His eyes darkened. ‘You don’t want more of what we’ve shared this last month?’
Of course she did. She yearned for that.
‘You don’t want to depend on anyone,’ he said gently. ‘You want independence, at all costs. I’m not asking you to sacrifice that. I’m not asking you to share more of yourself than you’re willing to share. That’s why this works so well. Without love, we can be calm and dispassionate, we can meet each other’s needs, we can be friends who see the world together, who live side by side. Hell, we can even share a family of our own one day, without any risk of getting hurt. Can’t you see how right that is?’
No, it was all wrong. So much of what he was offering made her heart swell, because it was what she wanted—to see the world with him, to have a family with him, but without love? Even when she had seen the dark side of love, and was terrified by its power, she knew she couldn’t stay with Luca, loving him as she did. It was better to leave, to nurse a broken heart, than to stay and yearn for what he’d never give.
‘It’s not what I want,’ she whispered gently.
So gently he had to lean closer to hear her words properly.
‘I have a life back in England, Luca.’
‘Do you? Because it never sounds like much of a life, when you talk about it.’
Her eyes dipped between them. He was right; he knew her too well. She swallowed past a lump in her throat, and then his finger was lifting her chin, tilting her face to his.
‘I have responsibilities.’
‘So we’ll go back for the weekend,’ he said with a nonchalant shrug. ‘It’s a couple of hours in a plane.’
‘No.’ Now that she understood her feelings, she couldn’t pretend any longer. The time they had left was going to be a minefield. She fidgeted her hands in front of her, then lifted one to his chest. ‘We had a deal.’
Disbelief was etched in the lines of his face. ‘And that deal originally included no sex. Then we realised we were attracted to one another and we changed the deal. Why can’t we do that again?’
She dipped her head forward.
‘Try it for three months. If this isn’t working, we can both walk away then.’
But she wouldn’t be able to walk away. If she was already finding the prospect to be a form of torture, how hard would it be in twelve weeks’ time?
‘I don’t want to change our agreement.’
Something shifted in his features. Rejection? Her heart ached. She was hurting him. And he was hurting her. It was exactly what they’d sworn they wouldn’t do.
‘I see.’
‘No, you don’t,’ she said with a small shake of her head.
He lifted a finger to her lips, silencing her. ‘It’s okay. It was just an idea, cara.’
She opened her mouth to explain, then slammed it shut. Just an idea. No big deal. He didn’t care. It didn’t matter. None of this did. When she left he’d replace her because, ultimately, she meant nothing to him. She was a convenient wife, just as she’d always been a convenient daughter, flying beneath the radar. Olivia’s heart was on the line, Luca was simply trying to manoeuvre a beneficial relationship into lasting a bit longer. She’d said ‘no’, and now he was brushing it aside. ‘Shall we eat out?’
She barely slept. Their strange conversation played over and over in her mind, tormenting her, making her doubt the wisdom of her response, so she wondered why she hadn’t just accepted his suggestion. It would mean more time with him. Wasn’t that what she wanted?
But at what cost?
Dawn light filtered into his room and, beside her, Luca woke, pushing out of bed and striding into the en suite bathroom. Olivia rolled over and pretended to sleep, pretended not to care that it was the first morning in weeks they hadn’t made love. Her heart was splintering into a thousand little shards.
The house felt like a mausoleum suddenly. Olivia couldn’t find peace, couldn’t get comfortable. She didn’t want to go out—she was too tired from a sleepless night—and she was finished packing. There was nothing left to occupy her, which left her mind with too much time to fret, to obsess, to panic.
Olivia caught a reflection of herself as she moved from one room to the next and stopped in her tracks. Her face was drawn, her lips turned downwards, her eyes dull, devoid of spark. She looked like her mother often had. Miserable.
Was this what heartache felt like? How had her mother lived with it for so many years?
And suddenly, Olivia knew she couldn’t stay any longer. One more night sounded simple enough, but it would be a torment beyond what she could manage. She was turning into her mother, allowing herself to be hurt, and Olivia knew one thing: she wanted better than that. She pulled her phone from her back pocket and began arranging the logistics, bringing her flight forward and booking a car.
It felt surreal to coordinate this, and wrong to do so without Luca’s knowledge, but wasn’t her independence something she valued? They were two strangers, really, regardless of what had happened in the last month. She’d fought hard—not for their marriage in the end, but for her own life, for her independence—and now she could step into it and enjoy the fruits of her labour. She could go home and see Sisi, and know that her sister would never have to make the kind of pragmatic marriage Olivia had.