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Stricken, she dropped her head, but his fingers caught her chin, lifting her face, forcing her to meet his gaze. “You cannot keep hiding from this. You think you can tell me you are sorry, that you can apologise and I will forgive you. I can’t. Not now, perhaps not ever. Our son deserved better.”
Tears sparkled on her lashes. “Please don’t say this. All I have done has been for Jack…”
“In some ways, perhaps. But you cut me out of his life, and nothing makes up for that. I’m not beating you over the head. I have no interest in that. My anger isn’t a vindictive punishment, it’s not petty revenge. It’s how I feel every time I look at him and see what I’ve missed out on.”
She nodded, her eyes sparkling with unwanted tears.
“You chose to come here, to my home, to live with me…”
“To stay with Jack,” she reminded him.
“Yes. But that means me as well, and as part of that you get a front row seat to how I feel, what I think about you, to how your decision has affected me. If that makes you uncomfortable, then you can leave, anytime.”
Her throat was raw. “You know I can’t do that.”
“So put up with this. Put up with the fact that I am going to take time to deal with your duplicity, to reconcile the woman I thought you were with the decisions you made, and the consequences of those decisions. My intention is not to hurt you, Elodie.” His words cut her deep though, exposing her heart and her soul. “But hurting you may well be an unavoidable by-product of how I come to terms with what you did. I can’t help that.”
A small sob strangled in her throat. “And it makes you feel better? To see me like this?”
“No.” A raw, guttural admission. “Nothing will.”
She expelled a soft sigh, because she understood how he felt. How could she not? The last six weeks without Jack had given her an insight into what her life would be without the boy. To imagine a life in which she didn’t know him at all – she shivered.
“You hate me.” The realisation did something funny to her stomach. It squeezed hard and she trembled from head to foot.
“I hate what you did,” he grunted, his jaw locked tight.
The distinction was small, but somehow vital.
“I hated you,” she whispered. “For a long time.” She lifted a finger to his lips to silence him, and in the back of her mind she wondered why the intimacy didn’t feel at all out of place. “But that’s not why I kept Jack from you,” she murmured. “I hope one day you’ll understand me, and understand why…” her voice trailed off at the look in his eyes, a look of unforgiving hardness. “I hated that you disappeared. I hated that you were married. I hated that you were happy.”
His eyes sparked with hers. “Being married does not necessarily equate to happiness.” She had the sense that there was something he wasn’t saying, something he felt deep in his soul.
She ignored it. “I hated that I thought of you.” She swallowed, her throat was dry and sore. ?
?I hated that I thought of you as often as I did, and when I found out I was pregnant, I hated that I was happy.” She angled her face away, turning to look towards Rome. “I knew you were married. I knew – I thought – that what we’d done was wrong, and despite that, knowing that we’d made a baby together…” she shook her head. “It’s stupid.”
“What’s stupid?” his voice was husky.
“I wasn’t used to being alone.” She toyed with her fingers, plaiting them together distractedly. “I struggled with that, and then I met you and for the first time in…since…” she swallowed. “For the first time in a long time, I felt connected to another human.” Her smile was wistful. “And then I got pregnant with Jack and it was messy and complicated and stressful and terrifying, but also, amazing.”
He was watching her intently. “You’re from Australia. Did you think about going home?”
A frown flickered across her face. “Briefly.”
“But you decided against it.”
She nodded.
“Surely it would have been easier to go home, to be amongst family and friends, rather than to raise a child on your own?”
She considered this for a moment. “I didn’t really have family or friends.” Her heart thumped. “My parents died in a car accident, six months before I met you.” The words were cool, but grief was pressing down hard against her. “I’m an only child. They were the only family I had.” She studied the water, the small ripples that shifted beneath the dusk sky. “And until they’d died, I’d been so wrapped up in my career that I’d let a lot of my friendships go.”
“What did you do?”
“I was operations manager for a large textiles and manufacturing company. I reported directly to the CEO. I was young and I guess kind of addicted to my success. I loved my job.” She shook her head, dismissing that. “I loved feeling useful, being good at something, but I ignored everyone and everything to get where I was.”
In the back of her mind, she wondered why she was telling him this, why she was being so open about something she preferred not to think about, much less admit to someone. “My parents were really good about it. They were proud of me, I think. But I pretty much ignored them, all the time. I never went home, I never called.” Her statements were full of self-recrimination. “I just presumed they’d always be there. I thought I could get around to seeing them in my own time.”
