Page 64 of Bound by Their Christmas Baby

She shook her head but he couldn’t let her interrupt. What if she told him to leave? He needed to at least say what he’d come to tell her, and then let her decide what she wanted. And he would need to respect that decision.

‘When I got back to Italy, after Christmas, I just knew I couldn’t be responsible for making you miserable. All I could think about was the way you looked when we argued. The things I said. The way you stared at me as though I was…’ He shook his head angrily, dragging his fingers through his hair. ‘You were falling apart. You hated living with me; you hated Italy. I had to send you here because I wanted you to be happy. Are you happy, tempesta?’

Her eyes locked onto his for several long seconds and then she blinked, looking away hurriedly. ‘I’m getting there.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

Her smile was miserable. ‘That seems to be our problem. You never have believed me.’

His gut twisted sharply. ‘No.’ Regret made the word heavy. He ran his palm along the back of his neck, feeling the coarse hairs there.

‘On Christmas Day you asked me if I loved you and I said no. I’ve never been in love. I’ve never been loved. But I’ve been lonely and I’ve been alone. I’ve been miserable. Most of my life was that. And then I met you.’

Abby was very still, waiting, her breath held, needing to hear something that would lift the weight that had lodged permanently on her chest.

‘That night, last Christmas, my God, if you knew how I felt. How I wanted you. How I fell for you.’ He swore softly under his breath. ‘It was my fault that the Calypso debacle cut me to the quick. For the first time in my life, I let my guard down. I let you in. I wanted every single piece of you. Not just your body—all of you. I’ve never felt that way before.’

‘And I lied to you,’ she muttered.

‘You lied to me,’ he confirmed grimly. ‘And I couldn’t forgive you for that. But nor could I forget you.’

Only the sound of Abby’s laboured breath filled the room.

‘I spent a year proving to myself that I was over you and then, the whole time I was in New York, I looked for you.’ He grimaced. ‘I don’t mean I actually tried to find you. Just that my eyes were always scanning, hoping to catch a glimpse of you. Seeing you at the restaurant was an accident, but I don’t think I would have left the city without you. One way or another.’

‘Don’t say that,’ she said with a shake of her head. ‘You don’t need to pretend.’

‘I spent a year waiting for you. I told myself I was busy, that I was angry, but I didn’t so much as look at another woman.’

Abby’s stomach swirled. Disbelief warred with pleasure at his admission.

‘I’ve spent a long time pushing people away, tempesta. All my life. And then you came to Italy and I relaxed, because I had everything I needed. You were living with me. You were my lover, and we had a child. I had a family. But I didn’t realise how much that would hurt you. How much I was hurting you.’

‘And so you let me go,’ she said with a soft nod. ‘I’ve worked that much out, Gabe. I know why you ended it. Why you sent me home. It was very kind of you.’

‘No,’ he said with a shake of his head. ‘You don’t understand. It wasn’t because I didn’t want you to stay.’

‘You didn’t want to hurt me,’ she said, her smile one of sadness. ‘You’re a good person. Too good to lie to me, too good to use me.’

‘I didn’t want to hurt you so I sent you here, as though I could click my fingers and take us back in time. As though by sending you home I wouldn’t feel like I had been hollowed out, like all of me had been dug from my body at the same time you left. I didn’t want to hurt you but I didn’t have any idea how much it would hurt to see you go. I’ve pushed people away all my life, and it comes easier to me than anything else. Even more so than admitting how I feel.’

Abby squeezed her fingernails into her palm and forced herself to face him. ‘And?’ she asked, the word a thin breath. ‘How do you feel?’

‘I feel like I have stepped into a strange world with only sharp edges and darkness. I feel like I am sinking all the time, my lungs filling with water rather than air and with no way to breathe. I wake each morning and reach for you, craving you, and then I remember. You’re gone. You’re here.’

‘Are you saying…are you trying to say that you love me?’ she demanded, hope an uncontainable beast in her breast.

‘I know nothing of love,’ he admitted, the words gravelly. ‘What I am saying is that you are the beginning and end of my life. That without you everything is unbearable. I want to wake up and see you every morning, and hold you tight every night. I am saying that even if there were no Raf I would want you. I’ve spent my whole life pushing people away and I won’t do it now—I can’t. I want to do the opposite. I want to pull you close, to hold you near, to make you mine for the rest of my life, even when knowing how much I need you, how much power you have over me, terrifies me. Tempesta, you have run like a cyclone through all of me so that I’m not the same man I was the night we met. That man thought people—thought you—were disposable. I was so wrong. So very, very wrong. If you’ll forgive me for being so stupid, I will make you love me too.’

And it was so ferociously determined that she laughed, a little unsteadily given that her chest was squeezing painfully.

‘You’re telling me you love me and still somehow doing it in a way that would control a room full of executives.’

‘Apparently, I can’t help doing that,’ he said with a shake of his head. ‘It makes what I say no less true.’

‘Gabe—’ she kept her distance ‘—I know enough of your upbringing to know how much loyalty means to you. Trust too. How will you ever trust me after what you found me doing?’ Her cheeks flamed. ‘You’ve told me again and again that you don’t believe me. That you think I was unequivocally going to give those images to my father. There’s no hope for us when you feel as you do. I’ve spent a long time coming to terms with that.’

‘And so have I. I cannot live without you, and I unequivocally believe what you said.’ He shook his head angrily. ‘I do believe you. I cannot explain it. The rational part of my brain demands proof and explanations, but the part of me that knows you, that understands you, simply believes.’ He took a step towards her and when she didn’t step backwards he lifted his hands and cupped her face. ‘You know almost as much about rejection and loneliness as I do.’ His gaze bored into hers, seeing all the secrets of her soul. ‘Your mother died and you were abandoned. Your father shut you out at every opportunity. Is it any wonder you were prepared to do anything he asked of you? In the hopes that maybe, just maybe, that might be the thing that would make him love you?’

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