Chapter 6 #3
The bubbles in her tummy stilled. Fiero’s face was thunderous all of a sudden, so that it was impossible to believe he’d been smiling a moment ago, looking at her with a hint of admiration for how she’d managed on her own for so long.
“It should never have rested on another man to raise my child.” He stood then, pulling himself away from her in every way – mentally and physically distancing himself.
She winced at her insensitivity; at the way she’d made it sound.
Pulling her feet from the water with unconscious grace, she stood, placing a hand on his chest without thinking about the gesture.
He stilled, his body like a rock. “He didn’t raise Jack.
He helped me out from time to time, not often.
He’s a friend – a good friend – but not a father-substitute. ”
Fiero’s jaw tightened and he shifted his gaze away from her, fixing it on Rome.
“And if you’d told me, I would have helped you. I would have spent time with Jack so you could work. I would have made whatever you wanted possible.” He expelled a breath and it rushed across her temple, lifting her dark hair a little.
“I know that.” What else could she say? She acknowledged she’d made a mistake, but it didn’t mean she’d been wrong not to tell him about Jack. It was so much more complex than that.
“You talk about second chances, about what a gift Jack was. About the family you lost and now have, but did you ever think that I deserved the exact same second chance you did?” His eyes flashed back to hers.
“Did you ever think I had also lost people I loved, that I deserved to know my son, to raise him, to have him in my life?”
“It wasn’t about punishing you, or with-holding anything from you,” she said, not for the first time. “I just couldn’t see how we would make it work.”
“You should have given me a chance.”
Her eyes swept shut, because he was right.
Her heart turned over in her chest, and she fought a wave of exhaustion, a wave of grief.
“I know.” And she did. “I can’t stand here right now and say I would have made the same choice now that I did then.
I can’t look you in the eye and say that I was right, I can’t defend my decision, I can only say that I didn’t make it out of malice or anger, or hurt or wounded pride.
I acted on my instincts, on what I thought truly would be best for everyone. ”
Silence.
He stared at her for several long seconds, and she stared back, and gradually, her hand on his chest began to feel different.
Tingly and heavy, so she went to move it away but he lifted his own hand, capturing hers and holding it where it was, pressing it to his chest, his eyes boring down into hers.
“What you did…”
She held her breath.
“I will never understand it.” His eyes flashed with a darkness that chilled her to the bones.
“And yet there is something about you that makes it impossible for me to hate you.” A muscle jerked in his jaw.
“I want to. My brother Max thinks I should send you back to England and make you fight for any kind of place in Jack’s life.
He thinks you should know what it feels like to be deprived of your own child. ”
Her gasp reverberated around the terrace.
“I wish I could. I wish I could get you out of my life. Out of my house. Out of my damned head.”
She inhaled shakily. “What do you mean?”
“Even that night, there was something about you,” he shook his head angrily, and with his spare hand, he lifted it to her face, cupping her cheek in his palm. “It was as though I had been bewitched.”
Her stomach squeezed.
“I was married.”
She made a husky groaning sound.
“On the brink of divorce, but I took my vows seriously. Until the divorce was official, I had no intention of sleeping with anyone, Elodie. You were the first – and only – woman I was with during that time of my life.”
He stared at her but she felt like he was staring through her, looking at all the pieces that made up her whole, trying to fit them together in a way he could make sense of.
“Why?”
“I told you, I took my vows seriously.”
“I mean, why me?”
His expression darkened, but his lips twisted into a mocking smile. “I wish I knew.”
His eyes drilled into hers intently.
“I have been asking myself that for six weeks. Why you? What was it about you that made me ignore the black and white morality that had guided me all my life?” His eyes narrowed and he moved infinitesimally closer, so her hand was the only thing between them.
“What is it about you that makes me want to kiss you even when I am so angry with you, even when a part of me is filled with rage for what you’ve taken from me?”
Goosebumps lifted across her body. “I don’t know.” A whisper. A gravelled, pleading sound.
His thumb padded over her lower lip.
“How can I be driven crazy by thoughts of taking you to bed after what you’ve done to me?”
Her lips parted in silent invitation and he responded, his eyes dropping to her lips, his expression sombre.
“Do you remember what I said to you in the hospital?”
She frowned, unable to think clearly, far less remember something that had happened days earlier.
“It doesn’t mean anything.”
Her frown deepened, his words coming back to her with an unwelcome, roiling inevitability.
And you will know that if I kiss you, Elodie, it is because of the same chemistry that drove us together that night, and nothing more. You will know that I will never like you as a person, that I will never forgive you for your decisions.
“My wanting you is just biology. Nothing more.”
She felt as though she’d been punched in the gut.
“I –,”
He shook his head curtly.
“You told me not to kiss you once before. If you tell me not to now, I won’t.
I won’t kiss you, I won’t touch you. I will walk away from you and hell, I’ll probably be grateful to you in the morning, grateful that you stopped me from doing something stupid and giving in to desire when there are a hundred reasons not to. ”
She moaned softly, her body flushing with heat and need.
“But if you say nothing, I will lift you up and carry you to my bedroom, and I will make you cry my name again and again, until it is the only word you know, the only sound you can make.”
He lowered his head, so his lips were just a whisper from hers. “Well, Elodie? Are you going to tell me to stop? To push me away again?”
She said nothing.
“Are you going to bring us back from the brink of insanity?”
Silence.
And then, a guttural groan as he dropped his head the final distance, claiming her lips with an intensity that knocked all the breath out of her lungs.
Their bodies melded; they were one. And he was right. There was insanity in this, madness and despair, need and beautiful, breathtaking inevitability.