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But he was withdrawing from her. Not physically, emotionally. She could see it in the tightening of his features, the bracing of his shoulders. This was a fight she couldn’t win. Childhood had a way of shaping you, sometimes beyond remedy. As a little boy, Alex had seen too much, his heart had felt too deeply, and so he’d closed it down, bit by bit, and there was nothing she could do about that. Not if he didn’t dare try.
‘You were right in the first place.’ He spoke with the appearance of calm. ‘Having sex has complicated things unnecessarily. If I had known that sleeping together would make you believe you loved me, I would never have—’
She swore under her breath, interrupting him. ‘I don’t believe I feel it, I do feel it. It’s fact, not fiction. And as for allowing us to sleep together, I don’t think either of us could have stopped it from happening. Just like I couldn’t help but love you. Honestly, Alex, I wonder now if I haven’t loved you this whole time? That night we slept together it wasn’t just physical. Something transformed inside of me, something so big it was terrifying.’
She hesitated, because she’d never planned to tell him this, but now the words came bursting out of her. ‘Do you want to know why I did that painting of you?’
Curiosity sparked in his eyes. His nod was deliberate, slow, his gaze intense.
‘I couldn’t get you out of my head. The things you said to me...’ She lifted a hand to her chest and clutched it there, as though she could somehow ease the awful, gutted sensation in her core. ‘You destroyed me, Alex.’
‘I was—’
But she wasn’t ready to be interrupted. ‘You broke my heart,’ she groaned. ‘I loved you then. I’d always loved you. It was easy to think it was just a crush, but now that I know you better, I understand my feelings more. I loved you, and I turned to you when I needed you—not sex, you—and you told me it meant nothing, that you wished you could undo what we’d shared. I was devastated. I felt like such an idiot for spending that night with you. And so I painted your face exactly as it had been then, so laced with scorn and disdain, and I made myself look at it every day, to remember never to be such a trusting idiot again.’ She swallowed. ‘It didn’t work though.’
He was very, very still, watching her with a look in her eyes she didn’t recognise. ‘Did you love me when you married him?’
She dropped her head forward, tears filling her eyes. She’d come this far. ‘Yes.’
‘So why marry him?’ he demanded.
‘Why not? You’d made it clear you didn’t want me, and I needed to get you out of my damned head somehow.’
He swore under his breath, then pressed his back against the wall, as if needing support. ‘All this time,’ he said slowly, the words heavy with realisation. ‘I’ve been blaming him for your insecurities, for hurting you, for damaging your confidence. I’ve been blaming him, but it was me, wasn’t it? I’m the one who broke you apart? I’m the one who hurt you.’
A tear fell down her cheek; she dashed it away.
‘It was an awful time in my life,’ she groaned. ‘It’s not your fault.’
‘Damn it, don’t make excuses for me. Don’t excuse me. I don’t deserve it.’
She flinched.
‘Stavros had died, my parents were heartbroken. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I needed—’
‘A friend,’ he groaned, hitting his palm to his forehead. ‘At the very least, I owed you that.’
Oh, how much his friendship would have meant to her! ‘None of this matters now,’ she whispered, throat thick with emotion. ‘It changes nothing.’
‘It changes everything,’ he retorted, the words half-yelled. He stared up at the ceiling, his face unreadable. ‘You can’t love me.’
She felt sympathy for him then, for how even the idea of love was shutting him down.
‘Why not?’ she demanded, even as a part of her lay dying.
‘You can’t,’ was all he could say. ‘Promise me you won’t.’ It was a demand, not a question. She wanted to deny that, and in her heart she did.
But she loved him enough to prioritise his needs, to understand that he was almost at breaking point.
‘I’ll stop saying I love you,’ she whispered. ‘But not feeling it. It’s not something that can be turned on and off.’ She’d laid it all on the line, but there was no ultimatum, no threat to leave him. Even when there was no hope of his returning her love, she knew she would stay with him, in his orbit, because it was better than living without him. What kind of fool did that make her?
‘So now do you understand why I need to sleep in my own room?’ she asked, neatly bringing their conversation full circle, and this time he didn’t argue. She waited, hoping, even then, but he said nothing, and after a few moments she turned and left, another small tear rolling down her cheek as she stepped from the room.
Over the coming days, Alex realised that there were some things in a marriage that could be worse than his parents’ arguing. Silence.
Not companionable silence, but heavy, burdened, painful silence, and smiles that were as fake as the lawn at so many houses. He had felt both from Theresa. He knew the silence was not to punish him, but because there was nothing else they could say.
The easy flow of conversation had disappeared, and any time he went to speak the words dried in his throat, strangled by his inability to give her the one thing she wanted. As for her smiles...they were an effort. They showed her attempts to keep things even between them, a sign that she wanted to persevere with this marriage even when it fell so wildly short of what she wanted and, hell, what she deserved.
