“So why are you here?”
Another group emerged from the pub, loud and jovial, so he looked over his shoulder. “I’m parked just there. Can we speak in my car?”
In his car? Alone with him? In a confined space? Maddie wasn’t sure she could trust herself. She shook her head, her eyes unconsciously portraying her mistrust. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Afraid I’m going to kidnap you?”
It was a joke but she couldn’t even muster a ghost of a smile in response. “No.”
Her eyes strayed towards her father, except he wasn’t there anymore. The street was empty, just the pretty twinkling of fairy lights overhead and the distant singing of Christmas songs.
Nico sighed, lifting a hand and running it through his hair. He seemed different somehow. Less confident. Less sure of himself.
“You’re scaring me, Nico.” Then, with another frisson of alarm. “Is it Dante? Is he sick? Is he –,”
“No! Stop! Let me speak.”
“Well, hurry up. I have no idea what you’re doing here and I hate that. Tell me so I can understand and then go back to my normal life, please.”
He nodded, but his eyes were watchful, his expression impossible to interpret. “Is that what you want?”
“What?”
“To go back to your ‘normal’ life?”
She gulped for air, looking away from him, a hint of anger bursting through her. “I don’t know what my normal life is,” she said with a shake of her head. “Honestly? I feel like a tiny boat on an enormous ocean with no idea what direction I’m going in, completely at the mercy of the tides and honestly, I hate it. Half the time I feel close to sinking. That doesn’t make any sense, I know, it’s just –,”
“It makes perfect sense,” he promised, his voice rough. “Because it is exactly how I feel.”
“You don’t get it,” she refuted immediately.
“I do get it,” he insisted. “Because ever since you left Italy I have felt like I couldn’t make sense of anyone or anything. It’s as though all the best parts of me disappeared the day you did, and I no longer know who I am. Without you, I don’t make sense. Without you, nothing makes sense, nothing works, and most importantly, nothing seems to matter.” He paused, scanning her face, perhaps waiting for her to speak but his words had rendered her utterly mute. “You are my everything, Maddie. My everything. You are all I think about, all I dream about, you’re the person I want to speak to whenever anything of interest happens in my day. I miss your smile and your laugh and your voice and all I want is to go back to that morning in Italy and shake myself for not understanding any of this before it was too late.”
Snow fell. People moved around them. The lights overhead twinkled. But Maddie was only conscious of Nico. She felt his every movement in every cell of her body. They were two people connected by a thousand invisible strings.
“I don’t –,” she shook her head. Words wouldn’t come.
“All of my life, I’ve told myself I don’t believe in love. Certainly that I don’t want it. But the truth is, I’d just never known anything like what you make me feel.” He moved closer, so his body was separated from hers by only a hair’s breadth. “And the more I felt for you, the more I cared for you, the more I loved you, yes, the more afraid I became, because in my experience, love doesn’t end very well. It’s not something I ever planned to rely on as a source of happiness. I like things that are tangible and make sense. I like numbers,” he reminded her so she was transported back to the cave in Italy, that beautiful, magical evening they’d shared looking out over the sparkling ocean. But he was so serious, his expression so sombre, that even those memories didn’t warm her. “I like things that are rational and sensible, easy to predict and control.” He shook his head. “That’s not this.”
She swallowed, biting down on her lip.
“That last morning, I wanted you to stay with all my heart but I tried to find a way to make it sound like something else.” He shook his head angrily. “The truth is, you answer every single need I could ever have. I love every part of you. All of you. I love you completely, and always will. And I’m still terrified of what that means. Of what the flipside to loving someone so damned much is, but I cannot live without you, Maddie. I can’t.”
It was too much. Her eyes filled with tears and her breath was shallow. “But you said –,”
“I was a fool. Such a fool.” He shook his head and she felt the strength of his emotion. She felt the sincerity of his words. “I didn’t really understand my own heart until you left. And even then, I pretended not to know what was going on, nor why I was feeling as though I wanted to shout at everyone, all the time. But it was talking to Yaya on Christmas Eve that made me realise.”
She was silent, watchful, waiting, so he continued.
“She was talking about my grandfather, and how hard it’s been since he died. And then she said that she’d do it all again. That loss was a part of life, of love, and her deep sense of loss was proof of how much she’d loved and been loved. And I realised.”
“You realised?”
“That one way or another, we lose the people we love. I pushed you away because I somehow thought I could control that, that I could limit how much it would hurt, but it didn’t. And I risked losing a lifetime with the woman I love because I was too terrified to admit how I feel, even to myself, certainly to you.”
A small sob emerged from her lips. She couldn’t speak.
“So I’m telling you now with no idea if even you, with your beautiful kind heart and your goodness and grace, will be able to forgive me for what I put you through. I have no idea if you still want me as you did then. But I’m standing here offering myself to you in every way and I’m begging you not to send me away yet. Just to think and see if maybe you can forget the last few months.”