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“I’m not lying!” The words came out louder than she’d intended but she didn’t apologise, nor did she make any effort to soften her voice. She had the feeling that she’d been pushed from the safety and sanctuary of the hospital into a wild and untamed jungle, and that Fiero was a lion hunting her track, toying with her for a reason she couldn’t make sense of.
“Then tell me of your attempts to contact me,” he encouraged sarcastically. “Was there perhaps a dead battery on your mobile phone? A poor connection? Did the dog eat your homework?”
“Wow,” she shook her head angrily. “Fine. Have it your way. And you’re right. Kind of. I didn’t want to tell you. Not at first. Not when I saw who you were and I googled you and learned that you were married.” Her eyes flashed with silent rage. “Can you blame me, Fiero? I was furious. I hated you that morning, I hated you so much. To have woken up and found you gone after what we’d shared,” her voice wobbled and she shook her head to break the threads of those memories, memories that warmed her even when the aftermath was chilling. “That was bad enough, but to see photos of you and your wife all over the internet?”
His chest moved with the rapid rise and fall of his breath, but his face maintained a terse mask of disgust. “So you thought you’d keep him from me as what? A punishment?”
“NO!” She roared the response. “When I found out, my first instinct was to not tell you. It was a one-night stand and you’d disappeared into thin air, forgetting all about me. Why bother involving you? You were married, for God’s sake.”
“As you’ve said.”
“But then I had his twenty week scan,” she spun away from Fiero, focussing her gaze on the view of the roses growing beneath her window. “And I saw his little face and his nose and heard his heart so loud and strong, and I knew that you had a right to know. I could hate you for what you did to me, but that didn’t change the fact that you were his father.” She swallowed, that day burned into her memory. “I flew to Rome, and came to your house. I waited there, screwing up my courage to tell you about Jack.”
“So? Then what? Go on, I’m intrigued.”
His scepticism was obvious.
“Right as I was preparing to cross the road and knock on the door, it opened. You walked out. With her. Alison.” She felt that it was a betrayal to the sisterhood that she spoke the other woman’s name with disdain. The other woman had, after all, done nothing immoral. It was she, Elodie, who’d been in the wrong.
His features briefly shifted to show a greater level of cynicism. “I see.”
“I’m telling the truth. I saw the two of you together and I realised that you were happy. No, it was more than that.” Tears cloyed at her throat. “You were a family, and I had no right to come into your life and destroy that. I wanted our baby to bring happiness and love, and if I told you, it would likely have destroyed your marriage and I couldn’t do that. I didn’t want that to be Jack’s legacy.”
He was quiet for a moment, his eyes scanning her face. “That’s a very convenient story, except for one salient detail.”
“Oh?”
“My wife and I had separated six months before I met you. She moved out of my home; we stopped living together. We were as good as divorced the night I met you.”
Elodie had suffered a traumatic accident a month and a half ago, but the pain in her head now was blinding. It was like being slammed with a mallet. “I don’t believe you.”
“So here we are, man and woman, both determined not to believe the other. Unfortunately for you, only one of us has to bear the proof of a lie.”
Elodie frowned.
“Whatever you thought, whatever you felt, you chose to keep my son from me. There is no excuse – none – niente – that you can offer to make that okay.”
“You were married,” she responded softly, the words swallowed up by her confusion. He had been. There were thousands of photographs on the web, Alison and Fiero at charity balls, concerts, dinner, walking hand in hand in Cannes. Bile rose through her. She ground her teeth and tried to grab onto her anger again.
“I’m sorry I didn’t magically intuit the situation, that I didn’t somehow know you were separated. If I had, believe me, Fiero I would have told you about Jack sooner.”
“You should have told me anyway.” The words, though spoken quietly enough, slammed into her as though he’d shouted them through the room.
She spun around to face him, and whatever she’d been about to say slipped from her mind. The look on his features stilled her.
He was devastated. Her heart kerthunked.
“I have missed two years of his life.” The observation was heavy with accusation. “And these past six weeks, I have got to know our son. I have seen him laugh and cry and talk and eat, run and walk. I have kicked a ball with him and for every moment that is so perfect, I feel an equal sense of disbelief and anger, because I should have known him from infancy. I should have held him as a newborn in my arms, I should have wiped his brow if he were fevered, held his hand as he took his first steps. I should have been there.” His eyes glittered when they locked to hers. “You kept him from me, and there is no excuse for that.”
She felt wobbly on her feet. She reached behind her for the wall, pressing her palm to it as an aid to balance. Was he right?
She blinked, slowly, and then closed her eyes, needing to shut him out for a second. She tried to put herself back in her shoes as they’d been then. The sting of his betrayal, the man she’d believed him to be. He hadn’t made her any promises during their night together, not with words at least, but his body had been devoted to hers, his kisses had seared her soul. And then he’d disappeared into thin air, back to his marriage. At least, that’s what she’d believed.
Unable to find the words to defend herself, she shook her head. “Do you think I wanted to do this alone? Do you have any idea how hard it’s been?”
“No. I have no idea what it’s been like because you didn’t involve me.” She opened her eyes to find him looking at her as though she were a piece of metal, one he was keen to send to the scrap heap. “You didn’t have to do this alone…”
“So what? I should have told you, even believing it would destroy your marriage?”
