It was one of the longest days of his life. Both adults were doing everything they could to make it special for Max, which meant they spent the whole day together as a family. The tension of being near Annabelle and not being able to touch her, not being able to make her smile, almost crushed Dimitrios.
When Max was finally asleep, he went in search of Annabelle. He didn’t know how he knew where she’d be, but something drew him to the Christmas tree downstairs. He found her sitting on the floor with a glass of wine, her legs crossed, her eyes on the present Max had given her, a small frown on her face. She’d showered and was casually dressed, her face wiped of make-up, her blonde hair loose around her face.
His gut clenched again in a now familiar sensation.
He loved Max. That love had been easy and instantaneous. He’d taken one look at his son and known the child was a part of him and always would be. And Annabelle?
Everything inside him ground to a halt. His blood stopped rushing, his heart stopped pumping, his lungs ceased to inflate; he was completely still. Even the world seemed to stand as it was, refusing to shift with its usual motion.
‘Annie...’
It was the first time he’d abbreviated her name. She jerked her face towards his, her eyes huge and for a second unguarded, so he saw the pain there, the look of loss.
It was a strange thing to inspire revelation but it was like a lightning bolt for Dimitrios. He looked at Annie and knew in that instant he would do anything to make her happy. Not just to make her happy because she deserved to be happy, but because her happiness was suddenly the most important thing in the world to him. Because, if she wasn’t happy, he never could be. Because Annie had come to mean everything to him, and he’d been too mired in his suspicion of love and marriage to see what was right in front of him.
‘I was just...’ She turned away from him, the sentence trailing off. ‘I don’t know. Sitting here.’
Her sadness hit him in the chest but now his reaction didn’t bother him. He understood why his body had been lurching, clenching and feeling so completely different for weeks now. It had been so much smarter than his brain.
‘Max has had a good day,’ he said gently, coming to sit beside her. She stiffened; he felt it. God, he’d been such a jerk. How had he missed something so obvious?
Because he’d been fighting it—Annie—since the first moment they’d met, when she’d been fifteen and the little sister of his best friend.
‘He’s had a great day,’ she agreed.
‘And you?’
She turned to face him, her eyes roaming his face, as though looking for something. ‘It was nice to see Max so happy,’ she said eventually.
He lifted his hand to her cheek; he couldn’t resist it, cupping her skin there. She leaned into his caress for a moment and then jerked back, almost knocking her wine glass over. He reached past her, catching it, then straightened.
‘You told me about your parents’ marriage, and I told you about mine,’ he began quietly, knowing he needed to get every word of this right. ‘But I don’t know if I ever explained how much my dad’s behaviour affected me. I don’t know if I made it clear to you that seeing my mum broken by how much she loved Dad formed a part of me that I have held on to my whole life. I had a daily reminder that love is bad. Love hurts. That formed my backbone; it changed me. And I have never regretted that; I’ve never felt that my life was lacking in any way.’
Her eyes were huge. She moved, as if
she was about to stand up, to run away from this conversation. He couldn’t have that. He reached across, putting a hand on her knee. ‘Hear me out. Just for a minute.’
Her eyes swept shut. She wanted to leave, he could tell, but she nodded just once, then reached for her wine glass, cradling it in her fingertips. ‘Go on.’
He released a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. ‘I don’t know if you remember the first time we met?’
Her response was another short, sharp nod.
‘I found you—’
‘Don’t lie to me,’ she warned.
‘I’m not lying. I found you captivating. I found myself thinking about you and, whenever Lewis talked about you, which was all the time—he was so damned proud of you, Annie—I listened with my whole body. I was glad when he said you had a boyfriend, because whatever hold you had over me wouldn’t survive that. Except it did. I thought of you often, and I wondered about you, so I did the only thing someone like me could do—I went out of my way to avoid you. Whenever you were with Lewis, I steered clear. I controlled my reaction to you completely by not seeing you.’
She looked towards the tree, the shimmering lights catching her face in little blades of gold and silver.
‘And then, after his funeral, I was weak for the first time in my life. I followed my instincts. It was never just sex for me, Annie. And no one else would have done. I needed you that night. Only you could put me back together again. Only you could make sense of the grief that had deluged me completely. I needed you.’
Her lips parted at his words but she kept her face averted, as though looking at him would be too much.
‘You were so beautiful and innocent—so much more beautiful and perfect than I’d dared imagine. I think I knew even then that you were the one person on earth who could make me forgot how much I hated the idea of marriage and love. You were far too great a risk and I wasn’t brave enough to take it.’ He ground his teeth together, hating himself for the decisions he’d made then.
‘I disappeared out of your life because I knew if I weakened, even a little, I would want all of you—all of you for ever—and I’m not someone who does “for ever”. You deserved so much better than me.’ He groaned. ‘What a coward I was. A foolish, selfish coward. I told myself I was protecting you by pushing you away, by saying all those awful things to you, but I was protecting my own stupid heart, making sure there was no risk you’d ever want me again.’