can’t hear her talk like this.
I seize her chin, watching her eyes shrink at whatever she sees in mine. Disbelief. Some anger. Overwhelming amounts of regret. “You don’t mean that.”
“Maybe I do.”
“You’re angry. She betrayed you. You probably feel like the world did too, because I do. You may have changed over these four years, but this hasn’t. It’s not weakness or naivety to love. You love harder than anyone I know, and it’s not a crime.”
“She knew what they did to me. She knew that, and she was still going to offer me up to them…” She blinks back tears, flashing a disbelieving smile. “It blows my mind how long she kept up the act, how long she pretended to care.”
She could deny it a thousand times, but I hear it… The love for her sister with nowhere to go. I hear it clearly because I remind myself too, every day when I wake up, relieved that I haven’t dreamed of my father’s face .
“People make terrible decisions when love is on the line. I hate her for what she’s done to you, but I cannot fault that. It would make me a hypocrite.”
The corpses of the men who defiled her—the agony I put them through—was a decision. One I’d gladly make again. “Your heart is boundless, Sophie. I knew it the moment I laid eyes on you,” I smirk softly, “even if you were shooting daggers in my direction most of the time.”
When her usual snarky remark doesn’t immediately follow, I gather her up, rolling until she’s pinned beneath me. Her lips stretch languidly like mine. Her fingers trace a line down my back, absorbing the directness of my gaze.
Her answer comes, even if it’s delayed.
“You’re the only one I trust with it.”