Chapter 19
What the fuck was this place?
I rubbed my face hard, maybe I would still wake up… The strong sun warming and blinding me and the bad feeling in my head were far too real to be a dream.
I tried to force my groggy brain to work.
I studied my surroundings. From the bed where I was, I could see a living room and behind it a counter separating the kitchen. To my right, a door. Bathroom, I thought. The place, which I discovered was a cabin, was small and furnished with a certain refinement. Well kept and clean.
The sound of waves in the distance drew my attention. Waves?
I jumped out of bed, wavering a little before stabilizing myself, and walked to the porch. I looked around, shaken. My brain liquefied at the view.
Woods. A lot of woods. Green as far as anyone could want. Palm trees rose in their glory and more vegetation, rocks… I was up high, so I could see the narrow strip of sand and the sea…
Ooh, Dio Santo! This isn’t real.
Dazed, I explored the trail down to the beach.
It didn’t take much to discover I was on a small island.
While I was there, I fell to my knees in the sand, openmouthed when I realized for the first time that I was still wearing last night’s clothes, incapable of thinking or speaking.
What the hell?
I must have spent a long time there because the weather changed suddenly, cooling when the sun sought refuge behind thick dark clouds and didn’t appear again. Heavy wind. A large, heavy storm approached on the horizon.
There was no civilization as far as my eyes could see.
My best bet, despite my strong apprehension, was the cabin.
My confusion faded when I came back and looked at Heithor’s apprehensive face. Then, finally, I understood how I’d gotten here.
Disbelief rolled through me.
“You… tricked me… drugged me,” I stammered, incredulous.
Behind the counter, he flattened his hands on the surface, his darkened gaze so firm on me it almost pinned me to the floor.
“I’m sorry for that, but it was necessary.”
“Necessary?” I growled, hands in fists.
“You wouldn’t have accepted willingly if I’d asked, right?”
“If you know the answer, why did you do it?”
“We’re going to settle this.”
My mouth opened without words.
“You’re n-not serious.”
“I have never been more serious in my life, Ella.”
“Oh, Dio mio! You did this, didn’t you? You kidnapped me? I have a job, you know? A life! A son!”
“They’ll be in the same place when we return.”
I narrowed my eyes, pissed off.
“I don’t like this game one bit, Heithor.”
“I’m not playing.” His voice, his expression, were pure steel.
“Fuck that!” I planted a hand on my hip, the other pointing at him with ferocity. “I demand that you take me back this very minute. I don’t want to be here with you.”
Heithor only watched me, and it took a lifetime not to fly at him.
“Are you going to force me?”
“Never.”
I ran a hand through my hair, really wanting to rip it out in frustration.
“We can’t stay here, Heithor! Lucca, he… Ooh, Dio mio…”
“Lucca is being very well cared for by his grandparents while his parents resolve their differences.”
“There’s nothing left to resolve between us, cazzo! NOTHING! When will you understand that?”
“When you’re truthful with me, but mainly when you’re truthful with yourself about what you feel. We’ve been putting off an honest conversation between us for too long. We can’t anymore.”
He was proving himself stubborn, impossible, and completely arrogant.
“I’m getting out of here!” I shouted. “I’ll find a way!”
“You’re free to try.”
Son of a bitch. He knew there was no way for me to leave. I knew it too.
I started pacing, my anger rising, breathing hard, ready to devour anyone who stood in my way.
I wanted to scream. Stomp my foot. Curse God and the world.
“I know we’ve talked many times and that you think we’ve already said everything to each other, but it isn’t true. So please, can we be honest with ourselves?”
I stopped, turned, and took a step toward him, eyes on fire before his calm.
“I don’t want you anymore. Is that honest enough for you?”
Heithor passed me, pissed, and left, and I stayed there, irritated and afraid.
I rummaged through the entire cabin looking for any means of communication. He couldn’t have done this to me. There had to be a way out of there. I knew there was. I just wasn’t able to find it.
Irritated and hungry, I checked the cabinets and made something to eat.
The weather kept getting worse until it grew dark and heavy rain began to fall.
And that stronzo still hadn’t come back!
Heithor returned, dripping from head to toe. He didn’t look at me, going straight to the bathroom. I refused the relief. I wasn’t worried about him… No…
This was what I wanted, wasn’t it?
More fight. More insistence.
That was before he kidnapped me.
And now what?
Dio, I had no answer.
No?
“My parents are going to find my disappearance strange,” I muttered later, when he sat at the table eating the pasta I’d made and hadn’t touched.
