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‘You were so awful to me I didn’t have any choice but to fight back,’ she whispered.
‘And you never fought back with your father, did you? You always ran away—like your mother told you to.’
She gave a slight nod, because to have done any more would have shattered her.
‘So there we are. It’s not fear that’s holding you back, Lulu, its anger.’
The powerful wave of emotion that had been pushing its way through her body since he’d arrived on her doorstep that morning broke, and Lulu found herself scraping back her chair from the table.
Perhaps he said her name—she wasn’t sure, because she was running across the restaurant. She knocked a waiter’s arm and the tray he carried went smashing to the floor.
Heads turned…there was a flurry of activity around her…but Lulu couldn’t stay.
‘I’m sorry… I’m so sorry,’ she muttered, and continued to push her way out of the restaurant.
And then she was out in the floodlit square, the autumn breeze cold on her bare arms. But there was no going back, and she ran down the street in her clumpy heels, her heart pounding.
‘Lulu!’
Alejandro caught her before she could hail a taxi.
He turned her in his arms.
In that moment Lulu wanted to deny it. She wanted to shout at him that her phobias had nothing to do with her, that it was something outside of her. Something she couldn’t control.
Her father.
She looked up into Alejandro’s beautiful face, lined with concern for her, and knew he was right. She’d never got the chance to confront him.
‘He never loved me!’ she shouted, shoving Alejandro in the chest with both hands, unable even to shift him, which was hugely, crazily comforting. ‘He was so full of anger he couldn’t love anything. How can you say I’m like that? I’m not!’ She stumbled back, hugging herself. ‘I’m not like that, am I?’
And there it was—her greatest fear. She wasn’t loveable. There was something intrinsically wrong with her.
The girl with the madman for a father.
The question was like a knife she’d put to her own throat.
‘
No,’ he said in a hoarse voice, stepping up to her, laying that knife down. Offering his large body as both punching bag and shelter. ‘You’re not filled with anger, Lulu, you’re angry. There’s a difference.’
He put his arms around her and this time she didn’t fight. This time she let him tighten his arms around her.
‘You have a right to be angry, amorcito,’ he said, his mouth warm against her temple.
She clung to him, not caring that they were in the middle of a public place, taking all the skin-on-skin contact she could get from him. And if a small part of her wondered where private, buttoned-up Lulu had got to, the rest of her knew.
Her family wouldn’t recognise her.
Nobody would. Only Alejandro.
He had undone all her buttons from the very beginning. This was the last one.
‘You should be angry,’ he reiterated.
She clutched at him—not because she was frightened, but because she felt that she could.
She didn’t have to hide her feelings any more.
