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“You think this is just sex? Really?”
Something shifted on his face, a look of surprise and then a small nod. “It has to be.”
“Because you can’t forgive me?”
“Because there’s too much on both sides to forgive,” he said gruffly. “We’re both responsible for this, Elodie. You kept my son from me, and I threatened to take Jack away from you. We bring out the worst in each other, not the best.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Am I?” His eyes bore into hers. “Am I really?”
Elodie stared at him, the man she’d fallen head over heels in love with, and she knew she was fighting a losing battle, but that she had to fight it anyway.
“Can you honestly tell me there’s no chance you’ll ever care for me like I do you?”
His expression showed surprise.
“Tell me,” she demanded. “Tell me you don’t care for me now.”
“Care for you?” He swore angrily, dragging a hand through his hair as though waking from a dream or a nightmare. “Maybe, Elodie, if things between us were different. You’re right – that night in London was about so much more than sex. There was something between us, a strange connection. Yes, I felt it too. Yes, in another time, another place, if I hadn’t had everything going on with Alison and Gianfelice…but life is always a question of timing and ours was bad from the start. Doomed. And it still is. You make me feel as no other woman ever has. If it weren’t for Jack, if it weren’t for the fact you kept my son from me, I think I would already be head over heels in love with you. If things were different.” He was quiet as his words sunk in. “But they’re not. This is the situation we find ourselves in.”
She sobbed, a wrenching, primal sound that had Fiero whipping his head in immediate response, as though a similar instinct flooded him, making him want to protect her, save her, to speak to her in a way that would fix all of this.
He didn’t.
“I know myself too well.” He said the words with cold determination even as his face was slashed with colour. “I can’t move past this, and I can’t lie to you. I won’t have another relationship with a woman who wants more from me than I’m able to give.” His chest moved with the force of his breathing. “Love should be about making someone happy, about living your life for the purpose of bettering theirs and I could never be that for you. Not after everything that’s passed between us.”
She sobbed again. “Maybe I could be that enough for both of us.”
“For how long? A year? Two? Before you grew tired of loving me without being loved back? I know you Elodie, as well as I know myself, and I know that would destroy you.” He swore again. “I don’t want that. I don’t want you to be miserable. I don’t want to hurt you any more than I already have. And I h
ave hurt you. I’m not blameless in any of this – I get that. I see my faults, I see your faults, I see too many faults for us to move past.” He stalked to the other side of the kitchen and stared at the wall, his back shifting as he drew in large, tortured breaths.
“You have to leave, to go back to London.”
She couldn’t leave Jack! Surely they weren’t back here again. She made a drowning noise and he whipped around, his eyes travelling the length of her body. There was pity on his face, and regret.
“I can’t. I will put up with anything rather than leaving Jack.”
“I know.” He swept his eyes shut but not before she caught the sympathy in their depths. “You will take him with you. Go home, and live just as you were before.”
“What?” Her ears were ringing. Shock and desperate panic flooded her. Did he want to be rid of her so badly he’d choose to ostracise his son? That made no sense.
“It’s what we should have done from the beginning. What I should have done. I have headquarters in London,” he spoke slowly, calmly. “I can start to base myself there more, so I can see him regularly. Weekends, and as he gets older, we will build up to fully shared custody. It will be easier for you if we don’t see much of each other, so I will work out a schedule with Emilia initially. Bene?”
“No,” she wanted to scream, but all she could do was shake her head from side to side so her dark hair whipped her cheeks. “It is not bene. I’m in love with you, Fiero. Wild, free-falling, tumbling off the edge of a cliff love, and I’m asking you to look into your heart and see that maybe what you feel for me isn’t what you think. And instead, you’re calmly making plans to excise me from your life?”
“For your own sake,” he insisted, his determination and implacability galling.
“Don’t tell me what’s good for me,” she fired at him angrily. “Don’t you dare!”
“Well, what do you suggest then?” He prompted, the words cold, calm, and so infuriating for that, because she didn’t really think he was feeling coldness towards her. She knew him better than that and she understood that the ability to control your emotions outwardly didn’t equate to a lack of them inwardly. She’d seen his heart. She’d seen it grieve for the loss of his son, for what his wife had suffered, she’d seen it hurt for what he’d lost with Jack, and for the death of his grandfather. He felt things deeply, even if he felt nothing for her.
I can make you only one promise: it is, and always will be, just sex.
He’d been so sure of that, so determined on that score, and not once had he waivered. Not once had he retracted those words or hinted that maybe, just maybe, there was more between them.
“I don’t know.” Even to her own ears, her voice was feeble. Tremulous.
