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‘And then?’ His eyes were locked to her face, holding her still. She stared at him, but she was sixteen again, uncertain, terrified and also giddy with excitement at the life growing inside of her.
‘I didn’t know what to do,’ she admitted. ‘My father was barely speaking to me and I had no other family except his mother, whom I hadn’t seen in years. I hadn’t been allowed to see friends since you left, to speak to anyone. I was living in a prison.’
His eyes narrowed for the briefest flash of time before his face resumed a mask of unbreakable control.
He didn’t speak. She moved to the coffee, pouring herself a cup even though she wasn’t sure her nerves needed any extra ammunition.
‘There was no one I could turn to. No one who could help me make sense of any of it.’ She lifted a hand to her hair, tucking it behind her ear. His eyes followed the gesture and her stomach kicked, a confusing array of feelings rioting through her slim frame.
‘The first time I called you was a brutal experience,’ she whispered, turning her back on him, then moving towards a picture of Annie that hung across the room. It had been taken just before her fourth birthday. Alicia still saw this smiling face in her mind when she closed her eyes. ‘I was so in love with you.’ She shook her head slowly.
‘That wasn’t love,’ he responded acerbically. ‘It was teenage hormones.’
The pain she felt was as real as if she’d been stabbed in the belly.
‘For me, it was love,’ she said. There was no point in denying it, but nor did she need to wax lyrical about all the ways in which Graciano had brought her soul to life. ‘I missed you like I’d lost a limb.’
She kept her back to him so didn’t see his expression, didn’t see the way he closed his eyes and inhaled.
‘I didn’t come here to talk about us. I want to know about my daughter.’
‘Aren’t the two inseparable?’ she wondered aloud, her throat dry and sore, then pushed on, ignoring his interjections. There was a story to tell, and she couldn’t skip ahead, but she could truncate it. ‘I was devastated by what had happened between us, traumatised by the way my father had been. I didn’t know you’d gone so far away. I called, the first time, because I wanted to come to you. I wanted to run away and be with you.’ She lifted a hand to her heart, pressing it there in an attempt to stop the twisting pain. ‘But your feelings had changed.’ A divot formed between her brows as she recalled his repeated insistence that it had just been sex, not love. ‘Or maybe they hadn’t. Maybe I’d mistaken your feelings all along. That would make sense, given how easy you found it to shut me down.’
She sipped her coffee, eyes on Annie’s face in the picture, not seeing the pallor of Graciano’s.
‘So when I found out I was pregnant, I was scared to tell you. Even you. I was totally alone, Graciano. No family, no friends, and no you.’
Silence, while she brought herself together, and she waited for him to speak. Eventually, he did.
‘I used a condom.’
Her eyes swept shut. He was determinedly focused on Annie’s conception. Nothing more. The difficulties Alicia had faced meant nothing to him.Because he doesn’t love you.Realising that she loved Graciano changed nothing about his feelings.
‘Regardless of the fact you’d made your feelings clear to me, you were still the one person I thought I could turn to. This wasourbaby,’ she said bitterly. ‘And in spite of what you’d said on the phone that afternoon, I knew you’d help me.’
He didn’t speak, but now sadness and hurt were turning to anger.
‘Do you remember that call?’
His eyes bore into hers and then he nodded, once. ‘I was angry.’
‘Yes. You were. My world was falling apart and I turned to you, needing you, needing help—’ She left the words suspended in midair. ‘I wanted to tell you, Graciano. I never intended to do this on my own.’
‘So why didn’t you?’
‘Come on. How? How could I?’ She moved to him instinctively, needing him to understand. ‘I was still in love with you, heartbroken over what had happened, and you told me none of it meant anything to you. You told me to stop calling you—that you never wanted to hear from me again. You were awful.’
‘Yes,’ he said after a beat. ‘I was.’ He shoved a hand in his pocket, his eyes moving to the picture of Annie. ‘But you were pregnant. No matter what I said, you should have found a way to tell me.’
‘In theory, sure, but I was a scared, rejected sixteen-year-old. It’s very easy to say that now, to see with clarity how I should have behaved, but back then, I was completely shut down by that call. I was destroyed.’
His mask slipped for just a moment, and she saw the anguish on his features. She wanted to weep for how their lives had unravelled.
‘So what did you do next?’
‘What could I do? I told my father.’ She winced. ‘It didn’t go down well.’
Graciano’s lips compressed, forming a tight, white line in his face.
