CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ASKyour cousin.
During the grim post-mortem that came at the end of any romance—where you bargained with yourself and beat yourself up over the mistakes that actually weren’t mistakes, were just you—in the sleepless nights when you rang your voicemail just to hear his voice, replaying every conversation in a futile search for the clue that’s going to unlock the mystery of what went wrong, Caitlyn actually found one. She heard for the first time not just the agony but the loathing in his voice as he’d said it—felt again his hand pushing hers away as she touched his pain and he shut her out.
‘Ask your cousin.’
So she did.
She reacquainted herself with her wardrobe and her make-up bag, and stepped out like a foal on wobbly legs, into a world that seemed just a little too bright and loud, and bravely asked the question she had to.
She’d sworn she’d never go back to him.
Would never set foot in the hotel again, would never be in the same room with Lazzaro Ranaldi as long as there was a breath left in her.
She’d sat and drunk and cried with friends, had read the self-help books and grudgingly accepted that he just ‘wasn’t that into her’—she had done all the things a girl had to do when she’d had her heart ripped out and stomped on: rung friends instead of him, deleted his mobile number so she wasn’t tempted to text him in the middle of the night, removed him from her inbox. And she’d waited.
Waited to feel better.
To believe that time healed.
That one guy didn’t fit all.
That of course there were others.
Millions and millions of others, walking the globe at this very minute…
But there was only one him.
Only one man who could literally stop her heart as she walked into the hotel bar and saw him sitting there. Only one man she’d actually have done this for—whether it made her brave or stupid that when he’d called her and asked that they might meet she’d agreed.
For closure.
Closure for him as much as for her.
‘Thank you.’ It was impossible to look him in the eye when he greeted her—impossible, because if she did she’d start crying. ‘Thank you for coming.’
‘It’s fine.’ She’d insisted they meet in the bar, unable to face his office. ‘I’m sorry it’s so public. I just couldn’t face the…’
She couldn’t even say it—couldn’t stand to go back to the office where it had all happened.
Lazzaro understood. ‘I know how you feel.’
‘I know you do.’ She gave a tight smile, because he must—because she didn’t actually know how he did it, how he sat in the same office not just where Malvolio had been so vile, but where he’d fought so bitterly with Luca.
Why he put himself through it.
Even if Caitlyn couldn’t look him in the eye, still she could see the pain etched on his face. The scar that was gouged on his cheek was red and livid today—as if the hell, the cesspit of demons inside, were all clamouring surface-wards now. She wasn’t conceited enough to consider it had anything to do with her—she knew his rivers of pain went far deeper than that.
‘How’s Antonia?’ That wasn’t why she was here, they both knew that, but she wanted to know. She cared for the other woman whose life had been upended.
‘She’s doing very well.’ Lazzaro managed a small smile at Caitlyn’s surprised expression at his upbeat response. ‘She really is. The marriage wasn’t good—well, we knew that. But it turned out she knew it too. Not about the affairs, of course…’
‘Affairs?’
Lazzaro nodded. ‘It would seem that when you stumble on the truth you find a lot of untruths.’
‘Who said that?’ Caitlyn frowned as she tried to recall.
‘I did.’ Lazzaro gave a tight smile. ‘Very Zen of me.’
God, why did he—how could he—still make her laugh? How, on this, the blackest of days, in the midst of an impossible conversation, when nothing about this was easy or right, could he, even if for just a second, manage to eke out a laugh?
‘She really is okay,’ Lazzaro continued. ‘It turns out that she had wanted to end it for a long time—only she didn’t know how, didn’t feel she had enough reason to walk out on her marriage.’