Chapter Eleven #2
And what about you? You’re one to talk, that snide little voice jeered.
Because she had also let her childhood wounds dictate her adult choices.
Just like Aristotle, she’d taken the hurt of being used as a pawn, to wound her father, knowing her mother didn’t see her as anything other than a weapon.
Knowing that as soon as her mother had remarried and had more children, Rosie had become completely dispensable.
How could she trust, let alone love, when her example of maternal love was so flawed?
She looked across at Aristotle and the sinking of her heart turned into something else entirely. More puzzle pieces began to slide together. This time, they were not pieces of him, but rather, of them.
The sense she’d felt, even at fourteen, that on the day they’d met, he was somehow a part of her. She’d felt it every time they’d seen each other afterwards, too. When their eyes would meet. In the thickening of the air around them, the stampeding of her heart.
She’d put it down to a childish girlhood crush, that she’d outgrown. And then, to sexual chemistry. And now? Their shared need to do what was right for their child.
But what if something else was at play? Something more.
She frowned across at him as a deeper understanding of her feelings began to take hold, even when she didn’t want it to.
She tried to stop the thoughts in their tracks, to push aside her shifting perception of this situation.
Because she couldn’t fall in love with Aristotle Machairas.
She refused to love anyone, having seen the destructive effects up close.
The joke, of course—and it was not a particularly funny one—was that Rosie had believed, all her life, that she could control her heart. That wishing it to not be vulnerable to love meant it wouldn’t be.
How stupid she’d been.
How incredibly na?ve.
She was an archaeologist and, no matter where she went and which culture she was studying, she had often reflected on the commonalities of all cultures and communities across time.
The emotional similarities—valour, jealousy, grief and love.
These were uniform and observable in all socie-ties, regardless of the variations in tribalism, trappings, religious observances.
How had she thought she could exempt herself from any of those key human conditions?
It wasn’t that her heart was immune to love, as she’d so long supposed, but rather it had been lost, without her realising it.
Lost to Aristotle, and from that moment on, no one else had been able to get a look in.
She’d been able to stay single without giving it a second thought because all of her heart, her mind and soul were already spoken for.
Her lips parted on a rush of breath as the realisations continued to detonate in her brain, one after the other.
He turned his hand over and captured hers, squeezing it. ‘Rosemary, is something wrong? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.’
She blinked quickly, her heart twisting. Her heart. Her stupid, disloyal heart! How on earth could it have been so stupid? To fall for Aristotle, the first time she’d met him? For as sure as she now knew that she loved him, she knew that this was a path destined to lead to devastation.
It was impossible to imagine he would ever love her back.
For while her hurts were historical, his were ongoing. His uncertainty about his parentage, the gap in his knowledge, was a wound that continued to bruise him daily.
‘When this baby is born,’ she murmured, curving her hand over her stomach as she glanced across at him, ‘how will you cope with the fact that you might look into their face and see features you don’t recognise? A throwback to your biological parents, perhaps, or someone else?’
His jaw tightened. ‘I don’t know.’
Her chest felt as though something heavy was being pushed into it.
‘It is one of the reasons I never wanted to have children. To look down into their face and not know it, to not be able to answer that child’s questions about our history, our family’s past… I have no idea what genetic burden I am passing on, what traits.’
Tears filled her eyes, as the whole future she’d imagined somehow seemed impossible to navigate now.
‘You have to talk to your mother,’ she said, knowing that was the only course of action that could give them hope. ‘You have to ask if she knows anything.’
‘She doesn’t.’
‘Your father said that, but maybe she does. Maybe things have changed now. Either way, she should know that you know the truth.’
He jerked his gaze towards the ocean. ‘I didn’t tell you as a means to ask for advice. I’ve known this for years, and that knowledge is a part of me.’
‘So is the hurt and doubt,’ she said firmly. ‘You’re living with a bruise you might not need to carry.’
‘Do you think there is anything my mother could say that would change that?’
‘I think you’ll never have a proper relationship with her unless you’re honest about this. I think you both deserve better than that.’
He turned to face her, eyes spearing her with their intensity.
‘I told you because it’s an important part of who I am—something you should understand, as we embark on this life together.
It changes nothing about me, our marriage, and how I feel about our child.
Please do not give it another moment’s thought, and for God’s sake, don’t mention it to her—or anyone. ’
He didn’t regret telling her. They were going to be parents; it felt appropriate for her to understand the unknowability of his DNA.
He just regretted the way in which he’d told her. Even as the words had spilled out, he’d heard the defensiveness in his tone. Even when he’d known she was trying to look at the problem and find a solution, to offer a fresh perspective, he’d just wanted to shut it down.
She couldn’t possibly understand what discovering his adoption had done to him.
So too his father’s refusal to help him find the answers he needed. In fact, his father had flat-out refused to have another conversation about it. He’d clearly expected Aristotle to be able to compartmentalize this part of his life, to bury it and move on.
But he never had.
Even now, it was so easy to feel like that fifteen-year-old again. And Rosemary had only amplified that, with her soft sympathy and gentle urging to talk to his mother.
He wanted to remind her that he was a monolith, a man who lived his own life unaffected by anyone else, untouched by need or wants, but the words hadn’t come.
For all that his independence was his identity, it was no longer accurate to describe him as that alone.
Their baby made it impossible—and so did Rosemary.
She was a part of his life now, and always would be.
She was the mother of his child, and no matter what happened, no matter where life and fate took him, caring for her, ensuring her well-being, would always be important.
Which was why he’d moved the conversation on, keeping the tone light, asking her questions about the Minoan culture, then about Athens, then about her more interesting digs, until she’d seemed, finally, to have given up on the subject of his adoption.
As they flew back over Athens and landed on the helipad atop his penthouse apartment, he knew she was different though. Deep in thought.
Which was the last thing he wanted. The subject of his adoption was something he’d sat with a long time.
He refused to let it bleed into the present, to change the very successful arrangement he’d formed with Rosemary.
And so, when they returned home, he did the one thing he could think of, and took her to bed, where nothing but their chemistry and connection seemed to matter.