She flinched again. Her eyes were darting everywhere but him, but she was listening. He knew it. He knew her. He loved her. And she loved him. He was certain of it. She was just too scared to admit it, not even to herself.
‘I told you about the time I nearly died with pneumonia but what I didn’t tell you—something I have never told anyone—is that dying didn’t scare me. I was aware that I could die and I didn’t care. I’ve never cared about death. My time in the military is the closest I have ever felt to happiness...until you, that is. In many respects it was a perverse happiness because much of it came from knowing my time could end at any time. Accidents happen all the time. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t want to die—I didn’t actively seek death—just that I was drawn to the things that could end it prematurely. I always have been. My mother always said I was born without fear.’
He paused for a breath and gazed at the bowed head of the woman who’d wound her way around his heart and then burrowed a permanent niche into it.
‘You’ve said many times that I saved you but...’ A shard of his heart broke off. ‘Clara, you’re the one who saved me.’
He heard a sharp intake of breath.
‘You’re the one who taught me that I could have a fulfilling life without having to throw myself off buildings or indulge in rescue missions. You’re the one who taught me that I needed to accept my life and find ways to counter the boredom, to tame the tiger without stifling the essence of him. What I didn’t tell you is that since you’ve come into my life, you’ve filled that hole in me. I can endure any amount of tedium in my life if you’re by my side because you banish the tedium. You’ve brought sunshine into these stuffy castle walls and made it feel like a home and not a prison to me.
‘I know you’re scared, bella. I’m scared too. I’m scared I’ve lost you.’ He faltered as another shard of his heart broke away and he had to swallow hard to get his throat working again. ‘I’m going to leave you alone now. I will not try to stop you leaving if that’s what you still want, but I will ask this question of you—and I beg you to look into your heart for the answer... Why do you listen to those sentimental love songs so much if there’s not a part of you yearning for some of that love for yourself?’
Her shoulders juddered but still she made no move to look at him.
‘I ask that because you can have that love with me,because I love you. I love you more than I ever believed it was possible to love someone.’ His heart swollen enough to burst, he stroked a lock of her hair and took the one sliver of encouragement he could that her flinch was less than when he’d stepped closer to her. ‘I love you, Clara,’ he whispered, ‘and I will not give up on us. I will wait the whole of my life for you. You just need to reach into your heart and believe it.’
An hour later Marcelo was the one to flinch when he heard the main door close quietly.
Holding his face in his hands, he gave in to the pain that had been steadily bleeding inside him and wept.
Clara had gone.
Clara’s hotel room was the most depressing space she’d ever stayed in. Worse than school. But it was the only hotel in the whole of Ceres’s capital that allowed dogs and had vacancies. Still, she cheered herself up—or tried to—by taking Bob for lots of walks, often carrying him so his little puppy legs didn’t get worn out. She’d explored so much of the capital that many of the streets were becoming familiar. The only place she’d done a U-turn from was the huge piazza with the central water fountain. The memories that had hit her at the sight of it had hurt her bruised heart. It reminded her too acutely of the night she’d been brimming with excitement at the step she’d been about to take of becoming Marcelo’s lover.
It made her inordinately sad that they’d never had the chance to return and get a caricature portrait done.
But other than those walks, she seemed to have lost all her energy. She didn’t even have the vim to rip at the peeling hotel wallpaper by her bed. She’d lost her appetite too, something that had never happened to her before. Not just that, she should have started the process of getting Bob’s passport sorted but had failed to muster the energy to do that most important thing. The ache in her heart seemed to have sucked all the life from her, and what didn’t hurt just felt empty. Hollow.
When she dragged herself out of the hotel bed on her fourth day there, she realised she hadn’t had a shower since she’d checked in. Or changed her clothes.
Oh, this was ridiculous! She needed to step out of this funk.
The problem was, no matter how hard she tried, squashing the pain in her heart and moving on with her usual positive attitude was proving impossible, not when the image of Marcelo was lodged so securely in her mind’s eye and the words he’d said to her playing like a stuck record in her head. Not when she missed him so much it hurt to breathe.
Not even the sun on her face could lift her spirits.
She just needed to try harder, she decided. Much harder. This pain would pass. It always did. She would smother it and move on with her life.
After taking Bob for a quick run in the hotel garden, she stepped under the trickling showerhead and determinedly washed every inch of herself, then put on a clean pair of jeans and a top.
A knock on her door cut through the all-pervading silence of her hotel room.
She looked through the spyhole and jumped back in shock to see Amadeo there.
He knocked again.
She opened the door a crack and used her body as a barrier to stop Bob escaping to greet him. ‘How did you know I was here?’ she rudely asked as a greeting.
‘I asked around all the hotels that admit dogs. May I come in?’
‘If you must,’ she muttered.
As the room only had one small seat, Clara perched herself on the windowsill and folded her arms. ‘What do you want?’
‘To apologise.’
Well, that was unexpected.