“Because that’s what Emma realized tonight,” Amanda continued shakily after a few seconds. “That she can’t be with a man who has so little to offer. Do the right thing, Vanni. Think of Emma, not yourself.”
For once.
Amanda hadn’t said the words, but they pulsed in his blood and his brain as if she had.
Do the right thing for once.
He inhaled, the air scalding his lungs, and walked out of the apartment.
* * *
Emma listened through the pounding of her heart. She heard the door slam. A few seconds later, Amanda walked down the hallway to where she stood, leaning against the wall. She’d needed the support, listening to Vanni out there. For a few seconds, they just stared at each other.
“You heard it all?” Amanda asked in a hushed tone.
Emma nodded. She felt sick to her stomach. “He left,” she whispered. “I . . . I didn’t think—”
Amanda was suddenly pulling her off the wall and walking her down the hallway, her arm around her.
“He left,” Emma repeated again dazedly when Amanda urged her to sit on the edge of her bed and sat down next to her.
“I know,” Amanda said, looking miserable. “But I thought . . . I mean, after everything you told me earlier about how he proposed this no-strings-attached affair with you, did you really expect he wouldn’t?”
Emma just stared at her sister, her mouth gaping open. The truth hit her full force.
No. I didn’t really believe he’d walk away, in the end. I still held out hope. I’m such an idiot.
“Oh, Emma,” Amanda said miserably, obviously seeing the truth displayed on her face . . . the crushed hope. She hugged her tightly.
When Emma had arrived home earlier after that toxic encounter with Vera Shaw, Amanda immediately knew something terrible had happened. Emma had only to open her mouth and a partial explanation came spilling out, her agreement to an affair with Vanni, her caveat of a specific time limit to keep her safe, and her tearful admission that it hadn’t worked. She was far from safe. She’d fallen in love. Deeply and irrevocably. Emma hadn’t told Amanda about Vera Shaw, though, or any of the specifics about Vera’s threats or Cristina. That all seemed like too tender a topic to expose.
In truth, it’d shocked her to the core that Vanni had listened to Am
anda’s reasoning. She was willing to do her part to make sure that Vera didn’t spill that poison truth to him about Cristina, but she hadn’t thought he would walk away so easily.
Here it was: firsthand proof that his feelings for her hadn’t altered since he’d first suggested a sexual affair. Or if they had changed, Emma realized with a wave of dizziness, they hadn’t altered enough to make him fight for her. His suffering and his fear of letting another person get close had triumphed. It left her stunned, her entire being vibrating with shock.
Emma was not used to letting doubt and fear triumph. But it had. That victory was not sitting well with her. It was constricting her spirit. . . dimming it.
“Maybe it’s best,” Emma said after a moment through numb lips. The pain would have come sometime. She knew that now for a fact. Whether Vera Shaw had made her ultimatum or not, Emma would have eventually sat here, bereft and empty. She now knew firsthand that he wouldn’t have fought for her, because his fear of losing another was too great.
There was nothing to act as a stopgap. Loss crashed into the vacuum that had opened inside her with tidal wave force, stealing her breath.
* * *
For the next several days, Vanni went through his waking hours like an automaton. The feeling wasn’t entirely unfamiliar to him. He’d gone through a good part of his adult life on automatic mode, after all. He hardly slept, but he was alert and he responded when people spoke to him. When a few crucial issues came up associated with work, he’d responded decisively and coolly.
On the inside, however, some sharp kernel grated, causing the ice inside him to splinter. Finally the pressure grew too great, and he felt the cracking of his brittle control.
He rose from his bed one night about an hour before dawn and walked down to the beach, naked.
He stood at the edge of the lake as the waves lapped around his bare feet. The water stretched out before him, as black and eternal as the night sky. The contrast between the thick, suffocating darkness of this shore and the warmth and brilliance of the beach at La Mer struck him . . . Emma standing on the beach, naked and beautiful, waiting for him . . .
He plunged into the frigid water. It hit him like a slap, ruthless and stinging. The farther away from shore that he swam, the clearer his brain got. Ever since he’d heard Emma’s flat voice on the phone so many days ago, he’d been fogged. Now shards of memory cut through his awareness like slicing glass.
Emma’s deadened voice on the phone: I thought I could do this, Vanni, but I can’t.
Amanda: Because that’s what Emma realized tonight. That she can’t be with a man who has so little to offer.