AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She sat at the pool’s edge and took in the natural quiet that was particular to Frigiliana. Birds twittered, leaves rustled, a goat bleated somewhere in the distance, and it was the most restful kind of quiet she’d heard in years. She inhaled the scent of lemons from the fruit trees below and wondered if she had been wrong to leave this place.
Strange that it had all been because of a dress. Full of sequins and sparkle and Javier’s expectation, it had been both beautiful and terrible when she’d seen it on the bed next to an invitation to a film premiere three days later. Beautiful because it was truly gorgeous, and terrible because the gift had come the very same evening he had left her waiting on a private runway for three hours, having completely forgotten that he’d agreed to come to her friend’s party.
That night she’d realised that she’d never be able to go to Santi’s film premiere, never make it through the night without breaking down. Part of her had worried that all the months of loneliness and desperate need to be loved would come pouring out in humiliating desperation, but the larger part—the far greater fear—was that, even if she did, it wouldn’t matter. Because, deep down, she worried that she had tied herself for the rest of her life to a man who would never love her back.
She brushed a tear from her cheek and kicked her legs in the water. Heart heavy and thoughts swirling, she took a deep breath, let herself fall.
Javier had worried the entire time his wife had locked herself in her room, hating the way that it made him feel on the outside looking in.Cristo, it was worse than when she’d been in London.
He knew he’d scared her. For a moment, he’d scared himself. He rolled the shoulder that had a new ache he could add to his collection. He’d not had an accident or hurt himself since...he rubbed at the scar on his collarbone...since he’d learned not to, he thought darkly.
At age seven, he’d walked around with a broken collarbone for nearly twenty-four hours until his teacher had noticed something wrong and sent him to hospital. He’d fallen the day before on his bicycle, but his mother had told him he was trying to ruin her day, trying to take the attention away from her. She’d demanded to know why she had been sent such ungrateful, mean children: Gabi who cried all the time and Javi who just took and took and took. She’d called him a succubus and though he hadn’t known the word, he’d understood what his mother had meant.
Things might have been different if it had happened on one of her ‘good’ days. Renata would have rushed him to hospital, primarily so that she could bathe in the lavish praise of being the perfect mother she sometimes liked to be seen as. But it hadn’t been a good day. Renata had just split with her second husband and she was always especially difficult when that happened. But he’d still asked her.
Please, Mamá, it hurts.
The memory of it brought a visceral nausea that threatened to overwhelm him, even now. He’d never told anyone what it had been like growing up with his mother. Santi had guessed enough but even he didn’t know the truth of how terrifying it was not to know what mood she would be in. Obsessively loving could flip to vicious jealousy in the blink of an eye. Most of her erratic behaviour had been excused by her family asdramatic, but Javier had always suspected that his uncle knew.
In his father’s absence, his mother’s brother, Gael, had taken Javier under his wing and instructed him in the wider family business. Javier had worked in some capacity in every one of his uncle’s businesses since he was fourteen years old, before being entrusted with a small delivery service company on his eighteenth birthday.
Gael’s gift had been more than Javier had ever expected, because his mother wouldn’t willingly relinquish control of the textile empire she had inherited from her father. He remembered the time he’d had the temerity to ask her if one day he might run it, like she did. Renata had looked him dead in the eye and, with more seriousness than he’d ever seen from her, replied,‘Never.’
No. She would never relinquish control of that company. Anything Javier had achieved was because of his uncle. But the difficulty there was the anger. An anger he tried to bury against the man who had allowed his mother to get away with what she did. But it was because of that anger that he’d impetuously used money from the start-up property business to invest in Santi’s first film.
The complex emotions seethed through his veins, making him feel close to an edge he didn’t want to approach. Being with Emily was forcing him to feel things that he had managed well enough to leave alone for the last six years. And now he was beginning to wonder if it hadn’t been stubborn pride keeping him from her, but that it had been easier. His conscience stirred painfully in his chest. Because he’d known that things hadn’t been okay between them. Each time he’d come home it was as if another shard had been chipped away and all he’d felt was that he was failing. Letting everyone down—Emily, Gael...he was failing.
‘You’re just like your father. A coward. A failure.’
He pounded the wall with the side of his fist. No. He was nothing like his father. He wasn’t a failure and he didn’t walk away. He would fix this with Emily. She would return to his side and they would be happy, dammit.
Because he knew she cared. He’d seen it in her eyes when she’d found him moments after he’d fallen. He’d felt it on his tongue in the taste of her, in the way she’d gripped his shirt and pulled him against her in the kiss that morning. He’d counted it in the pulse rate he’d felt when he’d grasped her wrist. Heknewit.
He took the steps two at a time down to the lower level and the swimming pool. He could feel it in him, the anger, the argument, the words that they’d never said, the disagreements they’d never had. Oh, they’d had passion in spades but in their last few months together she had taken slow backwards steps away from him and she’d fallen through his fingers like sand. But not this time.
Rounding the corner, he burst out onto the patio to find it...empty.
He frowned, looking around, and couldn’t see Emily anywhere. He knew she was out here—he’d seen her from the window.
There was a flash of white at the bottom of the pool—the swimming costume he’d talked Emily into buying six years ago. He’d made her promise to wear it at least three times a week, swimming pool or no, just so he could peel it from her delectable skin.
He looked closer, seeing Emily at the bottom of the deep end of the pool—hair floating around her like golden silk, eyes closed and hauntingly still. He waited for her to surface, something disconcerting needling in his chest. His breath started to become short as he imagined how her lungs must be feeling and still she didn’t surface. Alarm quickly replaced anger, a fist to his gut, and his mind skipped over the thought that this was what she’d felt for him after his accident. Maybe even that morning.
Alarm turned to panic and—
Basta ya!
He launched himself into the pool.
Something wrapped firmly around her arms and Emily screamed in shock, water rushing into her mouth the moment it opened. She was dragged up out of the water coughing and spluttering, looking up to find herself staring at a very wet, very close Javier.
Heart pounding and angry from the fright, she slapped at his arm.
He shook her, not to hurt and it didn’t hurt, but she felt it—his frustration, his fear, mixing with hers—and she slapped him again.
‘What was that for?’ he demanded.
‘You deserved it!’ she bit back.
