Chapter Eighteen
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Just get home…
Just get home…
Just get home…
Jasmine didn’t look back. She couldn’t. Not when she was hanging on by a thread. Any sight of Emilio would have her dissolving in a mess of tears—of agony, heartbreak and disappointment—and she couldn’t have that. She would not break here.
A water taxi took her to the airport, where she purchased a seat on the next flight out, boarding almost immediately. All the while she concentrated on the next step, and the next, to keep her mind focussed. It would only take one weak moment for her to crumble.
When she took her seat, she realised that her hell had only just begun.
For the next ten hours she would have nothing but time to dwell on her shattered future with Emilio.
On how much worse it hurt than any other betrayal in her life that Emilio had harboured this secret.
On how wrong she had been to allow him her trust; how completely he had just shattered it.
Everyone had two sides to them, herself included. It just so happened that only one side of Emilio was worth her trust and respect.
For the first time, she understood how her mother could have fallen so deeply for her perfidious father.
She understood her devastation when he’d left.
Unlike her mother, at least Jasmine had been the one to walk away.
She wasn’t sobbing on the floor at the front door.
But she hurt . She felt torn apart by the loss of the good in Emilio.
And Emilio’s good side had been kind. Patient. Memories assaulted her—Emilio eating a cheap dinner at her table, her mother’s fond smile—and she had to cover her mouth to stifle her sob.
Each day, he’d proved to be someone she wanted to lean on. Each day she’d allowed herself to hand over control to him just a bit more. But what had he done with that trust? He’d destroyed it. He’d done it with his brother and he’d done it with her.
Jasmine placed a hand on her belly. It wasn’t just herself she had to think about.
It wasn’t just her he’d betrayed. Now her child would not have the home they had wanted to provide.
And would Emilio break their child’s trust along the way too?
Would Jasmine have to protect them from their father, from the expectations he would allow them to have, only to fumble on his promises every time?
She closed her eyes, trying to will the tears away, begging her body to sleep so she could have some reprieve from the clenching in her stomach. From her constricted lungs. From the ache in her heart so severe, she was certain it would never be whole again.
She’d thought Richard’s betrayal had hurt, but it had never felt quite like this.
Maybe because you were falling in love with him.
No! Absolutely not; it was a far jump from trust to love.
By her own admission, Jasmine wasn’t sure what love really felt like any more. It wasn’t love.
Jasmine, honey, please stop hiding.
Another text message from her mother. Jasmine wasn’t hiding. She was trying to live with a gaping hole in her chest. Who would she be hiding from ?
The world? Anyone you could possibly connect with.
Especially after she’d thought she’d seen Emilio outside her brownstone. But that had to have been her mind playing tricks on her because he would never have driven there, so she had turned her back on the sight and climbed into her own car.
Jasmine pushed away from her desk. She’d spent most of the past week and a half behind it, only going home to sleep, then returning to do it all over again.
When have I ever hidden?
When her father had left, she’d been there for her mother in the ways a child could. When Richard had betrayed her, she’d gone to the most exclusive club in New York. Yet, when Emilio had betrayed her, she immediately locked herself away in the office and stayed in there all day, every day.
‘Enough!’ she told herself, and grabbed her coat. She wasn’t sure where she was going. All she knew was that she had to get out, to feel the sun on her face. To be somewhere, anywhere, else.
Not knowing where she was going or what she would do once she got there, Jasmine kept walking until she came upon a green space with benches and a small pond reflecting the blue skies overhead.
It was a patch of tranquillity in the middle of the chaos of Manhattan.
It called to her. Just as she approached a bench beside the path, she spotted two people walking towards her—two people she’d never wanted to encounter again.
It was too late to turn round. Richard and Zara had already seen her.
‘Jasmine,’ Zara tentatively greeted her.
Jasmine’s left hand curled tightly. Her wedding and engagement rings—Emilio’s rings—pressed into her skin. She’d tried to take them off several times, but she couldn’t bring herself to. She didn’t want to analyse why not.
