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“Then what are you afraid of?”
I think about my answer but know I can’t do anything but face the truth.
“Falling for you so far that I can’t walk away before we get hurt. I don’t want to hurt you, Victoria, but I’m not capable of loving you like you deserve. I don’t know how.”
“Oh, Nicholas, I wish I could make you see how wrong you are. You told me in Rome that you don’t believe in love, but I don’t think that’s true. I just think you are scared to love.”
Maybe she’s right.
Because I know that my mother’s love for my father was real. I didn’t need to see it to feel how real it was for her. It’s in the way she talks about him, the look in her eyes and the years of loneliness she has endured because nothing has ever come close to the love she felt with him.
So, I believe in love in some ways, but I have also seen the hurt in her during the quiet moments at night when I was younger and she would hold herself in her bed, with silent tears streaming down her face, crying over what she had lost. Thinking he had just left her and that she wasn’t good enough for him. I know I won’t survive that kind of hurt. I too lived it my whole life, thinking I wasn’t good enough to be loved. I know it was irrational, but the mind is a powerful thing, and if you think something long enough, then it becomes a part of you that you can no longer shift.
And nothing will ever take away the vision of my mother breaking into pieces at my father’s grave when she finally came to London to meet my grandfather. Every piece of herself that she had been holding together for all those years crumbled as I held her sobbing for what felt like hours. That is the real pain of true love.
I can’t do that. I’m not as strong as she was.
That’s why I can’t love, because the truth is, I’m not strong enough to survive the loss.
“Love is something that you shouldn’t be scared of… but I’m terrified of it,” I admit, kissing her on the lips, trying to get her to understand. “And I know I will never get past that.” I kiss her again. “I’m broken, and you are perfect. I can’t ask you to love a broken man…”
But my heart for the first time in my life is crying out to her…please, love a broken man. I’m begging you.
ChapterNineteen
VICTORIA
Oh, my poor Nicholas. The sadness in his eyes at how broken he feels is so heart-wrenching.
“You aren’t broken, you just need to learn that it is okay to open your heart.” To me, please open it to me.
My head is telling me I will probably regret this, but I want to go all in with him, because I know that deep inside is the man I could love, without a doubt.
He will push me to the point that I want to kill him daily, but as long as I can come home to this beautiful man, this sensitive loving man, then I’ll take all the fire between us day in and day out.
Elouise is going to want to lock me up when she hears what is in my head. She will tell me all the reasons he is wrong for me. The age gap, the lifestyle, the stress levels he drives me to, and pushing aside my dreams. But I think he will be worth it all.
I want to give it a shot to see if we can make this work, as crazy as that sounds.
Now I just need to convince Nicholas that even if he thinks he’s broken, which he’s not, that it will be okay. He can get past the heavy weight he has carried for way too long.
His laugh surprises me a little. “I tried keeping my heart closed, but you just barged through the door anyway.”
“Well, then look out, baby, because you ain’t seen nothing yet!” And this is what he needs from me. To acknowledge how this is hard for him, but to give him the tools of comedy and dare I say sex to get himself through to the other side. The gap between us is wide at the moment, but with time, I can fill in from the edges until it is only a small step for him to make it to the other side.
“Why does that frighten the hell out of me but excite me at the same time?” He sighs but in a good way. Nicholas sits up again and looks at me. “I’m in trouble with you, aren’t I?” He’s half joking but half serious.
“No more trouble than I am with you. I didn’t factor you into my life plan, Nicholas Darby, but you came thundering in anyway. I like surprises, but with you, I’m still trying to get over the initial shock of what have I walked into.”
“Ditto, beautiful. Fucking ditto.” Pulling me to him, his lips are so soft as they take mine. Nothing like the intensity when he is trying to fuck me into submission.
This kiss is him laying himself bare to me, as much as he can so far.
And for now… that’s enough.
“Come to bed with me,” he says, standing and holding his hand out for me to take.
My brain is worried that he is about to slip back behind the wall and use sex to calm his feelings, but the look on my face must tell a story.
