Julia
I chew my lip as I stand outside Antonio’s office, trying to pluck up the courage to push open the door and go inside.
I know that I deserve an explanation for the way he’s been pulling back from me, but it feels like I’m intruding.
And I can’t help but wonder just how much he really meant it when he told me that he would choose me above everything else.
My hand hovers in front of the door, and I hate that I’m back here again, scared of confronting him, worried about what he will say.
I thought we had finally put it all behind us the other night, the night it all happened, the night he touched my ring and told me that he would always choose me.
But instead, he has vanished into himself, and I know I need to coax him out before he disapears entirely.
I push a hand through my hair, letting out a long breath. Living in this apartment with him, it feels ridiculous that he’s been able to avoid me with this much ease.
I’ve seen a few people come ago, mostly men I recognize from the mansion—the few who survived the attack his son leveled against it, that is.
There’s so much rebuilding to be done, it makes my head spin a little when I think about it too hard—when I think of what he had and what he’s lost, the rubble that this world has been brought down to.
Does it make him angry? Is that why he has retreated into himself like this?
Or is it…me?
It’s one thing to live in the midst of all the chaos, but quite another to live in the quiet of what comes after it.
In the normal life that follows. I don’t even know if he’s used to this, just sharing an apartment with someone he’s in a relationship with.
I know next to nothing about the previous women he’s been involved with, let alone Andreo’s mother, and I can’t help but torture myself with comparisons, wondering what it is that he had with them, if it soured him to whatever is meant to be here between us now.
I force myself to gather all my strength.
I have to think of the baby. This child deserves better than parents who are constantly ducking and diving each other.
That’s how the resentment builds, I’ve seen it happen with my own two eyes, and I will be damned if I allow the same thing to go down here between us now.
I rap my knuckles against the wood before me and hold my breath, trying to gather myself, ears straining to hear the movement on the other side of the door.
Finally, it opens. I jump slightly as I look up at Antonio, as ridiculous as I know that is—he doesn’t scare me.
His eyes are hollow, and it looks as though it’s been days since he slept. Without thinking, I raise a hand to his face, brow furrowing, trying to make sense of what I’m seeing before me.
“Antonio, are you alright?”
He twists his face away from my grasp, something in him snapping shut before I can get a real answer. “I’m fine.”
I frown, pacing close behind him, trying to close the distance between us as he sits behind his desk. I notice the scent of whiskey in the air, and it takes me back to my parents, sending a cold shiver down my spine.
I cross my arms over my chest, willing myself back into the moment, instead of being caught up in the memories that have haunted me for so long. “You don’t seem fine.”
“Well, I am.”
I sigh heavily. I can’t stand it when he closes off.
It was the same when we were first married, when he first moved me into his place, the way he took control with no room for argument from me like I was hardly a blip on his radar.
And now, it drives me even crazier, because I’m going to be raising a child with this man, and he hardly seems able to look me in the eye.
“Antonio, what’s going on?”
“What are you talking about?”
I gesture around. “You’ve hardly been out of this room in the last week,” I tell him sharply. “And you’ve been drinking—”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Don’t lie to me,” I insist. “I can smell it on you. Something’s bothering you. And I just can’t work out why you’re so determined for me not to know about it.”
He snorts mirthlessly, and closes his hand around a drink on the desk before him. I lean on the back of the chair, hands on the green leather, trying to scan his face for some sign of what’s going on in his head, but nothing comes.
“Antonio, I know you lost your son,” I murmur to him, changing my approach, trying to reach him in some softer, kinder way. “But you can’t just hide from it in here for the rest of your life. You need to—”
“You think this is about Andreo?” he demands, and I raise my eyebrows.
“Well, you haven’t exactly given me much reason to think it’s about anything else.”
He looks away from me, gaze darkening. “You don’t need to hear about it.”
“Yes, I do!” I exclaim, my voice cracking slightly as I try to reach him.
“Antonio, I can’t—I can’t do this alone.
Do you understand that? Raising this child, hell, just going through this pregnancy—I need you.
And you promised me, you promised that you would be there for me… you promised that you would choose me.”
My voice cracks again as I hold up my ring, almost feeling stupid for allowing this to get so far. Maybe I shouldn’t have believed him when he said it, but God, it was downright alchemic, hearing someone talk to me like that, tell me that they truly, actually wanted me.
“I do choose you,” he replies, and he sounds almost shocked that I would think anything to the contrary. “Jesus, Julia, how can you doubt that? After everything I’ve done for you? For us?”
“Because you vanished!” I exclaim. “And I figured you had changed your mind, or thought better of it, or…”
He rises to his feet, moving to my side, taking my face in his hands and gazing into my eyes with a fierce intensity that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
“I would never change my mind,” he growls, and he sounds almost angry that I would entertain such a thing. “Never. I meant what I said, Julia.”
“Then where have you been?” I whisper. I lay my hand on his chest, imploring him, reaching for him as best I can. This feels like the first time he has been truly honest with me in a long time, and I’m not going to let it slip through my fingers now that we have come so close.
He tears his gaze away from me, as though fearful that I’m going to see something I shouldn’t.
“Antonio, please. Talk to me.”
His voice drops low when he speaks again, and I can tell he’s dredging something up from a deep, dark part of himself, a part of himself he might not want to acknowledge exists.
“It’s Andreo.”
