Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
TO SAY HE WAS SHATTERING was an understatement.
Roman felt as though he no longer knew himself.
He didn’t recognise a single part of his body, his heart, his mind.
Everything he’d believed important, everything he’d aspired to his whole life, was now just a prism of meaningless light, reflecting meaningless successes back at him.
He would have given up every dollar he possessed to take back how he’d spoken to Kate. How he’d treated her. He wanted to beg her to forgive him, to beg her to give him another chance, but how could he?
She was right. He’d promised to protect her, he’d sworn to keep her safe, and then he’d been the one to hurt her. He had no right to inflict himself on her.
“I’m sorry,” was all he said, because he was.
“That’s it?” she murmured, eyes roaming his face, lips pinched.
“There’s nothing I can say to take it back.” If only.
“It’s not what you said. It’s what you thought. What you thought me capable of.”
He frowned. “Tia said you were working as an escort. You’ve told me yourself that you hook up with guys, that sex is meaningless to you.”
She gasped, and he cursed under his breath. He was making it worse.
“I’m not trying to defend myself, just to explain that it was an easy conclusion to jump to, at the time.”
“Yeah, well, you were wrong. And sex did use to be meaningless for me, and I loved that about it. I loved that I could walk away from any guy, any time. But with you…it changed. It was never just sex with you. Not for me. For the first time in my life, I understood why people call it ‘making love’.”
His gut twisted and her words coiled inside of him, spinning and lodging in his gut.
She’d fallen in love with him, but had she fallen out of love?
Of course she had. Yet…she was here. She was talking to him, not some other guy.
Not home alone, watching whatever show she wanted, or reading a book.
She’d come here. It gave him a hope he knew he didn’t deserve. But he had to get this right.
“I’m far from perfect, Kate. You told me you don’t trust easily, then somehow, you gave me your trust anyway.
And I destroyed it.” His breath shuddered as the reality of that detonated inside of him and a sharp sting filled the back of his throat.
“I definitely don’t deserve you.” She angled her face away, staring at the generic piece of art hanging on the wall opposite and he was glad, because he felt so close to collapsing, and he didn’t want her to see that.
“But you’re right. Everything changed for me, too.
From the moment I met you, I wanted to hold you close, to look after you. To spoil and adore you.”
Her jaw shifted.
“It wasn’t sex that made me love you, it was you. Every moment, every look, every laugh. You lodged deep in here,” he pushed his fingers against his sternum. “And you’re there for life. For better or for worse, you’re my other half.”
He closed his eyes then, as feelings of shame washed over him.
“I grew up in an abusive household. I grew up terrified of what I might turn into, and I’ve chosen to keep people at a distance to avoid that fate. And then you found your way into my heart and I realised I’m just as bad as him—”
Her gasp drew his attention. “No,” she said, sympathy softening her features so hope exploded through him. “You jumped to the wrong conclusion, but you’re right—from what Tia told you, it wasn’t completely crazy.”
“It was.”
“Okay, but I can also see—”
“Please, don’t defend me.”
“Roman, we had a fight, is my point. You said things, I said things. You said worse things,” she muttered, but she was walking towards him.
“I never once worried that you were going to hit me. I have never worried that you would hurt me physically. You are not a violent person. You are not an uncontrolled person. There’s a huge difference between what happened between us and what you’ve described with your father. ”
A muscle jerked in his jaw. “I hurt you.”
“Yes.” She nodded slowly. “But it’s not what you said, the other day, that hurt the most.”
He frowned.
“You let me leave,” she whispered. “My whole life, people have let me go. No one’s ever fought to keep me, and then I met you, and I wanted, so badly, for you to ask me to stay. Not for a few more hours, or one more night.”
“But forever,” he groaned, his stupidity slamming into him like a freight train.
“I wanted that too, Kate. If you’d stayed another night, I would have asked the same thing of you the next morning, and the next, and the next, and every morning for the rest of our lives.
I just didn’t understand that until you left, and it was like the sun imploded. All the light went out of my life.”
“Yes. It was the same for me.” She cleared her throat. “I didn’t come here tonight so you could apologise, or say any of this,” she said, taking a step back from him, so he lost the solid ground on which he’d been standing a moment ago.
“No?”
