I climbed out of the car and opened the passenger door on Cai’s side. As I unhooked the harness on his child seat, she appeared beside me. She was still flushed, but when she spoke she didn’t sound so wary, which I considered a good thing.
‘I can carry him,’ she said.
‘I would like to,’ I replied.
She drew back and I could see she was torn, as she had been on occasion all through the day. Giving me a piece of our son’s care was hard for her, I realised. But I didn’t resent her reluctance any more. He was precious cargo, and she was only protecting him, like a mother bear. The last four years or so must have been hard for her. Caring for a child was not easy.
‘I swear I will not drop him,’ I added, forcing a smile to my lips.
She smiled back. ‘I know.’
As I lifted his slumbering body out of the car seat, a strange emotion washed over me. Protective, possessive but also filled with a strength of feeling I had never had before.
I had picked him up a few times during the day—lifting him into the Galanti X model we had come to see at the test track, later at the restaurant we had gone to for lunch and at the beach, where he had run for hours, letting me chase him as he’d shrieked. But this time was somehow different, as he lifted tired arms around my neck and snuggled into my embrace. I held him against my chest as the feeling spread and felt the sting of something in my eyes...
Could it be tears? Surely that was ludicrous? I never cried—even as a child, when my father had taken a belt to me, when my mother had left my brother and me, or as a man when I had stood over my brother’s grave...
I could feel Belle’s eyes on me, so I gently shut the car door and swallowed down the rush of strange emotions. But I couldn’t seem to stop myself from folding my arms securely around the boy’s sturdy body and breathing in his childish scent of sweat, sea salt and the chocolate ice-cream that stained the front of his T-shirt.
As we walked together into the house, Belle rushing to open the door in front of me, the boy’s head finally stirred. He lifted his eyes to mine as I stepped into their new home.
‘Hello, Mr Alexi,’ he said sleepily.
‘Hello,’ I replied, impossibly moved by the fact his arms only tightened around my neck. He wasn’t scared of me. He felt safe, secure. Even after only a day in my company, he trusted me. I swore to myself never to abuse that trust. ‘It’s just Alexi,’ I added, for about the fiftieth time that day.
‘You smell different to my mummy,’ he murmured.
I let out a hoarse chuckle at the sleepy observation. ‘I know,’ I said as Belle directed me through the house towards the boy’s bedroom.
‘I like your smell,’ he said, then rested his head on my shoulder, his fingers threading into the short hairs on my neck, and dropped back to sleep.
The simple statement had the rush of emotion surging through me so strongly, I had to lock my knees as Belle opened the door to his bedroom and turned on a night light beside his bed.
I stood holding my son, our son, for a few moments as she pulled back the duvet, my hands cradling his body, feeling his breath against my neck and inhaling his sweet scent. I knew in that moment I never wanted to let him go even as I forced myself to place him on his bed.
‘Why don’t you go into the living room and pour yourself a drink?’ she whispered as she began to strip the sleeping child, her movements fast and efficient.
I nodded and walked out of the room, trying to control the emotion in my chest that was making it hard for me to breathe.
I walked through the living room and onto the balcony, and took a few steadying breathes of the sea air. But as I stared at the lights of Nice in the distance, just starting to illuminate the coastline, one devastating truth occurred to me. I would never again be able to dismiss the emotion this small boy stirred in me—because he was mine.
What surprised me more, though, was the realisation that I did not want to.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Belle
AFTER TUCKING CAI into bed, I made my way downstairs to the house’s large living area.
Where was Jessie? I needed her here as a buffer.
I had seen the rush of emotion on Alexi’s face as he’d held Cai so carefully, so gently, as if he were the most precious thing in the world.
He had been wonderful with my son... I swallowed heavily...with our son all day. He’d answered all Cai’s questions, talking to him in a way that acknowledged he was a child while also acknowledging he was an individual. A difficult balancing act few people instinctively knew how to do. But Alexi did.
Watching Alexi with Cai had brought back bittersweet yet beautiful memories of his close relationship with Remy.
Alexi, underneath the caution, the control, the commanding personality, had always been a supportive and kind brother, and it seemed he would be exactly the same as a father.