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Everything in him was spinning. Sliding this way and that as though it didn’t know where it was meant to be.
‘This is a time I should have my family around me,’ she said firmly. Pointedly. ‘And you have your own family to care for.’
He’d hurt her. He hadn’t wanted to, but what choice was there? It was her or Brady. Still, it didn’t mean he found it that easy to turn his back on her. Not when every fibre of his being was howling at him to change his mind. To find a way to make it work.
‘Brady is with Luis,’ he managed. ‘And Julianna and Marcie.’
‘But he should be with you,’ she answered, and he felt the barb as surely as if she’d jabbed it into his skin.
‘You want me to go now,’ he realised.
He could hardly blame her after all he’d just said, so this was no time to succumb to this offensive, putrid thing sloshing around inside him.
‘Message understood.’ He stood. Stiffly. Awkwardly. ‘I should have thought. I won’t disturb you any longer.’
‘Jake...’ she whispered, looking suddenly pained. ‘It’s just...you’re right. It wouldn’t be fair on Brady, for a start. That kid has been through enough with his mother without having to deal with...this.’
She was grasping. Making excuses. He could read her as easily as he could read an X-ray.
My God, does she actually pity me?
‘Don’t concern yourself,’ he managed flatly. ‘As you so unambiguously put it, Brady is my family, my responsibility. Not yours.’
Even though he’d made his decision, his heart still cracked when he thought about trying to explain to Brady why he wouldn’t be seeing Flávia, or Maria, ever again. To say nothing of Eduardo, or the girls. But Flávia was right—it was better that than his young nephew ever seeing Flávia like this. Or worse.
Jake had managed to whisk Brady home from the forest with the quiet assistance of Fabio without panicking him about what had happened to Flávia. The official line was that she’d been called away for a government inspection and that was it. He could never bear to tell the boy that something had happened to her.
He wasn’t sure he would ever be able to bear hearing it himself. Which only seemed to confirm that it wasn’t just Brady’s heart he was trying to protect.
Not that he cared to dwell on that particular realisation right now.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘FOR THE LAST TIME, Livvy, will you just call the guy and tell him how you feel? Before you dust the paint off my favourite vases?’
Miles away, her sister’s voice finally penetrated Flávia’s subconscious and she looked up from her cleaning task. She lurched forward, knocked a vase, steadied it and stared at Maria loftily.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Maria rolled her eyes.
‘Of course you do. You’ve been moping around for the last month. Ever since Jake and Brady left for England.’
So much for thinking that she’d contained her feelings well. Still, Flávia pulled back her shoulders and thrust her head a little higher into the air.
But it was exhausting, trying to pretend that her heart wasn’t smashed into a billion tiny fragments.
She should never have sent Jake away. Never. But what choice had she had? Once the doctor had told her the news.
‘Should I remind you that I got bitten? That I’ve been unwell? If I have been acting a little oddly, it’s because I’m under the weather. Not because I’m moping!’ She practically spat the word out.
Maria levelled a direct stare at her. ‘You’ve been moping.’
‘No, I—’
‘You love the guy and he loves you. So why make a drama out of it when all you have to do is call him and tell him you’re sorry?’ she added archly.
‘I don’t love him,’ Flávia protested—poorly, probably, since this was to her sister. She felt too hot. Too...tight. ‘But even if I did, Jake Cooper certainly doesn’t love me.’
