Chapter 8 #2
She stared out at Rome and studied the golden lights that shaped the city against the inky black sky, she listened to the far away hum and drone of traffic, so she didn’t hear the knock on her door at first.
A second later, it sounded once more, and this time, she spun around. “Yeah?” Her voice was soft, but he must have heard it because the door opened and Fiero walked in holding two glasses of wine. Her heart began to thump.
She arranged her features carefully, wiping any hint of emotion from them.
“You were right this morning. We do need to talk,” he said quietly, his eyes roaming her face in a way that spread goose bumps across her skin. Her chest felt a little like it had been cracked open to reveal her rib cage.
“I thought we already did.”
His smile was derisive, but it felt self-mocking. She tried not to look too hard; to wonder. His face was like quicksand – if she stared at him too long, she would get sucked in and not be able to breathe.
“Not really. Not properly.”
She bit back her instant response – that he could have stayed and talked rather than walking out on her.
Instead, she focussed on her curiosity, wondering what he’d come to her room to discuss.
He walked towards her and her tummy did the flippy floppy thing she was growing accustomed to. He held a wine glass out to her.
“I don’t know what this is,” he said, after a moment, moving towards the French doors and the balcony, taking up the exact same position she’d occupied moments earlier. “But I know what it’s not.”
She swallowed, moving to stand beside him but being supremely careful not to touch him. “What’s that?”
“Meaningless.” He spoke the word with no inflection.
“You’re the mother of my child,” he rushed to add, even as something like hope was firing inside of her.
“It’s impossible for us to sleep together and not have it mean something, for there not to be a ramification of some kind.
We are parents to Jack. Sleeping together isn’t simple.
” He angled his face towards hers. “It’s not meaningless. ”
It’s not exactly meaningful, either, she added mentally.
“I’m not seeing anyone else.” He turned back to Rome, sipped his wine.
She ignored the strange explosion beneath her solar plexus, the sense that a part of her was flying into the heavens. “No?”
Scepticism sounded in her voice despite her state of partial euphoria and relief.
“No.” The word was heavy though with resentments.
“I suppose I find that hard to believe, given how we met.”
“Because you think I was married and hooking up with random women on the side?” He suggested, something dark moving across his features.
She worried her lower lip between her teeth and lifted her shoulders, not sure how to respond. Not really sure what she believed and felt, anyway.
“You were the only one.” The words seemed almost dragged from him against his will.
She risked a glance at him but his face was stern, not revealing anything more of how he was feeling.
Silence shifted around them. “Despite the fact we were as good as divorced, I did take my vows seriously, Elodie. I had no intention of breaking them until Alison and I were legally divorced. The night you and I met, my marriage was already over. It had been a long time since she and I had been intimate in any way, a long time since I’d been with anyone. ”
Elodie digested this, a frown etching across her face. “So you were just desperate for sex?”
The rejoinder was rewarded with a lift of his lips, a hint of amusement breaking through his mask of austere reflection as the sun pierced clouds at the end of a storm.
“No.” His smile dropped; the mask of steel returned. “If that were the case, I would have been with dozens of women. It’s not as though I didn’t have opportunities.”
“Wow,” she muttered. “Arrogant much?”
He turned to look at her then and her heart pounded hard against her ribs.
“I only meant I could have sought that kind of relationship at any point after Alison and I decided it wasn’t working.
I didn’t. I could have gone to nightclubs and bars, but I didn’t.
As I said, I took my marriage vows seriously and until they’d been dissolved with the full force of the law, I intended to uphold them. ”
She frowned. “So why didn’t you?”
His Adam’s Apple jerked as he swallowed.
“I met you.” Something shuddered in her chest. “And my self-control was as non-existent that night as it is now. I knew I should have resisted you. That dinner was an exercise in restraint for me – if you knew how I felt, how long it had been since I’d been intimate with a woman, the things I was thinking about you, and yet I sat there and made small talk for two or three hours, and all the while my body was burning alive.
” He shook his head in a gesture of anger.
“Still, I intended to resist you. As the night wore on, I felt relief. It was almost over. You would leave. I’d triumphed over desire. I hadn’t broken my marriage vows.”
She sipped her own wine, mainly to relieve the aching dryness in her throat. “And then I asked you to come home with me.”
“And any willpower I possessed evaporated as though struck by lightning.” He grimaced. “God, I wanted you, Elodie.” He shook his head. “I wish,” –
“Don’t say it,” she groaned. “If we hadn’t had that night, we wouldn’t have Jack.”
He nodded curtly, as if drawing himself back to the point at hand. “I wasn’t sleeping with other women then, and I’m not sleeping with other women now.”
She lifted her eyes to his, relief sagging in her belly.