Page 21 of Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire)
“Same way I could tell with you. Same way you could tell with me. We back to sex, then? Good.”
“No, we’re still at yourwife.”
“Right.” He sighed. “Anika. Not so much to tell, really. We were married, and it didn’t work out.”
“How old were you when you got married? And how long were you married?”
“Twenty. And four years. Two or so together, two apart, then the divorce.”
He seemed to think that was enough explanation. I didn’t. “Why did you get married?”
He looked at me, his face carved into its most somber lines, then said slowly, “Because I wanted her to be mine, and because I didn’t trust her otherwise. Bad reason, eh, but we were young. I was in Uni, and she was as well. The sex was like an explosion every time, and the rest was rocky. You think I’m bad now? I’m under control now.”
“Did you…” I braced myself, then went on. “Did you hurt her?”
“Not any way she didn’t want. Physically, I mean. In other ways? Yeh. I did. And she gave it back. It wasn’t a match made in Heaven, but then, I hadn’t seen many matches that were, so I didn’t know better.”
I hadn’t seenanythat were, so I didn’t have much to say about that. I waited, and eventually, when I didn’t speak, he went on. “Then we got our diplomas, and I got an internship in New York, but not much money to go with it, and she didn’t want to go. Maori don’t always transplant well.”
“Why?” I asked. “Please, Hemi. Tell me.”
I didn’t think he’d answer, but finally, he did. “We’retangata whenua—people of the land. Away from our tribal mountain, our tribal river? We miss it like you’d miss a person, or more. Like you’d miss your family. And we miss our family as well. Our whanau. Being Maori is all about the place that belongs to you, the place you belong.”
“Which you could handle,” I said, “being so tough and all. But she couldn’t.”
He turned to gaze at me, his eyes liquid brown pools, the honesty in them piercing my heart. Whatever else he said or didn’t say, his eyes told me the truth. “No,” he said, “I wasn’t tough, not then. I missed it, too. It was bloody awful, in fact, but I still went, and I stayed. She said she’d come later, and she didn’t, and I wondered what she was doing back there, and I was right to wonder. She stopped emailing, stopped texting, and then she said she wanted out. And then, of course, I found out about the other fellas.”
It had all hurt. I could see it. “And the…baby?”
“Dunno. Notababy, that is.Somebaby? Yeh, she wanted kids for some reason, and I didn’t, not yet, anyway. I was all wrong, like you said.Wewere all wrong. I was…” He looked across the café, at nothing. “Not ready.”
I realized it. No, Iknewit. “You were afraid of what kind of father you’d be,” I said. “Maybe you still are.”
He swung around again fast, a frown drawing his black brows together. “How do you know?”
“Hemi,” I said, “of course I know. Because of your own parents. Because you want to be perfect. But there’s no perfect. There’s just trying your best.”
“Then why are you so scared to do it with me?”
That one took my breath away.Hecould say that? “Maybe because I just found out that you’d kept a giant secret from me? And because I don’t know how many more you’ve got tucked away? You’ve never told me about your mother, or your father, either, and we’re supposed to be gettingmarried.When I heard that ‘baby’ thing…” I had to force myself to go on. “I realized how little I knew about you. How little you’ve shared. We’ve never talked about so many things.”
“Well, I’m not going to tell you now,” he said, which wasn’t at all the answer I needed. “You have to understand something about me.” His hand was still holding mine, and holding it hard. “I’ve always operated on a need-to-know basis, and you didn’t need to know about Anika. It was over.”
Need to know? Need toknow?“That doesn’t work,” I told him. “Nothing’s ever over, not really. Everything we do, everything we go through—it stays with us. It changes us, for better or worse. And there’s no ‘need to know.’ Not in a marriage, there isn’t. You don’t feel that way about me. You want to know everything about me and what I’m doing. It makes you crazy when you don’t. Why would you imagine I’d be any different?”
“That’s how I work, though,” he said. “That’s what I do. I need you to accept it.”
I rubbed two fingers over my forehead, suddenly feeling so weary. “I can’t do that. I have…I had a mother too, you know. She was loving. She gave her heart, but she gave it to the wrong people, and when they broke it, she had no defenses. She was powerless to stop them from stomping on her trust, or to stop it hurting. I can’t be that person. How can you ask me to be? What do you want from me?”
“I want you to love me more than I deserve,” he said. “I want you to love me as much as I need it. I want everything.”
Hemi
I knew I was asking too much, more than any woman could give, even Hope. But she’d asked what I needed from her, and it was the truth. I needed everything.
“What was your mum’s name?” I asked.
She drew in a surprised breath, but she answered. “Rose. Rose Sinclair. And she was as soft as that sounds. As sweet, too, and since you asked? I think it killed her. If she’d cared about herself as much as she cared about the men in her life, maybe she’d have gotten herself checked out sooner, before the cancer had taken such hold. Maybe she’d have thought she was worth her own attention, have put herself higher up her list.” She sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe not. Why are we talking about my mother? Why aren’t we talking about trust? And all right—why aren’t we talking aboutyourmother?”
