“I can only imagine. No, I can’t even imagine.”
“Alison was destroyed. It took a long time to get past it, in any kind of way. A long time before she could look at me. And then, she became obsessed with falling pregnant again. It was all she could focus on. I tried, Elodie. I wanted to give her another baby, but there were so many miscarriages. So much heartbreak, and by the end, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t sleep with her. I couldn’t be with her seeing her grief and knowing I was the cause of it. We destroyed each other, in a way.”
Her eyes were wet from the pool but he was sure he saw tears fill them and he cursed her gentle heart then. He didn’t want to layer fresh pain onto her. This wasn’t her loss to carry.
“The writing was on the wall for months before we agreed to end it. We were wrapped in this cycle of torture. It was a nightmare, Elodie. I wouldn’t wish that marriage on my worst enemy.” He expelled a long sigh.
“I reconciled myself to never having children. I presumed there was something wrong with me. And then I saw Jack andChristo, Elodie, he was so like that little boy of mine, the little boy who was born without breath. Their noses and lips, their chins, their faces are so similar.” He swallowed another curse, but anger beat a path through his body, as it always did when he thought of the child he and Alison had lost.What cruelty could extinguish such a beautiful life before it had been given any chance to be lived?
“I didn’t tell you who I was that night not because I was worried you might discover that I was married and I wanted to cheat on my wife with you. It wasn’t really a conscious decision, looking back. It’s just…you were like an island in the midst of everything else. What you and I shared was so different to my normal life, and I liked that. I didn’t want to poison what we shared with my grief and my loss, with the hell that was my marriage. I was selfish,si, but only because you made me feel alive for the first time in years and I wanted to hold onto that at any cost.”
Her sob was like torture. He stayed where he was, even when his body was urging him forward. He’d told her what he wanted and she’d pushed him away; he wouldn’t prey on her sensitivity and kindness to satiate his physical needs, even when he acknowledged they were all bound up together. Physical, emotional, mental, sensual.
“Why couldn’t you have children?”
His jaw tightened. “I don’t know. Alison was averse to the idea of fertility testing. She refused to believe there was a problem despite all the evidence to the contrary.” He shook his head. “I went anyway and was told my side of things worked fine. I didn’t believe it. It felt better to believe I was at fault somehow, because then perhaps I could fix things.”
“Did you consider adoption?”
“I considered everything but she was determined. She wanted our son. She wanted another Andreo.” He paused, taking a breath to calm the torrent of emotions that always flooded him when he thought of the child they’d lost. “It just wasn’t going to happen though.”
Elodie was crying openly now, silently but obviously. “I’m so sorry you went through that,” she whispered, the words landing around him with a strange comfort. Platitudes had been offered at the time and none had helped, but her words did something, knotting inside of him, tying parts of his soul back together.
And then, a moment later, “I’m sorry for Alison as well.” She shook her head, sympathy contorting her beautiful features. “When I was pregnant with Jack, I was so terrified of something going wrong.” She shook her head. “I honestly don’t know if there’s anything that could be worse.”
“Nor do I,” he agreed, the words made hoarse by the depth of his feelings.
She was still against the pool edge but they were closer now. He realised he’d moved towards her without intending to.
“Did you,” – he struggled to finish the sentence.
“Go on.”
“Did you think about not having him?”
Her face blanched, and her eyes widened. “No, Fiero. Never.”
He couldn’t say why, but her assurance did something else, stitching other parts of him together. “It must have been hard, discovering you were pregnant.”
“I have always seen Jack as a blessing,” she promised, lifting a hand to him so her soft fingers splayed across his chest. His heart thumped as though it was hungry to speak to her through their joined flesh.
“Is she still in love with you?” The words were strangely bleak. Then again, it wasn’t really so strange, not given the sombre nature of their conversation.
Thinking of Alison though brought a smile to his lips. “No.” He thought of how she’d been the last time he’d seen her and there was relief as well, relief that she’d found a better life for herself. “We filed our divorce papers shortly after my grandfather died.” He pictured Gianfelice and the familiar yearning filled him – the gap that the Montebello patriarch’s death had left in his life was one that would never be filled. “That was when you must have seen her, by the way. I was trying to work out how you could possibly have seen Alison at my house, given that she moved out before I met you, but she came to stay for a few days around the time of the funeral.”
Elodie’s eyes swept shut. “You looked so close. Like a perfect couple.”
“We weren’t.”
She bit down on her lip. “I wish I hadn’t just assumed…”
He could see her guilt and it cut through him, so he wanted to brush past that, to ease her pain in some way. “Of course you assumed,” he was surprised to hear himself say. “Alison was like my sister. After what we went through, we’ll always be close. You saw that when you looked at us. We weren’t a couple, but we’re bonded by the loss we experienced. She’s the only person on earth who understands the sense of impotence, the depth of pain.”
Elodie scrunched up her face, looking away from a moment as she steadied her breath. “I wish I’d…”
He interrupted her with a guttural noise of rejection. “There is no sense wishing.”
She nodded, her eyes awash with emotion. “I know. I can’t help it.”