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‘I can’t do that either,’ I said, the hopelessness of the situation suffocating me as I met Joe’s accusing gaze. ‘Because I can’t guarantee I won’t act like that again. I can’t be rational where she’s concerned. Seeing her with Alexi made me behave like a crazy person. Just thinking about her with another man is tying my guts in knots right now.’ Yet another cross I was going to have to bear for a long time to come.
Joe’s eyes widened. He swore softly in Irish. ‘I had no idea you’d fallen in love with her.’ He slumped in his chair, finally realising the hopelessness of the situation too. ‘In less than a week. That’s a hell of a thing.’
I let out a humourless laugh. ‘Precisamente.’
How ironic that it didn’t even freak me out to admit how far gone I was over Edie.
Less than a month ago—hell, only three days ago—I would have laughed in Joe’s face if he’d suggested such a thing to me. I would have called him a romantic fool. A gullible, naïve idiot—which is what I’d accused Edie of being.
I hadn’t believed in love, then. Hadn’t believed it really existed. And, if it did, I had considered it a weakness, a foolish sentimental emotion to be avoided and denied until it went away.
‘I can’t believe she walked out of here after you told her,’ Joe said. ‘I could have sworn she felt the same way. She was gutted after you broke up with her at the Villa, even though she was doing her best to hide it, poor kid.’
The shaft of guilt, fuelled by the memory of the tears streaming down her cheeks in the booth, combined with the hole in the pit of my stomach to make it a yawning chasm.
I know it was only five days. I know I overreacted, probably romanticised it too much. That it was too soon. But those feelings were still real. I was falling in love with you and you knew... And still you treated me like nothing.
‘I didn’t tell her,’ I corrected Joe as the evidence of exactly how badly I’d treated her echoed in my head.
&
nbsp; ‘Why not?’ Joe looked dumbfounded.
‘Because I’d already hurt her too much.’
What would be the point of telling her I loved her when she would never be able to forgive me? When I couldn’t even forgive myself?
‘That sounds like an excuse to me,’ Joe said. ‘How do you know what she’d do if you didn’t even tell her how you feel about her? Isn’t that making the choice for her?’
Something built under my breastbone, fuelled by the conviction in Joe’s tone.
‘I don’t want to hurt her any more than I already have,’ I said, but my reasoning sounding weak even to me.
Could Joe be right? Was there still a chance?
‘I don’t see how telling her you love her is gonna hurt her,’ he said bluntly.
But what if she decides she doesn’t want me?
The real reason I was reluctant to go to her, to lay my feelings bare, reverberated in my head. It was the same fear that had haunted me my whole life. What if I took this chance, risked everything, and she rejected me? Edie had the power to wound me in ways no other woman had—since my mother.
Except Edie wasn’t my mother. She hadn’t abandoned me. Until I’d abandoned her.
Images of her—in her second-hand ballgown playing poker to save her home, with a bruise blossoming on her cheek as she defended herself against a thug, with tears streaming down her cheeks as she stood up to me—shimmered across my consciousness.
Edie was brave and tough, passionate and resourceful and strong. She’d taken terrible risks, defied impossible odds to protect her family and her home. Perhaps it was time I did the same... If I wanted to be worthy of her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
‘EDIE, AT LAST you’re back. Didn’t you get any of my texts?’ my sister greeted me as I dumped my bag of cleaning supplies on the hall floor.
‘I had a job to do, Jude,’ I said, stretching my back to work out the kinks that had set in after scrubbing what felt like an acre of parquet flooring. ‘I can’t answer my phone while I’m working. If anyone catches me, they think I’m slacking.’
Walking out of my job at the casino had been the right thing to do. I would never get a handle on my feelings for Dante if I remained in his orbit. But having to return to scrubbing floors for a living had felt like an additional punishment I didn’t deserve.
‘There’s someone here to see you. He’s waiting in the library,’ Jude said.
‘Who?’
