If you’d let her in, talked to her, you would have known these things about her. You could have helped each other.
He didn’t know how to share his wounds. He didn’t know how to help her with hers.
He stiffened. That was what therapists were for, and he’d employed one for Poppy.
‘I hate liars, becauseIwas the biggest liar, Konstantinos. My mum died never knowing the truth. If I’d confessed, if I’d talked to her, maybe I’d have closure. Maybe, if you’d talked to your dad, you would, too. Maybe, if we talk to each other about our issues, our parents, maybe we can talk about our son. Find closure on our marriage, and move on with our lives.’
‘I do not need to have a deathbed confession, Poppy. I’m not dying,’ he said, but inside he was.
Her confession, it killed something inside him. Stabbed a wound so deep, it pained him in a place he couldn’t name. Some would probably call it his soul, but he knew he’d sold that the day he vowed to change. To let his DNA flourish and become his father. But he didn’t feel it flourish inside him now. He didn’t feel the heat of his rage.His anger.But nor did he feel weak.Soft.
It was an ache inside him. A need for something he didn’t know how to ask for.Whatto ask for to make it stop.
‘No,’ she agreed. ‘But we both will.One day. And if you don’t agree to do this, to talk to me honestly about what happened with Isaak, it will never be over. We will never have closure. Isaak, he was the catalyst to all of this. We need to be open about that.About him.We need to—’
‘No,’ he said thickly. ‘I won’t pretend to meet you where I can’t. I cannot talk about…’
He closed his eyes. The confession too close to his lips. Too close was he to telling her he couldn’t say his name. Not out loud. He couldn’t force it however hard he tried.
‘We can’t go on like this,’ she said.
He opened his eyes and met the watery depths of hers.
‘I can’t bear to think when this is over, that if I see you, across the street, if we end up in the same room, we didn’t do this properly. I want to do this—end us—with grace. With honesty.’
Konstantinos recognised it was a stand-off. A new kind of fight. And his wife would accept nothing other than his surrender.
He wouldn’t wave a white flag. He couldn’t give her what she wanted. But he’d give her a little of what she’d asked for. A little of the man he’d been. He’d be…fair.It would be an exchange. A story for a story. What would it hurt to do so?
‘I will,’ he said with a casual laziness he didn’t feel, ‘explain why I didn’t tell you about my father.’
‘You told me,’ she reminded him. ‘In Paris.’
‘I didn’t tell you everything.’
It was heavy in his chest.
This load he was trying to drag up from the depths he’d buried it in.
Her blue gaze narrowed. ‘Everything?’
‘My mother died.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘When you were young.’
‘She died because I couldn’t keep her safe.’ His throat threatened to close. He held it open. ‘My mother died becauseIcouldn’t protect her.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I couldn’t risk it happening again,’ he admitted, and closed the distance between them.
He didn’t sit on the sofa opposite her. He sat beside her, and Konstantinos gave Poppy what he could.
‘I could not risk it happening toyou.’
CHAPTER TEN
It was asledgehammer to Poppy’s chest.
