Her declaration was anathema to him. Never forget how much I love you, Niccolo. His mother’s parting words had stayed with him a long time, but love was easy to forget when it existed in a void. It was eleven months before he saw her again. Eleven months of longing and missing, needing and wanting, and never having. He’d cried, as a small boy, for a need to be in his mother’s arms.
Love was a powerful idea that didn’t, in his experience, translate to much in the real world. Just like any kind of future with Maddie was doomed.
They wanted different things.
She wanted children. Marriage. All of the happily ever after fictions he’d long ago come to despise. But he wanted to give her an answer that would make her smile. Christo, he wanted to give her everything.
“It’s okay,” she reached for his hands, moving them from her sides so she could step away from the bench. “I get it. It’s fine, really.”
“It’s not fine.” He grabbed her wrist, holding her still, looking down at their flesh – his dark and hers creamy – so something within him groaned to a halt. “I want to love you. I want to give you what you deserve but I can’t. I just…love isn’t… It’s not something I’ve ever wanted.” He winced at her look of hurt. “It’s not part of my equation. I just…don’t believe in it.”
“Don’t believe in it?” She seemed to have caught his habit of question repetition. “Love isn’t a belief. It’s a fact of life, an instinct that drives us all.”
It was the best evidence he could have sought for why this wouldn’t work. On this point, they were in fundamen
tal disagreement. “It doesn’t drive me.”
Her tears fell unchecked now.
He closed his eyes in an effort to stem the guilt that rose within him. “It’s just the way I am, Maddie.”
Her eyes narrowed, and he felt a spark of irritation in her gaze. He was glad for that – he’d prefer anger to sadness any day, especially when that anger was directed at him. “No, it’s the way you’ve chosen to be.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, come on, Nico. I know you. You were wrenched out of your mother’s arms as a four-year-old kid. Of course you don’t know how the hell to love and be loved. Of course it’s safer to tell yourself you don’t want love because your only experience of love is being hurt by the one person on earth who should have been biologically programmed to always look after you.”
He was almost at the bottom of the well. It was dark. He was alone. He could barely breathe. Her words were pressing into him, making everything hurt.
“Stop.” He took a step back from her, the force of his reaction surprising them both. “Do not speak to me about my mother.” His accent was heavier when he was emotional.
“Why not? You don’t think I know a thing or two about that kind of abandonment? My mum was gone half my life. She cared more about every other kid on earth than she did me. I get it. It sucks. But you’re a grown man and you’re responsible for how you choose to live. Stop being afraid and let yourself feel this.”
He was resolutely silent, his expression like stone.
“Or are you actually saying she has nothing to do with this? Why a man like you would choose not to let himself care for another person?”
He groaned. “Christo, I do care for you, Maddie. Isn’t that enough?”
“I think you’re in love with me.” She threw the words at him like an accusation. “I think you love me just like I love you but you’re too damned scared to admit it.”
His eyes flashed with disbelief. She watched him, her heart breaking, her mind spinning, but somehow, for some reason, she couldn’t stop. “I think this whole month we’ve been falling in love with each other and the reason you’ve asked me to stay another week is because you hate the thought of my leaving. Because you don’t want to be away from me any more than I want to be away from you.”
He shook his head, refusing to acknowledge any truth within her words.
“What’s going to happen in a week?”
He was quiet, stony-faced.
“If I stay,” she pushed. “What then?’
“I don’t know.”
She rolled her eyes, unable to stop the derisive gesture. “That’s not enough.”
“I’m sorry.” The words were a growl. “I wish I could give you what you want, Maddie.” Her heart turned over because she’d wanted to fight with him, to inspire him to a temper, but Nico was incapable of reacting in anger. He was so different to anyone she’d ever known in that respect. Was it further proof of the tight grip he had on his heart, though? “I thought I was clear from the beginning. I believed you understood.”
“I know what you said.” The words were quiet. All the fight had left her. She could see she was on the losing side of the equation, yet that didn’t stop her from wanting to have this out. “But I also know that this month wasn’t what either of us expected. We were playing with fire from that very first time.”