“I know what I stopped.”
“Then why do you regret it so much?”
“I don’t regret it, not like you mean.” He could remember his father’s face still, as he’d administered punishment to men in his debt. The calm. The absolute calm. But worse, he could remember his father’s face when someone had enraged him. Could remember how volatile, how beyond reason, he became in those situations.
And always, the old man had a smug sense that he had done what must be done. Full and complete justification for every action.
Just as Matteo had felt after Alessia’s attack. How he had felt after the fire.
“To me you were just a hero,” she said, her words soft.
They hit him hard, like a bullet, twisted inside of him, blooming outward and touching him everywhere, scraping his heart, his lungs. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe.
“It’s so much more complicated than that,” he said.
“Not to me. Not to the girl you rescued. You were like … You were every unfulfilled dream from my entire life, showing up when I needed you most. How can you not understand that?”
“Maybe that,” he said, “is our problem now. You know a dream, a fantasy, and I am not that man. I’m not the hero of the story.”
She shook her head. “You were the hero of my story that day. And nothing will change that.”
Coldness invaded him. “Is that what led you to my bed that night?”
She didn’t look away. “Yes.”
He swore, the word loud in the empty expanse of the ballroom. “So that was my thank-you?”
“No!” she said, the exclamation reverberating around them. “It’s not like that at all. Don’t make it into something like that it’s. No.”
“Then what, Alessia? Your fantasy of a knight?” Her cheeks turned pink and then she did look away. “Dio, is that what it is? You expected me to be your chivalrous knight in shining armor? What a disappointment this must be for you. You would have likely been better off with Alessandro.”
“I didn’t want Alessandro.”
“Only because you lied to yourself about who I am.”
“Who are you, then?” she asked. “You’re my husband. I think you should tell me.”
“I thought we went over this already.”
“Yeah, you gave me that internet bio of a rundown on who you are. We told each other things we already knew.”
“Why do we have to know each other?”
“Because it seems like we should. We’re … married.”
“Not really.”
“You took me into an elevator and had me against the wall—what would make it more real for you?” she asked, the words exploding from her, crude and true, and nothing he could deny.
“That’s sex, Alessia, and what we have is great, explosive sex. But that kind of thing isn’t sustainable. It’s not meant to be. It’s not good for it to be.”
“And you know this because you’re constantly having spontaneous, explosive sex with strangers?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know?”
“There’s no control in it. No sense. We nearly let it get filmed, nearly let the elevator go to the next floor. Neither of us think when sex is involved.”
“Maybe you think too much.”
“And maybe you don’t think enough. You feel, and look where all of that feeling has gotten you.”
Her lip curled into a sneer. “Don’t you dare blame this on me! Don’t you dare act like it was me and my girlish feelings that led us here. That’s far too innocent of a take on it, first of all. Yes, I might have built you up as a hero in my head, but what I wanted that night in New York had nothing to do with you being some kind of paragon and everything to do with me wanting you as a woman wants a man. I didn’t want hearts and flowers, I wanted sex. And that was what I got. That wasn’t led by my feelings,” she said, her words cold, “that was led by my body and I was quite happy with the results.”
“Too bad the price was so steep.”
“Wasn’t it?”
Alessia looked at Matteo and, for a moment, she almost hated him. Because he was fighting so hard, against her, against everything. Or maybe she was the one fighting. And she was just mad at him for not being who she’d thought he was.
And that wasn’t fair, not really. He couldn’t help it if he didn’t line up with the fantasy she’d created about him in her head. It wasn’t even fair to expect him to come close.
But no one in her life had ever been there for her, not since her mother. It had all been about her giving. And then he’d been there, and he’d put it all on the line for her, he’d given her all of himself in that moment. And yes, what he’d done had been violent, and terrifying in a way, but it was hard for her to feel any sadness for the men who would have stolen her last bit of innocence from her.
She’d grown up in a house with a criminal father who lied and stole on a regular basis. She knew about the ugliness of life. She’d lost her mother, spent her days walking on eggshells to try to avoid incurring any of her father’s wrath.
But in all that time, at least, no one had forced themselves on her sexually, and considering the kind of company her father kept, it had always seemed kind of an amazing thing.
And then someone had tried to take that from her, too. But Matteo had stopped it.
“Do you understand how much of my life has been decided for me?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said slowly, obviously unwilling to admit to not understanding something.
“I don’t think you do. I spent my days mothering my siblings, and I don’t regret it, because it had to be done, but that meant I didn’t go away to school. It meant I stayed at home when a lot of girls my age would have been moving out, going to university. I went to events my father wanted me to go to, hosted parties in dresses he deemed appropriate. That day … that day on the road, those two men tried to take another choice from me. They tried to choose how I would learn about sex, how I would be introduced to it. With violence and pain and force. They tried to take something from me, and I don’t just mean virginity, I mean the way I saw myself. The way I saw men. The way I saw people. And you stopped them. So I’m sorry if you don’t want to have been my hero, but you were. You let me hold on to some of my innocence. You let me keep some parts of life a fantasy. I know about how harsh life can be. I know about reality, but I don’t need to have every horrible thing happen to me. And it was going to.” Her voice was rough, raw with tears she needed to shed.
She turned away from him, trying to catch her breath.
“And then my father told me that I was going to marry Alessandro. And I could see more choices being taken from me but this time I didn’t see a way out. Then my friend Carolina said she would host a bachelorette party for me. And for once my father didn’t deny me. I didn’t know you would be there. And Carolina suggested we go to your hotel and I … well, then I hoped you’d be there. And you were. And I saw another chance to make a choice. So don’t ask me to regret it.”
His eyes were black, endless, unreadable. “I won’t ask you to regret it, because then I would have to regret it, and I don’t. When I found out I was your first … I can’t tell you how that satisfied me, and I don’t care if that’s not the done thing, if I shouldn’t care, because I did. I still care. I’m still glad it was me.”
“I am, too,” she said, her voice a whisper. The honesty cost them both, she knew.
His eyes met hers, so bleak, so filled with need. And she hoped she could fill it. Hoped she could begin to understand the man that he was and not just the man she’d created a fiction about in her head.
She nearly went to him then. Nearly touched him. Asked him to lie her down on the cold marble of the ballroom floor and make love to her again. But then she remembered. Remembered the question he hadn’t answered. The one she’d been determined to get the answer to before she ever let him touch her again.
She’d messed up earlier. She hadn’t been able to think clearly enough to have a conversation with him. But now, she would ask now. Again. And she would get her answer.
“Will you be faithful to me?” she asked.
He pushed his fingers through his hair. “Why do you keep asking me this?”
“Because it’s a simple question and one I deserve the answer to. I’m not sleeping with you if you won’t promise I’m the only woman in your life.”
“I can’t love you,” he said, the words pulled from him. Not I don’t love you, like he’d said earlier, but I can’t.
“I’m not asking you to love me, I’m asking you to not have sex with other women.”
His jaw tightened, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. “To answer that question, I would have to know how I planned on conducting our relationship, and I do not know the answer to that yet.”
“Were you planning on asking me?”
He shook his head. “I already told you we won’t have a normal marriage.”
“Why?” She knew she shouldn’t ask, not in such a plaintive, needy tone, but she couldn’t help herself, couldn’t hide the hurt that was tearing through her. How was it she’d managed to get her dream, only to have it turn to ash the moment her fingers touched it?