Chapter 19 Choosing You, Keeping Me #3
I feel different. Settled in a way I haven't felt in months. Not because anything has been solved or fixed, but because I'm here by choice, and he knows it, and neither of us is pretending otherwise.
"There's something I need to tell you." I keep my voice soft, matching the quiet of the clearing. "Something I want you to know."
He goes still behind me, his arm tightening slightly. "What is it?"
"Before I found out about the baby." I turn in his arms so I can see his face. "I was thinking about leaving Sicily. Not just your house. Everything."
I watch him absorb this. His expression shifts, something flickering behind his eyes that might be hurt or might be fear.
"I have contacts in Grasse." I make myself continue, even though part of me wants to stop. "People I exchanged formulas with years ago. I hadn't booked anything. I didn't even know whether there would be work for me. But I was looking for a way to go."
"To France." His arm slips from my waist, his hand resting on the blanket between us. "You were going to leave the country."
"I was considering it." I hold his gaze. "I didn't know if our marriage could be saved. I wanted somewhere I could work without spending every evening waiting for you."
He's quiet for a long moment. A bird calls somewhere in the trees above us, and the sound seems very far away.
"What were you hoping to find there?" His hand finds mine under the blanket, holding on. "In Grasse. What did you think you'd get that you couldn't have here?"
"Professional respect." The words come easier than I expected. "Work that was just mine, that I'd earned on my own merits. Space to figure out who I was when I wasn't someone's wife or someone's daughter." I squeeze his fingers. "Distance from how much everything hurt."
He nods slowly, and I can see him working through it. Not angry, not accusing. Just trying to understand.
"The baby changed things." I need him to hear this part clearly.
"Finding out I was pregnant made me pause.
I needed time to figure out what it meant, to decide what I wanted.
And then you started showing up. At the market.
At the clinic. Everywhere I turned, there you were, trying so hard to be different. "
"So the baby kept you here long enough for me to find my way back." He looks down at our joined hands. "I might have kept asking for another conversation while you made plans I knew nothing about."
"Maybe." I won't soften it. He deserves the truth. "But I'm not here because of the baby, Rafael. I'm here because of you. Because you showed me something had changed, and I wanted to see what we could build together."
He pulls me closer, his face pressed against my hair. His breath catches against my shoulder. I feel him try to steady it before he speaks.
"I would have followed you." The words come out muffled against my shoulder. "If you'd gone. I would have found a way to come after you."
"Rafael." I draw back enough to see him, and he loosens his hold.
"Not to force you back." He lifts his head so I can see his eyes. "I wouldn't do that. But I would have asked for a chance to talk. Crossed whatever water I needed to cross just to see your face and ask if there was any way to try again."
"You would have left the estate?" I search his face for any sign that he's exaggerating. "Left everything here?"
"I've learned that I can leave the work to others." He brushes the hair back from my face. "I kept acting as though I had to oversee every detail myself. But people here can handle more than I let them. The groves would keep growing whether I watched them every day or not."
"That's a big thing to realize." I let my hand rest on his chest. "You used to act like the whole place would collapse without you."
"I know." He covers my hand with his. "I was wrong about a lot of things."
We're quiet for a moment, the weight of what we've said settling between us. The light continues to shift, the shadows lengthening across the blanket.
"Nothing about choosing you means closing the door on my work.
" I need to say this, need him to understand.
"I still want to build something. I still want to learn and grow and see what I'm capable of.
And someday, maybe, I'll want to study in Grasse, to spend time with people who know things I don't know yet. "
"I know." He presses a kiss to my forehead. "I won't ask you to give that up. If you want to go learn something new, we'll figure it out together. That's what I want. Not to keep you here, but to be part of whatever you're building."
"Good." I let myself relax against him. "Because I'm not willing to choose between having a marriage and having a life."
"You shouldn't have to." His arms tighten around me. "I'm sorry I ever made you feel like you did."
We stay wrapped around each other while the sunlight moves off the old wall. The clearing cools in the shade, though the branches above us still catch the gold. I feel drowsy and content, my body warm against his.
"We should probably head back soon." I don't make any move to sit up. "Before it gets dark."
"In a minute." He moves the blanket higher over my shoulder, making no attempt to get up.
I smile against his shoulder, content to stay in this suspended moment a little longer. His heartbeat is steady beneath my palm. I leave my hand there until I can no longer see the last patch of sun on the grass.
When I finally sit up, the movement is slow, reluctant. Rafael sits up too, keeping the blanket around us both. The air is cooler now, but not cold, the last warmth of the spring afternoon still lingering in the sheltered clearing.
I look at him in the fading light. His hair is mussed, his shirt rumpled, his expression soft and open in a way I'd almost forgotten he could look. He watches me with so much tenderness it makes my chest ache.
"Rafael." I reach for his hand. "Give me your hand."
He offers it without question, palm up, waiting.
I take his hand in both of mine. Slowly, deliberately, I guide it down and press it flat against my belly, low over the soft fabric of my shirt.
His breath catches. His fingers spread against the fabric of my shirt, warm and steady. His eyes meet mine in the deepening dusk.
Nothing moves beneath his palm. It is too early for that. I cover his hand with mine and watch him lower his gaze to where they rest together.
He doesn't search my face for what to do next. He stays, his hand spread carefully beneath mine, as though he has all the time in the world to learn us.