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“People know who we are,” he said. “They know that we have an association.”
“You’re a genius, Luca. You cannot be unaware that women are often harassed by men they know. Particularly men they had slept with.”
“It is not harassing you to want to know more about the situation that you find yourself in.” He paused for a moment. “The situation we find ourselves in.”
She let out a heavy sigh. “Oh, Luca. You don’t have to do anything in response to this. I had already decided.”
“Are you not keeping the baby?”
“I am,” she said. “I had a difficult relationship with my parents, and I am never going to have a family if I don’t make one myself. This is an opportunity for me to do that. I’m financially able. And therefore it just seems...like a reasonable time for me to have a baby. But I don’t need you to be involved.”
He frowned. “But I am the baby’s father.”
“Yes. You are. But many fathers are not involved in the day-to-day lives of their children.”
“But those men are bad fathers.”
“Maybe not. Not if it benefits everybody for the man to stay away.”
“You think the child would be better off without me?”
He said that with so much genuine wonder that it made her feel like she had been stabbed clean through. It was easy to think that Luca couldn’t be wounded. Yet it was clear she had hurt him.
It was so difficult, because the truth was, she suspected that he wouldn’t be a good father because of the way that he was. Because of everything about him. Because of the way that he had to live his life. And yet she didn’t want to hurt him.
She hated the revelation that she was able to hurt him.
Luca had always seemed invulnerable and untouchable, and today he seemed undone in a way that she didn’t care for.
She especially didn’t want to be the cause of it.
“Think about it,” she said. “You don’t want a child. You can’t even handle having to get a new personal assistant. If you think your life is disordered now, think of how disordered it will be when there’s a baby. You won’t be able to do things whenever you want, you will be subject to the schedule of another human being. You’ve never even had a relationship, have you?”
He shook his head. “No. I haven’t.”
“And why is that?”
“It doesn’t fit into my life.”
“Exactly. And I knew that about you. I knew that about you when I slept with you, and I know it about you now. I never expected more from you than one night.”
“You did not ask me what I wanted.”
“You just said it doesn’t fit into your life.”
He met her gaze, his eyes like steel. “Then my life will have to change. Because it already has. Because you are pregnant with my baby, and I will not be a bad father.”
“I don’t know what you think—”
“You will marry me. And return to Rome with me today.”
Luca’s brain was working as fast as it ever had. He had to react appropriately. It had never been more important. He was a genius. He knew that. He understood the inner workings of the human body in ways that most did not. His brain was filled with an enormous amount of education, but while he understood the inner workings of the human body he often did not understand the workings of the human mind. The human soul.
It hadn’t bothered him, not in general. Because he had fashioned a life that catered to his strengths and not his weaknesses. Because what he was accomplishing with the human body mattered much more than him connecting with a few other people.
He had assumed, when he had bothered to think about it at all, that this was simply the balance of things. If you could understand one, you would not be graced with understanding of the other.
But he needed both now. He needed all of it now.