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“Then believe this: I am completely miserable without you. I think of you every second of every day. I crave you. I long for you. I want to be back at Atrani with you, laughing with you, holding you. You have marked my soul and my heart, and they will be, forever yours.” He squeezed her sides lightly. “I think I fell in love with you the first moment I saw you. I became so angry that he’d met you first. You have no idea how angry. And then, I clung to that anger, rather than letting myself realise what you mean to me. But I have not been without you, ever since then. You’ve been here, in my thoughts, my dreams, and mostly, my heart.”
Tears filmed her eyes.
“You can tell me that you don’t love me, and I’ll believe it. I don’t deserve your love. But don’t you dare say that I don’t love you. I have lived with the regret and disgust, the guilt, of how I spoke to you, how I treated you, every moment since you left.”
She blinked away from him. “Because you found out I was a virgin,” she whispered.
“It forced me to accept what, deep down, I already knew, yes. Nothing about you added up to the woman I’d presumed you were. But I had to cling to it, because the alternative was loving you so hard, I’d be prepared to give up anything and anyone. I was scared.”
She dropped her head forward, his words some kind of balm, but the pain was there too, so sharp and hard.
“You think you’re the only one? You hurt me more than I have ever been hurt by another soul. What kind of idiot would I be to put myself in the position of allowing you to hurt me, ever again?”
“Listen to me,agape mou.You know me. You know my determination. If I swear to you now, on everything I care about, that I will never, not for even one second, cause you pain again, would you think about giving me a second chance?”
Oh, her heart. How desperately it wanted to reach for him, to accept what he was offering, but she’d been too scared.
“I can’t,” she whispered. “It was too much. Once felt like agony. Twice, I don’t think I’d survive.”
He caught her face in her hands, tilting it towards himself. “Only you can decide if the pleasure of the life we could share is worth that risk. For my part, I would take this gamble again and again and again. Without you, I know my life is meaningless. With you, it’s technicolour.”
“This isn’t fair,” she said quietly. “You can’t give me what I need.”
“What do you need?” He asked, urgently.
“Safety.” She hugged her chest. “Certainty. I don’t want to feel as though I’ve been dropped off the edge of the cliff. The way you made me feel that night,” she shivered. “I can’t go through it again.”
“I made the worst mistake of my life that night.”
She understood what this apology meant to him, that Anastasios was not a man to admit his failings, and that he was doing so now unreservedly. But her heart was still too damaged, her memory too strong.
“I’ve been hurt so many times,” she said softly. “I’d rather be alone than risk going through that again.”
His eyes swept shut, a look of torture on his features. “You deserve safety,” he agreed. “You deserve everything.”
Her heart turned over in her chest. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and hold him tight, to sink into his words and promises and stop overthinking things. But her past made her wary, and she wore that wariness like a shield now.
“I didn’t come here with any expectations or hope, except that you might consider giving me a chance to show you how sorry I am.”
“But a chance might lead to success and then—,”
“You worry I’ll hurt you again.” The words were wrenched from his chest.
She sobbed, pulling away from Anastasios. “You broke my heart.” She shouted the words, needing him to understand. “You broke my heart,” softer now, but heavy with pain. “And I had given it to you, so completely.” She wiped her eyes.
“I know that. God, Phoebe, I know.”
“That day…my birthday…it was so perfect. For the first time in my life, I felt cherished. I felt loved.” She shook her head. “And the contrast of those feelings to the crash down to earth afterwards. The way you looked at me, I’ll never forget it.”
“I hated the idea of you with him. It made me so angry, I couldn’t see sense. I got those messages from Tommy and I just…saw red.”
“You couldn’t see me.”
“I did. I do. I see you, and I love you.”
“Love isn’t enough,” she said, honestly, her heart collapsing at that admission. “You say you love me? That you loved me even then? And yet you thought the worst of me every day. Every day.”
He opened his mouth to say something, but she slashed a hand through the air, silencing him, angry beyond bearing. “You know what my life was like, growing up. I’ve been on the run from that pain for so long; don’t ask me to walk right back into it.” Doubts throbbed inside of her, but she knew she was speaking the absolute truth. There was danger in Anastasios, and it didn’t matter that she loved him too, that she wanted to be with him, she had to look after herself, first and foremost. “Please,” she groaned, wretchedly. “Just leave me alone.”
