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During the next two weeks, as Liliana recuperated, Antonio never left the center, always hovering around, trying again and again to get her to talk to him. But after that time when she’d first woken up, she’d given him nothing but silence. His presence seemed to plunge her into deepening despondency.
Everyone kept telling him to let her bounce back from the trauma, that she was hurt that much because she loved him as fiercely and that he’d eventually heal her with his love. But the days had passed and Liliana seemed to be drawing further into herself.
And today he couldn’t bear it anymore. He’d just entered her room, said he would stand there beside her bed, no matter how long it took, until she talked to him again.
Then she finally did, and shattered his heart.
Eyes no longer distant, raw, ravished, she looked up at him, her pain and betrayal skewering him to his vitals. “You lied to me, Antonio, when all I ever asked of you was honesty. Even if you’ve developed feelings for me, everything that you said or did, everything that happened between us, is tainted by this lie. Now I can’t trust or feel again. My emotions, my faith, like the body you’ve put back together, have been damaged and will remain scarred.”
Before he could swear to her that he’d wait forever for her to heal, that he’d erase her scars, she sat up, swung her good leg followed by her casted leg over the side of the bed. “There’s no more medical reason for me to remain here. I want you to discharge me.”
All he wanted to do was rave and rant and keep her there until she gave him another chance.
But he couldn’t press her more in her fragile state.
“I will. But please, Liliana, whatever you think of me or however you feel now, please, come back with me to our place, let me take care of you as you recuperate.”
She shook her head, and for the first time since her accident tears started to fall. He hated himself more with every track of moisture that stained her pale cheeks.
He wished she’d rave and rant. Her subdued misery was so much worse than any passionate display that would have given him hope he could revive her emotions.
All he could do now was stop hurting her more, let her go and hope she’d heal enough one day to let him in again. Pray that she wouldn’t shut him out like her mother had her father, for the rest of her life.
* * *
The day that should have been their wedding day came and went in total silence from Liliana.
She hadn’t gone back to Antonio’s mansion. And she hadn’t returned to the lab.
He was hailed as the leading expert of mending catastrophic injuries, but he’d injured the one person he needed to live, an injury he was helpless to heal.
It was during one of the surgeries he now buried himself in that he realized the truth.
It didn’t matter that he healed her so she’d come back to him. It mattered that she healed for herself, so she could resume her life, her work. He and what he felt were of no consequence.
Only she mattered.
And because only she did, if her emotional health depended on letting her go, he would.
Even if it destroyed him.
Eleven
Three months after the accident, though Lili had fully recovered physically, she hadn’t gone back to work.
Among those who regularly came visiting, Brian had been the one who kept persistently trying to convince her to do so. She’d insisted right back that she’d decided to take all her missed vacations at once.
Ever since Antonio had discharged her and sent her back to LA on his private jet, she’d left the house only for follow-ups and the intensive physiotherapy Antonio had scheduled for her, both performed by others under his command.
She hadn’t seen or heard from him since.
At times, longing for him made her unable to breathe.
Her father, whom she’d told a severely edited version of the truth, had been adamant it meant she’d healed enough to believe in Antonio’s love again. But she knew missing him had nothing to do with being over the trauma. Missing him, with every breath, had always been her default.
As for his love, after being dedicated to her after the accident, he had been silent since he’d discharged her. Whatever he’d felt for her, it seemed she’d pushed him away so hard he’d given up on her.
She couldn’t heed her father’s fervent advice to contact him. She couldn’t impose on him if he’d moved on.
