Alex swallowed against the lump in his throat. “How did you get past it? Everything that happened? The way we were raised?”
Cesare poured his own second glass of Scotch. “You never really get past it.” He looked at his cousin, then deliberately held up his glass. “Unless you want to.”
“It can’t be that simple.”
“It isn’t.” He looked at his raised toast. “And it is.”
Tilting back his head, Cesare drank deeply.
Alex looked at his cousin. He suddenly envied the man with all his heart. “It is easy for you to say,” he growled. “I saw how you and Emma love each other, but I told myself it wouldn’t last. I had to believe that. Because I don’t know what love is or what it’s supposed to feel like. That’s why I couldn’t stand to be around you, Cesare. Because it showed me—”
“What you thought you’d never have?” He leaned forward in his chair on the terrace. “I realized I loved Emma when I understood her happiness was more important to me than my pride. More important than anything.”
“But I don’t love Rosalie. That’s the whole problem. I can’t.”
“You know you’re in love not just by the way you feel, but by the way you act. For the first time in my life, I cared about someone else more than myself.”
“Then I definitely don’t love her,” Alex said flatly. “Because all I’ve done is break her heart.”
His cousin tilted his head. “So why did you let her go?”
“Because—because I couldn’t stand to see her so unhappy. Because she deserves better than me. Because...”
“Because her happiness is more important to you than your own.”
Alex stared at him.
Could it really be that simple?
He’d set her free because he couldn’t bear for her to be unhappy. He’d sacrificed not just his honor, not just his comfort, but everything he’d ever wanted—a family, a home, a child, a wife.
He thought again of the loneliness of the villa after she’d left. His total misery. But he’d been willing to live like that.
For her.
Some people proved their love by proposing marriage, he realized. He’d proved his by asking Rosalie for a divorce.
“Do you see?” Cesare said, leaning forward intently. His eyes crinkled. “Do you finally understand?”
Alex sucked in his breath. “Yes,” he whispered.
His actions proved his love.
All the emotion he’d been afraid of feeling, he suddenly felt all at once. It was as if his heart cracked open. He saw the beauty of the Italian lake beyond the villa’s terrace, in a whirl of blue and gold and red and green. He saw his older cousin’s concern, which Cesare had always had for him, ever since he was a child. Closing his eyes, he saw his own baby’s sweet face.
And Rosalie’s. Her beautiful eyes, her open heart, her joy in the world.
I love you. He heard the echo of her trembling voice.
She’d known great pain, but she’d still been brave enough to risk her heart, in spite of all Alex’s demands to the contrary. In spite of the way he’d neglected and avoided her so he wouldn’t have to face his own feelings. She’d loved him through it all.
And now she’d gone back to California alone, to face her grief over her parents’ deaths and the devastation of her childhood home. She was actually thinking of selling land that had been in her family for a hundred years. She’d asked him to go with her, to be her comfort and support. He’d refused like a coward.
So she’d had the courage to do it alone.
Part of Alex had always seen her strength. It was why he’d chased her to Mont-Saint-Michel. Why he’d brought her back to Venice. Why he’d married her, in spite of having believed he’d never marry again. Because some part of him had known, from the very beginning, that Rosalie was braver. That she was stronger and finer than he.
Some part of him had known, even then, that he needed her.