She shook her head, pulling her phone from a clutch bag. “I wanted your bank details, so I can pay you back. I emailed Garrett about it, but he never replied.”
Roman’s gut clenched. “You don’t need to do that.”
“You flew me back to Australia, first class. Obviously I’m in your debt, and I don’t want to be.”
“Kate, stop.”
“Roman,” she said, emphatically.
“I’m not taking your money.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want it. I don’t want anything. Kate, please.” But he couldn’t bear it. He couldn’t bear knowing that she’d come here for such a pragmatic reason. It wasn’t because she needed to see him, and wanted things to work out with them.
He’d pushed his fingers into her biggest emotional bruise, and she was going to protect herself all over again rather than let him in.
“I am in love with you,” he said, slowly, knowing that only the truth would have any hope of working. “With all of my heart and soul, everything I have is yours. Including seats on my airline, anytime you want to go anywhere. This isn’t a debt—it’s reality.”
She was shaking her head though, lifting her fingers to her lips, pressing them there.
“I am in love with you,” he repeated, “and will be for the rest of my life. My deepest wish is for that life to be shared with your life. But if it’s not, I will still always love you, always help you if you ask for it, always consider everything of mine to be equally yours.
You’re…my family, Kate. You always will be. ”
She sobbed then, and dropped her head forward. He thought he heard her whisper family as her hands fell to her side. He moved forward, but didn’t touch her. He knew this had to be her call. God, but he loved her.
“Is there any chance you can forgive me?”
She looked up at him, eyes huge, features pinched. He hated himself so much in that moment. Hated what he’d done to her. Knew that even if she forgave him, he wouldn’t forgive himself.
Her lips pulled to the side. “The thing is, I understand you. I understand who you are, how you think and feel, I know what your fears are. I know you. I know why you reacted like you did, why you said what you did.”
He knew she was right. She had drilled right into his soul.
“And you know me. You know what it cost me to trust you. To love you. To let myself want to stay with you, to hope for a future, when I’ve learned that hope is the most futile emotion someone can feel.”
His gut felt emptied out. He’d betrayed her in the worst possible way by letting her leave. He’d made her feel expendable, just as people had made her feel, all her life.
“Do you know what I think?”
She blinked up at him.
“Words are cheap.”
Her eyes skimmed over his face.
“I could stand here and tell you I love you a thousand times. I could get down on my knees and beg you for another chance, I could beg you to marry me. I could promise you the whole fucking world and everything in it, but you’d say no.
Not because you don’t love me, but because you’re not sure if you can trust me. I know you pretty damn well too, Kate.”
A tear slid down her cheek. He lifted a hand before he could stop himself, his thumb gently wiping it away. She closed her eyes on a soft sigh.
“So what if I just ask you to let me show you that you can trust me. That you’re safe with me.”
Her brow crinkled as she considered that. “What does that mean?”
“It means we go slow. I stay here in Sydney for as long as it takes. Weeks, months, years. You’ve had a thousand people let you down and that will never be me again, Kate.
I don’t just want to promise you the world, I want to give it to you, every single goddamn day of our lives.
I love you, and I will move mountains to show you that, if you’ll let me. ”
She didn’t say anything and his whole body tensed.
Nothing in his life had ever felt more consequential than this.
He’d lost people, too. He’d known pain and devastation, the effort of rebuilding his life from that loss.
But if Kate pushed him away, he wasn’t sure he’d ever recover.
He held his breath for so long he had stars in his eyes.
“Okay,” she said, after what felt like a lifetime. “Prove it.”
Kate hadn’t doubted his sincerity, but she’d harboured some uncertainty about Roman’s ability to take anything slowly. He wasn’t built for slow. His tendency to run like a bull at a gate was a key factor in his success; she admired that trait of his.
But six weeks after going to his hotel, she had been proved thoroughly wrong.
He’d started so slowly it had been almost painful.
The day after she’d gone to his hotel, he’d texted her and asked if she’d meet him for coffee the next day.
Coffee! She’d agreed, and getting ready to go to the café, her stomach had filled with a million butterflies.
Every single one that had been dormant since leaving New York.
He hadn’t offered to pick her up, and she knew that was a conscious choice, too.
He was giving her space, breathing room. Going slowly.