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‘It was because I wanted you.’
I sat on the couch, my heartbeat loud in my ears, four years of silence shifting and altering and finally falling into place. ‘And you were...what? Keeping your distance?’ My voice sounded faint and slightly cracked.
‘Yes, I was keeping my distance.’ His gaze burned. ‘I was too old for you, and you were my friend, my stepsister. My duty was and still is to protect you, most especially from myself.’
It made sense, so much sense. The years of curt, cold messages, and finally no messages at all. And then that night in the garden, how he’d fallen on me like a beast let out of a cage...
I swallowed, the cold shock slowly fading to be replaced by heat.
He’d wanted me all those years. He’d wantedme the way I’d wanted him.
‘But you don’t need to protect me any more,’ I said. ‘You can—’
‘Yes, I do,’ he interrupted. ‘And it’s even more important now. You don’t want a platonic marriage, Jenny, so I can promise you that it won’t be. And if you want to talk about our living arrangements, our wedding, how we will raise our child, then we will. We can organise all of that together. It will not be an issue. But I cannot be your friend again. The relationship we once had is over.’
Tears prickled once again, loss throbbing behind my breastbone. But I ignored the sensations. Because all of this washisdecision, not mine. He was the one who’d decided on distance, who’d thought he had to ‘protect’ me, or some such nonsense. Who now seemed to think that sex was an adequate replacement for his friendship.
Even though the sex was very good indeed, I discovered that I’d been right. Itwasn’tenough.
I wanted him. And it wasn’t only about me, it was about our baby as well.
‘What about our child, Con?’ I asked flatly. ‘Will you distance yourself from them too? Will you tell them that you can’t give them love?’
That muscle in the side of his jaw jerked and jerked again. ‘That’s not—’
‘How do you think they’ll feel when they sayI love you, Daddyand you don’t say it back?’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Constantine
THEWORDSHUNGin the air, the sharp edges of them glittering like knives.
I turned away from her, looked back down at the papers on my desk, struggling to contain the fury and anguish twisting deep inside me.
I love you, Daddy. They were words I’d said once to my own father, back when I was very young. Too young to know yet how painful those emotions could be.
Domingo had laughed. ‘You really are a stupid boy, aren’t you?’ he’d said. ‘You should be more like your brother. He doesn’t bother with any of that nonsense.’
That had been the start of the wedge he’d driven between Valentin and I. Valentin had been rebellious, confrontational. Never doing what Papa said and constantly fighting with him. While I... I had found such confrontations distressing. They’d been painful and I’d hated conflict.
I had been weak back then. Vulnerable. I still remembered the cruel edge to his laugh and the lazy amusement on his face as he’d called me stupid. Reducing my feelings to something shameful and humiliating.
The only way to protect myself from him had been to become him, and I couldn’t allow the same thing to happen to any child of mine.
I would never intentionally do anything to hurt them the way Papa had hurt me, but if I was finding it difficult to control my feelings around Jenny, then controlling my feelings around my child was going to be impossible.
How could I expose them to that? I couldn’t trust myself.
‘I will tell them the truth,’ I bit out. ‘That I will protect them with everything I have, but love is something they will only be able to get from their mother.’
‘Oh, Con...’ Jenny didn’t sound angry now, her voice full of a compassion that made me ache. ‘What happened to you?’
Unconsciously I closed the hand resting on top of the papers into a fist.
She was still on the couch, her hands clasped in her lap, the sunlight from the window behind her streaming in, making her glow, illuminating all the dark spaces in the cottage.
Illuminating all the dark spaces in my heart, too.
