“No, I fear for you,” he said vehemently.
Helooked scared to death, and she felt like calling him every terrible name she’d ever heard because she could see him receding inward, his head falling. She thought,He intends to leave it at this.
Nina shook all over in disbelief.
“I fear for my heart, too,” he said, raising his head and piercing her with his eyes.
Hector made a noise—it sounded like he was chuckling, she could not be sure. His thick eyebrows were furrowed, and he raised his hands, then dropped them heavily at his side, his fingers curled tight.
“You have no idea, Nina, what it is like to love someone so much, it tears you apart, that you think you will die when you lose them. And after experiencing such awful pain, you never want to feel it again any more than a man wants another limb hacked off.”
“I have some idea,” she whispered.
He did not reply, but she noticed how his jaw clenched at that.
Hector walked away from her, moving along the table, to the other end of the vast room, which served as parlor and dining area alike, this odd home he filled with its jumble of eclectic objects.
“Youarea coward.”
“Nina—” he began, and she bridged the distance between them as quickly as he had established it, reaching his side.
“Do you think you can put your heart in a box of iron and throw away the key? Do you think that is the best way to live? Keep your damn heart in a box and let nothing touch it!” she exclaimed.
Ready to depart, now that she had said her piece, she whirled away from him. Her chest burned with ardent sorrow, but at least she was glad she was not weeping.
“No, I do not think it is possible, because you are in there already!” he yelled back.
She gasped but remained afraid that if she said or did a single thing, he’d stop speaking.
“You are everywhere in my life. I did not want that,” he confessed.
She turned around. Hector was severe and the look in his eyes wasthat of a man in pain, not one declaring his love, but there was a sincerity that had been lacking when Luc promised her eternal happiness.
Nina slid closer to him. “Then why won’t you let me beside you instead of keeping me in a solitary corner of that box?”
“What happens when you stop loving me?” he asked tersely.
That was the crux of the matter, the invisible dividing line on the floor.
“Why should I?” she replied. “Because Valérie stopped loving you?”
She looked at him, straight in the eye. There was no room for coyness.
“I am not Valérie,” she said.
“I’ve noticed.”
“Then?”
“Then,” he muttered. “You were speaking of leaving the city a few days ago, of Luc Lémy, and I—”
“And you said nothing.”
He replied with a speechless stare, looking humbled. He was older than she, but one would have thought her the senior if they’d seen them then and noticed her carefully crafted boldness. “What would you have had me say? It would have been improper… and I thought you liked him, I thought—”
“I’ve thought silly things, too,” Nina said. “It doesn’t matter. But now? What will you do now? For a man who once gave me a pack of playing cards, I don’t think you’ve ever learned one must gamble in order to win. And despite all your talk of teaching me, that’s one lesson I can give you.”
She extended a hand and smoothed the cuff of his faded lounging robe, wanting to touch his fingers and not daring, because he looked like he might bolt out of sight, as he had bolted when they were in the tower at Oldhouse.