“You’re wondering if you did the right thing?”
He shakes his head quickly. “No, no, it’s not that,” he assures me, slipping a hand to mine, lacing his fingers around it.
“Never that. I just…I can’t stop thinking about…
” His jaw tightens as he forces himself to keep speaking.
“About why he turned out the way he did. And if this child that we’re going to have will turn out the same way. ”
My eyes widen in shock. It’s about the last thing I would have expected to hear from him, and it takes me a moment to wrap my head around it, the enormity of what he’s saying.
“That’s what this is about?”
He nods, eyes reaching mine, searching mine.
“I can’t stop thinking about it,” he admits, voice thick.
“All the things I taught him, all the ways he used that to hurt you. How he betrayed me the first chance he got. How he was willing to sacrifice you and the baby just to get what he wanted. I don’t know how I created a child like that, and I’m worried that because I don’t know… it’s going to happen again.”
My mind reels as I try to wrap it around what he’s saying to me.
He really blames himself for all of this?
It seems crazy to me, given the differences I’ve seen between him and Andreo, the people that they are.
The way that Antonio has protected me and looked out out for me and shown his loyalty to me, even when it was hard, even when it seemed like the world was against us.
I cup his cheek again, drawing his gaze to mine, making certain that he hears me when I speak again. “Antonio,” I whisper. “I…I knew Andreo well. I knew the kind of person he was. And I can tell you, without a shadow of a doubt, that there is no way he could have learned that from you.”
Antonio snorts slightly, but I shake my head, furrowing my brow.
“No, listen to me,” I insist. “I know what I’m talking about.
I’ve come to know both of you pretty well, I’d say, and you’re so different.
You couldn’t be further from each other if you tried.
You—you’re caring, and protective, and you want to give this child and me a future.
So much so that you worried yourself half to death about it.
Andreo? He wouldn’t have thought twice about what kind of father he was going to be.
That kind of thing would never have crossed his mind.
He only wanted to take this baby from me because he knew that I wanted it so badly, and because he knew that it was yours.
Not because he has a fatherly bone in his fucking body. ”
I take a deep, shaky breath, and continue.
“Listen. I’ve thought a lot about having a child of my own.
If I would be able to protect them from the shit that my parents did—if I would end up like them somehow.
And there’s no way in hell I would ever put them in a situation where I thought for a second that they might have to suffer like I did, you understand? ”
His eyes are softening now, and I can almost see the glaciers melting, whatever has been keeping him at a distance from me giving way now.
“I know that Andreo didn’t turn out the way he did because of you,” I insist. “He might have taken what you taught him and twisted it to fit what he wanted out of the world, but that doesn’t make it your fault. And besides…”
I smile at him slightly. “It’s not just going to be you raising this child this time,” I point out. “It’s going to be both of us. It’s not going to be the same as last time. I don’t know what became of Andreo’s mother—”
“She was never in his life,” he admits, shaking his head. “One-night thing. She dumped him on my doorstep, more or less, and that was the end of it. Didn’t want to be part of my world.”
“But I do,” I whisper to him firmly. “I want to be part of your world. And that’s not going to change, you hear me? It’s never going to change.”
His shoulders drop suddenly, as if a weight he has been carrying all this time has finally fallen away. I clasp his arms, as though I’m holding him up, as ridiculous as it seems.
“It’s not just you choosing me, it’s me choosing you, Antonio,” I insist. “And nothing is going to change that. Nothing.”
He wraps his arms around me in a sudden motion, pulling me in tight, pressing his face against my neck as though he’s confirming everything that I’m telling him. Promising himself that I’m really here, that I’m not going to leave him, that he can believe everything I’ve said to him.
It makes my heart ache to think of him torturing himself all this time, letting himself believe that he was the problem and that he would have to bear that burden alone, but now that I have him here in my arms, I can see that it doesn’t have to be that way.
A circuit has closed, two ends of a whole coming together to let the energy flow properly.
“But you have to promise me one thing,” I insist, and he pulls back, brushing his nose against mine, eyes filled with sincerity.
“Anything,” he tells me gruffly.
“When these things are bothering you…I need you to talk to me,” I tell him firmly. “You don’t just go hide out in here and drink. I can’t stand that. My parents were always drinking, and I don’t want to deal with the same thing again—”
“I’ll get rid of all of it,” he replies at once, and I can tell from the fervent tone in his voice that he means it. That it seems, to him, a small price to pay if it means making right everything I need him to.
He catches my hand in his and lifts it to his lips, planting a kiss against the ring as though he’s swearing all over again that he will be there for me, love me, honor me, in every way that a husband should.
He pauses for a moment, staring at it, as though taken by the power of its symbolism. “I’m so glad I married you,” he tells me, and I gaze at him, grinning.
“Oh, yeah?” I ask. “And why’s that?”
He grins, slipping his hands down to my waist and pulling me against him. “Because it means I’m allowed to do this whenever I want…”
And with that, he presses a kiss against my lips and turns me around to hitch me onto the desk behind us.
My heart flutters at the feel of his mouth on mine, speaking more than just sweet nothings, telling me everything I want to hear.
Everything that I know he will be able to back up, the same way he has delivered on every promise he has ever made to me.
I trail my hands down his back, and beneath his shirt, I can feel his muscles, his strength—all tamed, as long as he’s here with me.