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“Don’t.” The word was tortured. “Don’t apologise. You never, ever need to say that word to me.”
Tears filled her eyes. She loved him so much, pushing him away felt every single kind of wrong. “It’s just too hard to spend time with you. We’re not friends, Anastasios, and we can’t be lovers. So what’s the point of another dinner?” She looked around, wistfully, then focused her gaze on him. “I’d like to leave now, please.”
In the car, they drove in silence, only as he approached her home, he slowed, then swerved off the road.
“The point,” he said, the words rumbling from his chest. “Is that I love you.” He hooked his eyes to hers. “This is not an ordinary love, but something I will feel for all time. I cannot let you go without a fight, and yet, if you truly want me to disappear from your life, if you can honestly say that will make you happy, then I will. Because love is about sacrifice, and if I have to sacrifice my own happiness to guarantee yours, I will.”
She sucked in an unsteady breath.
“But if you think you might love me too, despite that night…if walking away from you will make you as miserable as it will me, then I ask only this: don’t ask me to leave without giving me a chance to show you that I can be everything you need. I’m asking you to dinner because I understand that you need time to trust me again, and I will gladly take as much time, going at your pace, if there’s even a chance, the smallest chance, that you might, one day, be able to forgive me..”
She closed her eyes, anguished and torn.
“I need to fix this.”
She knew how she felt about him, and even though she was terrified, she found her mind moving into lockstep with her heart.
“Do you know something I learned from your father?” She said, slowly, thoughtfully.
Anastasios shook his head.
“Love often doesn’t look as we expect it to. We are fed an idealized version of love from a young age, first through fairy tales and then through Hollywood, but in the real world, it’s more complex and knotty than that. He did love your mother, Anastasios, but he loved Annie too. His greatest guilt was that he couldn’t be what either woman needed, he couldn’t give either of them his whole self.”
Anastasios stared at her, and she softened her features in sympathy.
“I don’t know if you love me enough,” she said after a beat. “I don’t know if I can trust you not to hurt me.”
He made a low, guttural noise but before he could speak, she continued, “But I do know I’ll regret it if we don’t have one more dinner together. I’m not ready to say goodbye yet.”
He lifted a hand to her face, cupping her cheek, and moved closer, so close to kissing her, but she sobbed, confusion making it impossible to surrender to the moment.
He seemed to understand, and pulled back. “Thank you.” The words were heavy with emotion. “Dinner is an excellent start.”
In the end, his probation extended to multiple dinners, but each lasted for longer, and started earlier, until four dates later, they wound up having lunch, then going for a walk through The National Gallery, so that Phoebe could show Anastasios her favourite pieces.
To Anastasios, it might have simply been a gallery, but to Phoebe, it was a shrine, and sharing it with Anastasios meant more than she could say. More than she could admit, even to herself. Deep down, fear was still holding her heart tight, making it difficult to let go and step into the future she knew he wanted them to have.
“Your father hurt you deeply,” Anastasios said, that same night, as they walked, slowly, back to the car, neither of them willing to end their time together, just yet.
“It’s not so much that he hurt me,” she said thoughtfully, “but that he shaped me. I’m tough, Anastasios, because I keep people outside. The danger comes from letting someone in.” She lifted a hand to his chest.
“Especially someone who treated you as I did.”
Her eyes fanned shut. “I’m sorry.” Because she felt as though she was failing him, and herself, but she couldn’t help the self-protective instincts.
“Don’t apologise,” he groaned, and then, breaking the unspoken rules they’d observed for weeks, he wrapped his arms around her waist, holding her tight, breathing her in. “If all this can ever be is dinner, after dinner, after dinner, then I will be happy, because at least that is something. It’s something with you. Do you know how much I live for our time together,agape mou?”
A single tear slid down her cheek. She loved him. There was no sense fighting it. But how to admit it? How to fearlessly own that love?
“I feel the same,” was the best she could do, and he made a noise of relief, holding her so tight against him. “Dinner tomorrow?” It was the first time she’d asked him, and his eyes glowed with relief and pleasure.
“Absolutely. I can’t wait.”
When he arrived to pick her up, it was with a spring in his step, as an idea that had been borne years earlier suddenly seemed to have gained impetus, and Phoebe was at the heart of that.
“There’s something I want to speak to you about,” he said, as soon as she opened the door.
Phoebe lifted a brow. “Hello, to you too.”
