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“I’ve always loved you,” she said as if she was confiding a great secret. “Even when I hated you the most, there was a little part inside me that hoped that you would come back. Because that was what would make it right, no matter what had happened. I just loved you, and I wanted to be with you, even when I would have sworn up and down I didn’t. And when you did come back, what terrified me the most was that all that love hadn’t gone anywhere. It was just waiting—”
“It is impossible,” he told her then, sounding as if he was chewing glass as he spoke. “You must know this.”
“Which part?” She watched him stalk over to grab his trousers and wondered if he was having as much trouble concentrating as she was. What with all the nudity in the room. “Because I assure you, it’s actually quite easy to love. You just do it.”
Pascal didn’t say anything. He dressed quickly and quietly, and when she didn’t rush to do the same, he lifted one of those dark brows at her direction.
Cecilia sighed, then took her time refastening her bra. She stepped into her panties, pulled them into place, and then she took a very long time indeed to wander over across the office floor and pick up her dress. When she finally shimmied it over her head and back into place, he was gritting his teeth so hard that she was fairly surprised his jaw didn’t shatter.
She smiled. Pascal did not.
“I told you that you would beg, and you did,” he said darkly. “But I see no reason whatsoever to drag out the rest of this charade. I will have my secretary contact you and you can hammer out the details with him.”
“What details?”
“We’ve already covered this,” he said, but though his voice was as commanding as ever, his eyes told a different story. It was as if he was so wounded he’d…gone numb. And had no idea that he was staggering about while missing a limb. “Take Dante. Go back to your mountains. You’re safer there.”
“I love those mountains,” Cecilia said. “I always will. But they’re not the only thing I love.”
“I heard you.” His voice could have cut stone in half, and she was somewhat surprised she wasn’t in pieces herself. “I don’t need to hear it again.”
But she had decided to stop being afraid. No matter what.
“I want everything, Pascal,” she told him. “I want a real marriage. I want a real family. I want a real life. With you.”
“And you deserve those things.” He sounded stiff, but she could see the torment in his eyes. “But I cannot give them to you.”
She made herself laugh. “You’re one of the richest, most powerful men in Italy. You can give me whatever you want to give me.”
“Cecilia—”
“Think of it.Real life, Pascal. No threats, no lies. No secrets. Just us.”
And she could see the storm break in him then. She lifted her hand toward him—but he stepped back as if he was afraid that she would tear him in two.
As if she already had.
“I can’t bereal,” he threw at her, and her heart broke at the sound of his voice. So ragged. So raw. “I wouldn’t know how to begin. I was born broken and I’ve only gotten worse.”
And she wanted to put her hands on him more than she wanted her next breath. She wanted to gather him to her, and soothe him somehow. She wanted to shout at him, shake him.
But she knew he wouldn’t let her do any of that.
Instead, she tried to smile. “All you have to do is choose love, Pascal,” she told him quietly, but with every bit of truth she knew right there in her voice. “Choose me. Just once.”
Six years ago he’d run. And she understood why he had, why he’d believed he had no other choice. But understanding the past didn’t change it; it could only—if they were lucky—change the future.
“Just once,” she whispered.
But Pascal was shaking his head. And she wanted to scream at him, beg him all over again, but he looked tortured. Ripped apart.
“I can’t,” he gritted out. And then he stood a little straighter, lifting his head to meet her stricken gaze head-on. “If that means you have to leave me, I understand. I told you. I think you should.”
She had been asleep the last time he’d left her. And maybe that had been a kindness after all.
But Cecilia wasn’t asleep now.
She thought about the past six years, and how hard she’d fought not just to give Dante a good life, but to also make sure that her own didn’t feel like an albatross around her neck. She’d chosen her life, and she’d made it good, with whatever pieces she’d had left after she’d had to leave the abbey.
