Chapter 7 #2
His body weight on her body was a pleasure she could no longer bear. She lifted her hands to push at him, just a little, but he rolled away pre-emptively, onto his back, staring up at the ceiling.
She studied him, a frown on her face, a kernel of worry growing out of control inside of her belly.
“The sex is easy. Desire is easy. But everything else is an absolute mess, and I think we’re just going to make it worse.”
A week later, at their grandparents’ estate, Fiero took a swig of beer from the bottle, his expression grim.
It was a warm evening. Max was swimming, and Luca was across the table, on the phone to the CEO of their Belgian operation.
Yaya, having joined them for dinner, had retired to her room for the night.
She tired early these days, going to sleep shortly before eight o’clock each night.
An uneasiness had crept over Fiero. He knew she didn’t have long and that knowledge was like a chain about his throat.
Life without Yaya was almost impossible to contemplate.
She’d asked about Jack at dinner, a smile tickling her lips. Then, she’d asked about Elodie, and silence had fallen. No one had known what to say, least of all Fiero. How could he explain any of this to Yaya?
How could he explain it to anyone? He couldn’t even get Elodie to comprehend how he felt.
She’d been right.
Sex was easy. Incredibly easy.
He despised her during the day, despised the fact she’d kept him from his own son, despised the fact that if it hadn’t been for the accident, he’d have no idea about Jack.
Despised that he was glad, on any level, for what had befallen her because at the same time, fear at the way her body could have been destroyed filled him with an acid that burned through his whole system.
It was a mess, just like she’d said.
He despised her in the day but at night, when he reached for her, everything locked into place once more. His body craved and hers responded. Perhaps it was the other way around. He drew her into his arms and she blinked up at him and there was nothing and no one that could keep them apart.
“So? How’s married life?” Luca disconnected the call, a self-satisfied look on his expression which Fiero took to mean he’d closed the deal over in Brussels.
He stared at his brother blankly.
“Jack’s mother?”
“Elodie,” Fiero supplied without thinking. “We’re not married.”
“But as good as,” he pointed out.
“No.” Fiero’s eyes flashed, his body tightening in rejection of that. “Not now, not ever.”
Luca laughed gruffly. “Sounds like you’ve got something to hide.”
Fiero’s pulse was thready. “Oh?”
“You look like you want to kill someone. You don’t want to be here. All I can presume is that your home life beckons.”
“Because I can pass up the chance of time in your charming company?” Fiero quipped, but a smile crossed his lips despite his mood. Max and Luca were two of his best friends. Along with their cousins, who had been raised with them, so that they were almost like one family.
“Because you’re like a bear with a sore head.”
“Marriage isn’t on the cards, believe me.”
“But you’re sleeping with her?”
Fiero whipped his head around as though it had been snapped, and a laugh sounded from the pool. Max was there, his arms braced on the coping, his teeth white against his tan.
“Think you hit the nail on the head there, bro.”
“Do you mind?” Fiero took another drink from his beer.
“So you’re not?”
“Sleeping with her?” Fiero repeated, then stood, frustrated beyond belief. “That’s none of your goddamned business.”
Max was no longer smiling. “If you’re not, why deny it?”
“Because my sex life is private. Not for you two to speculate on.”
He closed his eyes and thought of Elodie and only certainty filled him. Certainty that he wanted her, certainty that regardless of what anyone else said or thought, he would make love to her in a matter of hours. His body was already anticipating that pleasure, filling with longing and need.
“For the last two months, all we have heard is how you’ll never forgive her, how there’s a special place in hell for women like her.”
Fiero’s face felt hot and he wished, for some reason he couldn’t fathom, that he could draw those words back, could leave them unspoken. “I cannot justify what she did.”
“I can’t say I blame you,” Max grunted from the table. “It’s sheer good luck that you even know about Jack now.”
A blade ran the length of his body. “I do not consider that ‘good luck’. She almost died.”
“And if she hadn’t been hit by a van and wound up in hospital, you’d have no idea you had a son out there.”
“I am profoundly aware of that, believe me.” Fiero’s voice whipped around the terrace.
“So what do you want from her?”
“From Elodie? I want nothing.” He spoke the words emphatically, wondering why they tasted strange in his mouth.
“You could offer her a financial settlement,” Max proposed. “In exchange for sole custody.”
“Money?” Fiero disputed with a humourless laugh. “You think she wants money?”
Neither brother spoke.
“If that were the case, don’t you think I would have heard from her before now?
She could have begged a fortune in custody demands.
A house. A trust fund for Jack. A stipend for herself.
She has asked me for nothing, even now.” He swallowed, the reality of that something he hadn’t fully considered until that moment.
He frowned. “I’m doing my best to work this out. ”
Luca stood up and paced towards the pool, shucking his shirt as he went before diving in. He emerged on the other side, his eyes roaming Fiero thoughtfully.
“Look, Fiero, you’re not thinking straight if you are doing anything other than lining up custody papers and pushing her out of his – and your – life.”
Everything inside of Fiero rejected that. “She’s a good mother.”
“So? A better mother than Emilia is nanny?”
Fiero’s eyes flashed and even in that moment, as his temper was invoked, he wondered at his desire to defend Elodie, to protect her as a bear might a smaller, defenceless creature.
“We are not the best judges of this,” he said through gritted teeth. “Our own mother was hardly a paragon of maternal virtue. Elodie is. She loves Jack. She’d do anything for him.”
“How can you say that when she chose to keep him away from you? She denied him his father – that’s not selfless. It’s not loving. It’s stupid and irresponsible.”
“Basta!” He lifted a hand to silence them, his mind ringing with the accusations, the tirades, the words he himself had thought and even flung at her.
His two brothers watched him without speaking. He was conscious of the effort that took – he knew both were biting back what they were thinking and he appreciated that they did that.
“She is Jack’s mother. It is for this reason and this reason alone I paid her hospital bills.
You do not think my son deserves that? Do you think I could have looked him in the eye ever again if I hadn’t done everything in my power to save her?
We were raised by our grandparents because of our parents’ failings.
Because they didn’t know how to stop being selfish children and start looking after us.
” He glared at both Luca and Max. “I will never let Jack say that about me. I owe it to him to try to find a way to make this work – with Elodie in my house, with the two of us raising him together.”
“Raise him together, assolutamente, that’s laudable. Noble. Anything more and you are a fool.”