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“You did not think I would notice.”
She winced. “No. I didn’t. But that says more about me and what I think about myself than it does about what I think about you.”
He arched a brow. “Does it?”
She let out a long, pained breath. “Yes. It does.” She sat for a moment and stared down at the floor. “I’m sorry.”
CHAPTER NINE
LUCA LOOKED AT her as if she was delusional. “You apologized already.”
She swallowed. “No. I’m not sorry because I feel bad. I’m sorry now because I know that I hurt you. Worse, I tried to hurt you while telling you that you were unfeeling. I knew that you weren’t, or why would I have even bothered to insult you?”
He looked stunned by that. He paused his movements, his hand still around the mug of tea. “I suppose that’s true.”
“I am really sorry. You didn’t deserve that. I was angry and upset, and I knew that I was in a fight with you I couldn’t win. I lashed out. I’m not making excuses.”
He frowned. “I wanted you and the baby here with me. I don’t know how to be sorry for accomplishing that.”
That felt different than what he had said earlier too, even if she couldn’t articulate it. But in all things, it was honest.
It wasn’t that destructive, hideous catastrophe that she had lived through with her parents.
When they did nice things for her it was usually to get at the other one. Often making her feel special simply so she could be used as a pawn later. And then, when they didn’t need her she didn’t signify. When they were angry, she was in the way.
And they loved to deflect anger onto her.
No emotion was ever what it was presented as. But that wasn’t true with him.
What he had done had been heavy-handed. But he had been clear on his goals.
He had achieved them. That was who he was.
She swallowed hard. “At least you’re honest.”
He frowned. “I am sorry, though, if I hurt you.”
His eyes met hers, and there was honesty there. As bracing and clear as it ever was.
“Thank you.” She didn’t know how to articulate the ways in which he had hurt her.
She was a silly girl, that was the problem. She knew that he...that he was never going to be a man to fall madly, passionately in love with a woman.
I feel things...
No. Not because she didn’t believe he had feelings, but because she believed he had one true love. And it was medicine. It was healing the world. He was a single-minded man, and she was having difficulty figuring out how he was going to slip that focus. But when he had approached her on the steps in Milan, she had been convinced that he was there for her. When really he had been there to offer her a job. She had been terrified of course, because she had been certain that he must know about the pregnancy. But...
She just didn’t want to get into that, because she didn’t know how to explain it. Not to him, and not to herself.
He brought her a hot mug, and placed it in her hands. Her fingertips brushed his. He had been her boss for five years.
And now he was her husband.
More than that, he was the father of the baby that was inside of her. She had been the one who was cold and clinical. She had been the one who had decided to cut him out of her life, like this was a photograph, and she could simply take scissors to it and excise him from the frame. In one brutal snip.
Just the same as she had chosen to run from him that morning after they had first made love. She was treating him like he might turn into her parents. Like he might become a monster she didn’t recognize all of a sudden. He was difficult. But she understood the ways in which he was difficult. Luca had always been himself. Every inch himself. He had always been honest and up-front.
She was the one hiding.