The tension coiling around my stomach wouldn’t let me eat.
“No, they won’t.”
“You can’t know…”
“Who do you think helped me?”
“What?”
Heithor lowered his fork.
“Your mother showed me the place, and your father agreed, even though he wasn’t very happy with Selena’s idea. The island is theirs.”
“Mamma wouldn’t plot against me.” She absolutely would.
I remembered the cabinets stocked with food and a suitcase with my clothes and toiletries. Grazie, mamma!
I drew one breath and another, angrier than ever.
I was so indignant that words failed me.
“Selena didn’t plot against you, Ella,” he said cautiously, his tone low and coaxing while I glared. “She wanted to do you a favor… do us a favor, because apparently, you’re too blind in your pride to see what’s in front of you.”
“I see very well.”
“Do you really, Ella? Can you see my love for you? My remorse? That my actions weren’t deliberate?
That I did what I did believing I was doing the right thing, protecting an innocent?
That I thought of our son? … I have always wanted you, Antonella Vicenti.
Only you.” He paused, huffing a laugh. “I would have stepped over my pride. Fuck, if I haven’t already done that countless times just to be with you.
But I couldn’t do that when my love for you put our son’s safety at risk. ”
“It’s so easy, isn’t it?”
His features contracted and darkened.
“Do you know what would be easy, Ella? Not loving you. Feeling absolutely nothing. Just asking your forgiveness and moving on with my life. I wish I were that cold, unscrupulous man you think I am… This, all of this I’ve been doing to try to redeem myself for my mistakes and reconcile with you, no matter how much it makes me look like a fool, I do because I love you. ”
“Good people don’t keep a mother away from her son.”
“Good people don’t try to abort their child.”
I choked, horrified.
“How… how dare you?” I jumped to my feet. “I can’t believe you said that!”
He pushed his plate aside, his gaze hard with anger.
“So you can hurt me as much as you want and I can’t say anything, even if they’re only facts and not accusations? For a long time, I let you play the poor wronged woman. Yes, I made mistakes with you, but, Antonella, let’s be honest here. You’re far from being that innocent flower.”
“I had my reasons for acting the way I acted,” I snarled, eyes damp.
“I had mine too, love.”
I wanted to hit him so hard. Instead, I hid in the bathroom.
There, I showered and changed, but I didn’t come out right away.
Thor didn’t bother me, as if he knew I needed that time.
I didn’t want to admit that my mortification came from the meaning behind his words… It was there, circling my mind, while I dodged it because…
I faced the mirror after a lot of hesitation, crying.
… Because that didn’t make him the monster I’d painted.
Still, it hurt.
I placed my hand over my heart in a symbolic gesture, rubbing, to contain something I wasn’t capable of holding back. I cried quietly, hurting for us, for him.
How could I go back to someone who had hurt me that way?
“It takes great courage, great strength, to move past pride and start over with someone who stabbed you in the back when you only loved him…”
I breathed deeply, unable to acknowledge the truth in those words.
“… Do you know what’s easy? Staying defensive, chewing over the past, hiding from the world and from yourself. Surviving…”
It wasn’t easy. It was painful. Terrible.
It was like being trapped in a hole inside yourself, a kind of emotional limbo where, day after day, memories were chewed over incessantly.
I looked away from my reflection.
Too cowardly to acknowledge…
Then I blew my nose and splashed water on my face.
The wind didn’t stop for a single second, nor did the sound of the trees or the rain.
It could have been late at night or still very early. Whatever.
Time seemed frozen at the end of the world.
I didn’t speak to Heithor, refusing to look at him standing before the door that led to the porch when I finally left the bathroom and went to the sofa, sitting and pulling my legs up. I wasn’t going to lie down in that bed, even if I was dead tired. Which wasn’t the case. I was sleepless.
I watched Heithor, after a while, sit at the other end of the sofa. He leaned forward, covered his face with his hands, and slid them into his hair.
“This isn’t a competition,” he murmured to himself, then fixed his gaze on me. “Is it so hard to understand the reasons that made me act the way I did?”
“As hard as it was for you to understand when I didn’t want the pregnancy.”
“Lucca is the best thing in your life.”
“He is,” I whispered.
“You were only afraid.”
“Do you think it will be like that with us?”
“You have to give us a chance, love. I know I can make you happy if you let me. It will only be a failed attempt if you don’t love me anymore.”
I stood, unable to tolerate staying still.
I refused to answer.