A heavy silence falls over the room when she stops talking, her blue eyes suddenly glistening at the memory. And I’m reminded of yesterday, when I brought her home to the apartment and helped her to the bath and saw the bottom of her foot for the first time.
She’d told me what happened.What does that mean, that she was willing to tell me what happened, and not him?Had she remembered his reaction and told me out of fear that I’d do the same?
“I told you because I’m tired of pretending it didn’t happen.”
I look up at her, startled. Her face is still and pale, her eyes still glistening, though I don’t see any tears spilling over. It’s as if she read my mind, and I want to go to her more than ever at that moment, to hold her and touch her and tell her that I’ll soothe away all the pain. That as long as I’m here, no one will hurt her ever again.
“Everyone says I should try to heal. You, Sofia, Caterina, even Sasha. And I don’t think I can do that if I keep shoving it down, trying not to think about it, keeping it hidden. It happened. Theyallhappened. So why not talk about it?” She tilts her chin up, swallowing hard. “Maybe then they won’t feel like ghosts, haunting me all of the time.”
Ana is quiet for a long moment after that, looking down at her fingers, still twisting the tassels between them. “He had me on a schedule of sorts,” she says finally. “I’d wake up, and he’d dress me in a maid’s outfit—not a sexy one, a real, honest-to-God Victorian maid outfit. He’d bring me breakfast—at first in bed, until I made him angry, and then like I told you, on the floor when he wanted to punish me. He’d have me clean the apartment while he was out for the day, except for the rooms I wasn’t allowed in—his study and his bedroom. And then he’d come home, sometimes with Yvette and sometimes not, and we’d eat—once again—”
“On the floor, if he was angry with you.” I bite out the words. “I swear, if I never have to hear that shit again—”
“I’m sorry.” Ana drops her eyes instantly, her hands knotting together. “I won’t talk about it if it’s going to upset you—”
Shit. I’d told her to talk to me and then gotten upset with her in the next breath for doing exactly that. “No, I’m sorry,” I tell her gently. “I told you to tell me whatever you felt you needed to. And then went back on that. It’s my fault, and I’m sorry.”
She looks at me with such absolute startlement in her eyes that I can’t stop myself. I cross the room in three long strides, sinking down onto the floor on my knees next to where she’s sitting on the sofa. I want to sit next to her, but if I do, I know I’ll pull her into my arms and kiss her, pull her into my lap. Then I’ll never make it out of this apartment until I’ve gotten to be inside of her again.
“Ana,” I say her name quietly, reaching for her hands, and this close, I can see that there are tears welling in her blue eyes. “I want you to feel like you can tell me anything—like you cantrustme. I’m sorry. I really am.”
“I know.” She blinks the tears back, giving me a watery smile. “It’s been a long time since a man apologized to me, too. In fact—” she laughs a tiny sound that still feels as if it lightens the entire room. “I’m not sure if one ever has.”
“I’m glad I could be the first, then.” I don’t let go of her hands, and she licks her lips nervously, her fingers biting into her palms as I wrap my fingers around them.
“After dinner, sometimes he’d bathe me, and then he’d dress me in my pajamas and put me to bed.”
“Like a child.” My voice is flat, and Ana looks at me, her lips pressed tightly together.
“More like a doll,” she says quietly. “It didn’t feel parental, but it also didn’t feel sexual. It felt—I don’t even know how to describe it. Like caring for something very expensive. A doll is the best example I can think of, and that’s what he called me in French—his little doll.”
My stomach clenches at that. I hate the thought of him calling her a nickname, something familiar and sweet, even if the undertones of it are strange. I hate anything between them that could be romantic, that could have led to her thinking that he loved her and that she loved him in return.
I hate everything that he’s ever done that could keep her from me.
“He’d give me this tea every night with a sedative in it, so I’d go right to sleep.” She hesitates, and I can tell that there’s something else, something that she’s not sure yet if she wants to tell me or not. “So there wasn’t any time for me to do anything for myself. He didn’t have a television, and if I’d wanted to read, or draw, or—I don’t know, anything at all, there was no time built into my day for it. And I was so—shell-shocked, I guess, so traumatized that it never even occurred to me until I was here that I might have wanted to.”
She looks down at our hands then, and slowly, she pulls hers away from mine, her chest rising and falling as she takes a deep breath.
“I relied on it, Liam,” she says softly. “The routine. The things he did for me.Nothaving to choose—having every decision made for me. It was easier after everything I’d been through. It made me happy, in a strange way. I don’t expect you to understand. But I loved him for making it easier. For taking away the pain by taking away having to choose to get through it. I lived for him, for pleasing him, and there wasn’t anymoreme. And that was better because everything I had ever wanted was gone.”
Ana swallows hard, looking away. “I don’t know how to go back to being me, Liam. I don’t even know if I can be the girl I was before. And if I’m going to become someone else, someone different from that girl, or the one who survived Franco, or the one who stopped existing with Alexandre. In that case, I don’t have the slightest idea who she is going to be.”
Her eyes meet mine again, and I know what she’s saying. That she doesn’t know how to be with me, if she doesn’t even know who she is. That there’s no one for me to love, in the shell of the girl sitting in front of me.
But even as I stand up, knowing I need to get ready to meet the woman who is supposed to be my fiancée, I don’t believe that.
I know exactly what I feel for the girl sitting in front of me.
I just need her to believe it, too.
12
LIAM
When I come back out after showering and changing, Ana isn’t in the living room any longer. My guess is that she’s gone to bed—Sofia, Caterina, and Sasha are on their way back to Manhattan, and they’d done more today than I’m sure Ana has done in some time.
I don’t want to go out to meet Saoirse. I haven’t seen her since I signed the betrothal document at St. Patrick’s and told her that I was going on a business trip. I’ve never been a good liar or a man who feels that it’s okay to lie, and I’m afraid she’s going to see the truth written all over my face—that I’m in love with someone else and that it’s not her.