Chapter Fourteen #2
Melina glanced at Rosemary, her expression showing the concern she obviously felt. ‘What good would that have done? You cannot fix this, Aristotle.’
‘I broke it; of course I can fix it.’
‘I’m not an “it”,’ Rosemary interjected. ‘And your mother’s right. I’m not your problem—’
‘You are my…you are…’
‘Yes?’ Rosemary demanded, her eyes sparking with his. ‘What am I?’
‘The mother of my child,’ he said, immediately shaking his head at how insufficient that seemed. His concern for her was not motivated purely by her pregnancy. It was bound up in Rosemary as a person, as the woman he’d become used to having in his life. The woman he loved to see smile.
‘Please leave,’ she whispered, confirming that she too felt he’d said possibly the worst thing he could have.
‘Not without you.’
‘Well, unless you’re going to kidnap me,’ she muttered, not realising that he would indeed stoop to that. To confirm it, he reached down and picked her up easily, cradling her against his chest.
She squawked and hit his shoulder. ‘Put me down, you fool. This is absurd.’
‘No, absurd is you being here, wasting away, when you should be at my home, where I can care for you.’
‘Aristotle,’ Melina hissed, ‘you cannot behave like this. I don’t know what’s come over you. Honestly, to think my own flesh and blood could carry on like this—’
Now it was his mother who’d said the exact worst thing at the exact worst time. His patience was already stretched to breaking point.
‘Just as well I am not your flesh and blood then, isn’t it? You can put this behaviour down to my biological parents—whoever the hell they may be.’ And he stalked out of the room with a now silent—shocked—Rosemary held tightly to his chest.
He’d made it to his car when Glen Richardson burst from the house like a man possessed.
‘Just what the hell did you say to her?’ he roared as his eyes swept over Aristotle and then Rosemary, who had stopped arguing, at least. But at the car he had no option to put her down, and the second he did, she stepped away from him, looking at him as though he was a lit fuse.
Control—something he valued almost above anything else—seemed totally out of his grip.
‘Your mother is in there, looking like she’s about to pass out, or vomit, or both. What did you say?’
He refused to soften. Refused to regret what he’d said.
‘Something I should have said a long time ago.’ He turned to Rosemary. ‘Come with me.’
But it was a question. A plea. A need deep in his chest for her to be back in his home, where he was convinced she belonged.
She shook her head slowly, tears sliding down her cheeks.
‘I can’t.’ But she came closer to him, lifting a hand to his cheek, cupping it gently.
‘Are you okay?’ Her voice trembled slightly, and her concern was almost his undoing.
With anyone else, he would have been able to brush off the enquiry with some acerbic rejoinder.
With Rosemary, it felt as though the truth was desperate to burst from him.
‘Are you coming?’
She shook her head, her lips parting then closing. She swallowed, her throat visibly shifting with the movement. ‘I can’t. But you should go back in there, talk to your mum properly.’
He rejected that instantly. He hadn’t meant to reveal what he knew to throw her concern back in Melina’s face, but strangely, he didn’t—couldn’t—regret it.
‘It’s a conversation that we should have had a long time ago, and at her instigation. I am not interested in staying here to appease her conscience.’
He wanted to pull her with him. To lift her into the car and buckle her in, to take her back to his home and order all of her favourite foods.
Somehow, he had a complete list in his mind of everything she’d eaten and loved in the past weeks.
All of the things that had made her close her eyes and swoon as she’d tasted them.
From octopus to lamb to prawn kataifi and chicken souvlaki.
It was as though parts of his brain had rewired themselves completely, to become an expert on Rosemary Richardson.
Rosemary Machairas, his brain instantly supplied—the name he’d started to crave calling her. Strange, when it wasn’t really even his name.
He wrenched open his car door and slid in behind the wheel, closing the door and putting down the window so he could regard Rosemary for another beat. ‘You’re sure?’
Her tears were still falling. It gutted him. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘If you’re going, go.’
He didn’t need to be told twice.
For the briefest moment, when his doorbell rang, his hopes soared. Every part of him burst with alertness, in the hope that he would open it and find Rosemary on the other side.
Of course, it was his mother. He wasn’t remotely surprised. There was no way she could leave things the way they were, without an explanation.
‘We need to talk,’ she said, her lip quivering. Her eyes were red-rimmed, as though she too had been crying. So he was two for two then.
He stepped back and gestured into his home, though he was in no mood to have this out now. At least she was alone. Given the way Glen Richardson had looked like he wanted to pummel Aristotle, he wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d accompanied Melina.
As she walked into the enormous living room her eyes swept over it, clearly noting the changes, before she sat down on the edge of the sofa.
‘How long have you known?’
‘At least you didn’t come here to deny it.’
She shook her head, face pinched. ‘Oh, Ari.’ She reverted to his childhood nickname, and something inside of him twisted painfully. Rejection of that, because it had all been a lie.
‘How did you find out?’
He stiffened. ‘Does it matter?’
She shook her head soulfully. ‘I suppose not. When did you find out?’
‘When I was fifteen.’
She swore then, dropping her head forward. ‘I wish you’d come to us. This is not something you should have dealt with on your own.’
His nostrils flared. ‘I spoke to him.’
‘Your father?’
He nodded once, a curt shift of his head.
Melina’s brow creased. ‘What did he tell you?’
‘Trying to get your story straight?’
Melina fixed him with a steady glare. Despite the pallor of her skin, there was strength and determination in her features. ‘Do not speak to me like that, Aristotle Machairas. Whatever else you might think, I am your mother, and I raised you to be better than this.’
He flinched at her summation, aware that she was right. But if ever there was a time for some anger, this was it.
‘He told me that I was adopted, that he had no idea who my birth parents were, and that there was no possible way of finding out. He told me that I should never bring it up with you, because it would devastate you. And that was the end of it.’