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‘A little, yes,’ she admitted. ‘I don’t walk with the same security others do, or the way I used to. I don’t orientate myself in the world the same way. When I’m tired my eyesight gets worse, and I have to squint more, or close my bad eye more. I tire more easily, over things that others don’t. It’s different,I’mdifferent now. And no one likes that. Not really,’ she said.
He bit his lip, self-recrimination a powerful force in his chest.
‘But the camera,’ she said with a smile, leaning in to give a small demure shrug, ‘it lets me see what you see. One eye to the viewfinder is all I need and I’m not different any more. It’s not noticeable that I’m tired—it’s obviouswhyI’m squinting,’ she said, the joy in her eyes something to behold.
‘And you get to control what you see,’ he intuited.
She smiled again. ‘I’m not surprised that you see it that way, but yes. Iloveseeing the world again.’
She took a sip of her wine and stole an olive, squinting into the sunlight. ‘So,’ she said delicately, around the olive in her mouth, ‘is this where you bring all your lovers?’
He nearly choked on his wine. ‘No,’ he spluttered with a laugh. If she only knew how few and far between those lovers had been she might get the wrong impression. ‘No, I haven’t been back here since…’ He trailed off, realising just when it had been. His gut clenched as the sun disappeared behind a cloud.
‘Since?’ Ivy asked gently.
His gaze narrowed on his hands. ‘Since I was eighteen,’ he said, nodding to himself. ‘I didn’t realise it had been that long.’
‘Yes, because you’re such anoldman,’ Ivy teased, giving him an out, he realised. Giving him the chance to change the subject. He could do it. If he wanted to. But she had been vulnerable with him, truthful with him. She deserved only the same in return.
He dropped his head, a small smile failing to pull his lips into submission, before they flattened.
‘I last came here after I met my mother,’ he admitted, and it took Ivy a moment to realise that he wasn’t talking about Alessia.
‘I didn’t… I didn’t know you’d met your biological parents,’ she said.
‘Parent. Just the one.’ He shrugged, before looking back up at her. The pain in his gaze was masked quickly. ‘And no one knows. Alessianeverwill,’ he said, the warning clear in his voice.
‘We don’t have to talk about it,’ she assured him, but he shrugged, nonchalantly, though it was clear that the ripples from the meeting had become waves that had changed things for ever.
‘At eighteen, my adoption records were unsealed. After my mother’s husband had left, I…’ He clenched his jaw. ‘I stupidly thought that I’d like to meet them. I was handed the paperwork and, for the first time, I had the name of the woman who had given birth to me.’
Ivy waited, her hand having found its way to his shin—the small touch barely there, but enough to connect them.
‘When I met her, the first thing she asked me was “What do you want?” And in the space of a heartbeat, I saw her take in my appearance, my clothing, and that question morphed into “What can I get?”’ Antonio said, his swallow hard.
‘She wanted money?’ Ivy asked, her heart breaking for him, unable to imagine how deeply that must have cut. Her mother had left them, chosen someone else over her own children. But Antonio’s mother? She hadusedhim,takenfrom him. Anger and pain shook her from deep within.
He nodded.
‘And you didn’t give it to her,’ Ivy stated, not even beginning to comprehend what that must have felt like.
‘I did,’ he said, much to her surprise. ‘I gave her what she wanted. It meant nothing to me, and everything to her,’ he replied dispassionately.
But he was wrong, Ivy realised. Ithadmeant something to him. It had cost him a piece of himself. And he’d borne it alone with no one knowing. No one there to support him or help him. He’d been left with a scar, a wound, that he carried with him still. Because that was how Antonio controlled the world around him. Money. Paying people to do things—her to marry him. Paying people back—his mother with the house he’d bought her, Maria with the company he’d help her get through marriage to him.
Every relationship for him had been transactional.
‘Why didn’t you take the money? Why didn’t you want the money for yourself?’
The questions he’d asked her took on new meaning then, because she’d confounded him by not playing by the rules he understood. Because he’d never allowed anyone to care for him without an exchange, without something specific and tangible to justify that care, that love.
‘Antonio, I—’
He shook his head, raised his hand between them as if to ward off what she was about to say.
It hurt, yes. But she understood why he felt unable to hear the words she would have given him freely. She understood that it wasn’t about her, and chose to shelve the pain that caused. The prick of a thorn that would bleed and ache more in the time to come.
Ivy couldn’t give him what he wouldn’t accept, but there was something she could give him. Something that he welcomed from her. And as she looked around this magical glade, the place he’d brought her to, she realised that shecouldremake his memories of this place. Refocus and reframe this part of his world for him.