Now they made her wish he was by her side, as he had been the last time she’d run into Richard and Zara. The memory made her miss him, the stifling hurt that had been present since she’d left Italy shifting.
Richard was sneering, of course. ‘Where’s your lover?’
Jasmine saw Zara wince and felt a small amount of pity for her.
She would have to get used to that behaviour; that was who Richard became when he wanted control of a situation.
Eventually Jasmine had found it easier just to allow him to feel as if he were in charge to avoid conflict. She hated that she had done that.
You never did that with Emilio.
‘Did he see sense and leave?’ he added.
It was amazing that she’d had put up with Richard’s ugly side for so long.
‘Why? Because I’m too controlling? Too tightly wound?
Because it was stifling being around me and I sucked the life out of everything?
I believe that’s what you said.’ The words didn’t hurt.
They didn’t feel like anything at all now. ‘Who’d want that?’
‘I can’t imagine anyone would,’ Richard replied.
Visions of Emilio making love to her came to mind. The things he’d said to her in Italy.
‘I would take all the time you gave to me and still want more.’
Emilio had run into the woman responsible for destroying his family and shattering his heart, but even in anger he hadn’t been cruel. Antagonistic, yes; but cruel? No.
‘Just because you need to control your partner to feel like a man, doesn’t mean others do too, Richard.’
‘Torment me.’ The memory of Emilio’s words still had sparks alighting in her belly.
‘I thought I was in control, Mr De Luca.’ Her own words. And Emilio had submitted to her. He hadn’t allowed her control, as if it had been inherently his; he’d recognised that she had needed it and had surrendered to her. He’d been happy for Jasmine fully to be herself.
And she had been.
In a flood, it started coming to her: all the times Emilio had given in to her desires.
When she had been unwilling to budge, he had.
When she’d wanted a wedding and he hadn’t, he’d given her a beautiful ceremony.
He’d taken care of it himself. Unlike Richard, who’d left her to do everything and then never showed up.
She thought about Emilio’s reaction to a dinner meant to test him, and how he had been with her mother.
How he had agreed to move in with Jasmine, despite owning a penthouse beyond her wildest dreams, all because he wanted to take care of her and their baby.
How he hadn’t forced her to be anything but herself even when he’d been hurting.
When she’d stormed out of the gallery, he hadn’t forced her to take his hand for appearances’ sake.
He had accepted her anger, her boundaries.
She thought about how relaxed she had been with him. She’d shown him a side that she had tried to smother, but he’d given her a safe space so that she could let go. Indulge her carefree side.
It all made her miss him. Made everything feel a little less bright. Made the sun feel less warm. Made her pine for the man who had looked so broken when she had walked away.
‘Do you think it’s easy to live with what I’ve done? I think about it every day, Jasmine.’
Of course he did, because the goodness in him wasn’t a lie. His remorse was painfully evident.
Richard had never shown remorse for anything he had done in all the time they had been together. Suddenly, she found herself wishing she could magically manifest Emilio by her side. Wished they could talk.
She looked down at the ring on her finger, as if it could help her with these churning thoughts.
Zara followed her gaze. ‘You’re married.’
She was married…to a man Jasmine had compared to Richard time and time again. Now she felt guilty about it. Despite how badly Emilio had hurt her, he and Richard were nothing alike.
‘I am.’
For now, she supposed. She would have to start divorce proceedings at some point. The very thought made her soul rip in two. Maybe afterwards she could bring herself to remove the ring from her finger… But even the thought of that was more than she could bear.
‘Maybe you two will follow suit one day,’ she said, looking at her former friend. ‘After all, Zara, you already have experience planning weddings.’ Zara’s eyes widened and Richard glowered, but Jasmine didn’t care. ‘I’m glad you found each other,’ she said sweetly. ‘You deserve one another.’
And she meant it. They were out of her life. However briefly she had been with Emilio, he’d helped heal this hurt. He’d showed her how she wanted to be treated. Zara and Richard had no power over her any more.
Jasmine turned and walked away, feeling freed from a shackle, and yet her heart had never been heavier. Because now, she realised, what she had lost was love.
She had loved Emilio.