Chapter Four #2
Shadows dance with the spill of architectural lights. With every corner exposed and discovered, Theo’s maiden masterpiece fights, and wins, against the supremacy of the city’s golden glow.
I keep my hands shoved into my pockets, as if that will ground me, as if it will slow the reckless beat of my heart.
‘I shouldn’t find your scathing disinterest so stimulating,’ Theo says dryly, breaking the silence.
My heart lurches, stupidly, hopelessly, and I cover it with insouciance. ‘There’s a reason men like you enjoy the chase. It’s almost a cliché.’
His mouth curves, slow and deliberate, packing far too many punches. ‘Clichés exist for a reason.’
The moment hangs, charged, with our eyes locked and the hum of Lisbon around us thinning into quiet.
Then my stomach growls, loudly and humiliatingly.
Theo’s brow arches but I’m thankful when he doesn’t call me out on my body’s clear betrayal.
Instead, he glances towards a vendor set up on the riverfront, where the air is thick with the scent of sizzling chourico and warm bread.
Without a word, he strides over, exchanges euros in smooth Portuguese and returns with two sandwiches heavy with sausage, onions and mustard.
Any protest I reach for dies in my throat before it’s given voice. We sit on a worn wooden bench by the water. The breeze carries salt and spice.
For once, it’s easy and we eat without sparring. And in that rare pocket of peace, I catch myself watching him differently. Less as an adversary, more as a man who has let me glimpse something raw beneath the polish.
When I lick a smear of mustard from my lip, I feel his gaze hook into me, hot and unguarded, that simmer of heat never far away.
And just like that my pulse betrays me again. Against every rule I swore I’d keep, the words spill out. ‘What happened last night can’t happen again. Especially if you’re entangled with anyone.’
The air tightens.
Theo’s face hardens instantly, eyes glinting like obsidian. ‘I don’t cheat. I have a special loathing for those who do.’ His voice is cold, almost cruel. He’s watching me carefully, as if the weight of my reaction matters more than the words themselves.
Pain spears through me, raw and barely containable. I force it down and make my voice bold. ‘With respect, I’ve heard that line before. More times than I wish to count—’
‘Not from me,’ he interjects. Then his eyes narrow. ‘So, who was it?’ he demands to know.
‘None of your business.’
‘I disagree. I’m being tarred with a brush meant for another. Right now and four years ago, too, I think. So I think it’s very much my business.’
My heart lurches, but I dismiss the alarmed hope before it can flare to life. ‘What about the woman who sent you the I’m pregnant message?’
His jaw ticks. ‘One of those very same loathsome, faithless types,’ he says coolly. ‘And very much in my past.’
I’m wrapped in pain I can’t let show. My voice is low, but it still cuts. ‘And what about the baby?’
‘There was no baby.’ His nostrils flare. ‘It was a ploy she attempted to trap me with.’
The food in my stomach turns to stone, heavy and congealing. My breath catches. ‘Are you serious?’
His gaze sharpens, probing mine with unnerving intensity, as if he’s stripping me down to the bone. ‘Deadly.’
‘But…why?’ I push, my voice thinner than I want it to be, bewilderment cracking through the facade I’ve held all day. My chest feels tight, as though every breath has to fight its way out.
‘Not that I particularly care…’ Theo replies, his tone dry as dust, ‘…but at the risk of being labelled even more of a cliché, what does any woman desire from a man of my position and stature?’
I shake my head, words failing me. I’ve heard of women wielding the promise of a child—real or imagined—as leverage for a ring on their finger, especially where vast wealth and influence were involved.
I’ve seen it in stories whispered behind hands and in scandals that scorch through communities like wildfire.
But maybe it’s because of my own experience that it makes me recoil in visceral disgust, that someone would have dared to use that trick with the man who’d fathered my baby.
The woman who might have had a hand in the reason my own text to him was ignored and deleted, and why my existence was blotted out of his life.
No. I will not make excuses for him. He’s already told me what he believed were behind my reasons for reaching out to him.
You’re not the first woman to want me back.
The words curdle in my stomach and my mouth sours.
I should leave it there, should walk away before my tongue slips any further into dangerous territory, but a more pressing thought roots me to the bench.
‘You sound bitter,’ I say quietly. ‘About more than a faithless ex.’
The briefest flash of bleakness crosses his face. If I hadn’t been watching him so closely—rapt, caught when I swore I wouldn’t be—I would have missed it.
‘She’s not my first encounter with faithless women,’ he says finally, voice even but edged with something darker.
‘I learned early that love and loyalty aren’t guarantees.
They’re currencies. Spent. Wasted. Sometimes carelessly flung about without care or consideration of who might be—’ He cuts himself off, shakes his head as if pulling himself back from the precipice.
Then his gaze flicks to mine, sharp and alive again. ‘Are you ready to admit you’re disregarding your own rules? Not that I’m keeping tally, of course.’
The breath stills in my chest. Because he’s right. I’m the one who dragged us here, into the personal, when I swore I wouldn’t.
I don’t answer, because there’s no counter. Only silence.
We rise. I brush crumbs and distress off my fingers and we leave, still carrying that silence between us, and walk back towards the car.
The night air smells of river and smoke, the city glowing all around us.
Neither of us speaks again until the warm luxury hotel lights welcome us back and the penthouse lift ushers us back into our suite.
Long after we’ve stiffly bidden each other goodnight, no sign of last night’s sultry temptation hanging around, I’m sitting cross-legged, my laptop propped up on a pillow, my heart in my mouth.
My hands shake as I type in the details I know like the back of my hand by now.
Shake as they do every time I revisit this decision I’ve toyed with for a long time, now.
No, toyed is too frivolous a word. This isn’t a game.
It’s weighty, soul-deep, a choice—to be a mother via IVF—that feels carved into me.
Profound enough that every cell in my body quakes with the enormity of it.
The doctor’s words still ring in my ears. Words no woman in her late twenties, who believes she has plenty of time, wants to hear.
Because of the complications after your miscarriage, I recommend you have a baby sooner rather than later, Tessa. You’re not out of time yet, but the clock isn’t pausing for you, either.
A gentle warning dressed in medical language, but it had felt like a countdown all the same.
Each month ticking past like another significant, possibly life-altering, door slamming shut.
Tonight, though, I know it isn’t just biology pressing on me.
It’s memory. The ache of what I once had, briefly, and then lost before I could even hold it.
The void it left behind has never stopped echoing, never stopped pulsating with heart-wrenching pain.
And though I’ve tried to silence it with work, with duty, with telling myself I am whole as I am, there is still that emptiness inside me.
That yearning that no rule, no self-discipline, no vow of independence has managed to cure.
I inhale sharply, then log into the site of the IVF clinic I’ve chosen. With several locations worldwide, I can begin the process at their London branch.
The familiar logo flashes as the secure portal opens. Before I know it, my fingers are flying, firmer than they’ve ever been. My decisions clicking into place one by one.
I don’t second guess or let myself think.
And then it’s done.
I shut the laptop with a definitive snap, slide it aside and collapse back against the pillows. My pulse slows and my breath evens out. For the first time in years, a sense of peace I don’t quite fully trust yet spreads through me.
Nevertheless, I close my eyes and let the darkness hold me.
And dreamless sleep claims me before doubt can claw its way back in.