by Maisey Yates
She gritted her teeth. Fighting against sympathy. Fighting against any kind of understanding. She held on to her anger like it was a lifeline, and she refused to release her hold. “It doesn’t make it easier for me, too. It simply means that I can’t even rail against you the way I want to. All it means is that I can’t get an answer out of you. No matter how hard I try. Though I doubt you would give me one even if you could remember. That’s just how you are. You have been kind to me in the past. But I’ve been clinging to those memories like they have anything to do with the man you became.”
“And who is that?”
“A bored, cynical playboy with a drinking problem. A man who has been given everything, and seems to feel nothing.” She took a deep, shaking breath. “You’re a brilliant businessman, but you’re a terrible husband. You don’t love anyone but yourself, Leon. And it has been like that for a very long time.”
He seemed stunned by her outburst. Stunned by her words. Well, that made two of them. But it was true. It was everything that she had buried down deep inside herself. Even deeper than the love she felt for him. When she had talked herself into divorcing him, she hadn’t used anger to make the decision.
She had latched on to a kind of world-weary practicality. Forcing herself to face that if after two years they didn’t have a real marriage they never would. She hadn’t allowed herself to feel anything like the sadness that bloomed deep inside her now. Nothing like the rage that burned hot beneath it.
She was allowing herself to feel it now.
“I was wrong. There is no excuse. The reasons don’t matter. I was wrong, and I’m very sorry that I hurt you. I’m sorry that I hurt April. That I had any part in hurting Isabella. I am sorry.” His words were raw, genuine. But she couldn’t find it in herself to care.
“It changes nothing. What good does sorry do? Can you give me back the last two years of my life? Can you give me back my heart? I am so tired of you holding my heart. I am a fool. I am the fool who has loved you for the last fifteen years, and you never deserved that.”
“I feel you’re probably right. That I never have deserved for you to have any feelings for me at all.”
“I am right,” she said, conviction burning in her words. “You didn’t deserve my father’s affection, either. The world has been kind to you. I imagine the first time anything tragic ever happened to you was when that other car crossed the centerline in Italy.”
He closed the space between them, reaching down to where she was on the bed, wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her up against him. His dark eyes blazed down into hers. “I deserve all of that,” he said, his voice low, soft. “All of that and more. Give me your anger, agape. Let it out.”
“I hate you,” she hissed. “As much as I ever thought I loved you. How dare you do this to me? I did nothing but live my life trying to please people. I was the daughter that my father required. I took care of him after my mother died. I never let him see how I used to cry. I never let him know how badly I missed having a woman in my life. I never let him know how lost I was all through junior high and high school. How lonely I was. Because I didn’t want him to worry. I agreed to marry you for his peace of mind, even though I knew you didn’t love me.” She took a gasping breath. “And I never let you know how much it killed me when you went out with other women. I simply accepted what you handed to me. I licked the crumbs that you threw me off the floor, because I am such a sad, pathetic creature. But I am not your creature anymore.”
He reached up, sifting his fingers through her hair, holding her head steady, staring down at her. “You cannot possibly hate me more than I hate myself.”
“Of course I can,” she spat. “I wish you could feel this.” She pressed her hand to her chest. “I wish you could feel exactly what you did to me.”
Tears burned her eyes, her heart pounding, her entire body trembling. She felt desperate. Desperate to make him understand exactly what she felt inside. Her heart was like shattered glass, the shards working their way into her skin, burning, aching.
She wanted him to feel this. She wanted him to understand. This man who had always seemed so charmed to her. So together. Who seemed to get everything he wanted from life, who seemed to be denied nothing.
Who made her want with every deep, desperate part of herself. Who made her want him even now as she burned incandescent with rage over his actions.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, tilting her face upward as she rose up onto her tiptoes and claimed his mouth with hers. She kissed him with all the anger inside her. She poured all the hatred, all the rage that she had just professed straight into him. Hoping it would burn all the way down. Hoping it would destroy him slowly the way that it was destroying her.
She sobbed helplessly even as she parted her lips, thrusting her tongue deep into his mouth. She hated herself. Almost as much as she hated him. For wanting him even now. For needing to be comforted by him even though he was the one who had caused her all of this pain.
But if it was so easy to turn it off, she would have done it a long time ago. If she could simply decide that she didn’t want him, decide that she didn’t love him, things would be so much easier.
If she could transfer it all to him, exorcise it from her body, everything would be simpler. She would be free. Finally. Instead of feeling like there were chains wrapping around her wrists, around her neck, pulling ever tighter. Binding her to a man who could never give her what she needed. To a love that could never give back to her.
She moved her hands, curled her fingers into the fabric of his shirt, holding tightly to him as she continued to kiss him. He pulled her forward, taking a step back, bringing them up against the wall. Then he flipped their positions, her shoulder blades pressing into the wood paneling.
She slid her hands down to his chest, felt his raging heartbeat beneath her fingertips. She couldn’t stand these clothes between them. Couldn’t stand secrets between them. Couldn’t stand lies, even lies that were lost in the dark spaces in his mind.
She couldn’t erase those other things. But the clothes, she could do something about.
She tore his shirt from his body, followed by his jeans, and all the while, he made quick work of what she was wearing. Soon they were both naked, pressed skin to skin, as though they were trying desperately to connect. Trying desperately to get beneath everything between them so they could find some way back to each other.
His desperation matched her own. His pain did, too.
Whatever Leon might have felt about any of this at another time, it hurt him now. That didn’t absolve him. Not even close. But it satisfied her. Deep down in the meanest part of her, the part of her that wanted him to hurt, too.
She pulled her mouth away from his, angling her head and scraping her teeth along the side of his neck. He growled, grabbing hold of her chin and straightening her head, leaning in and kissing her before nipping her lower lip.
She returned the favor. Sinking her teeth into his skin before soothing him with her tongue. He moved his hands down her body then, cupping her bottom, pressed her tightly up against his hardened length. She arched into him, seeking oblivion. Seeking satisfaction.
He shifted, moving his hand down, grabbing hold of her thigh and lifting it up over his hip before testing her readiness. Then he thrust up deep inside her, both of them groaning as he filled her.
It wasn’t a gentle coming together. It was fiery. Intense. It was rage, it was need. It was a kind of broken hopelessness that wound its way through the air around them, impressed itself on their skin.
When all was said and done they had something to contend with that neither of them knew how to handle. Once the desire between them was extinguished they would have to find a way to move on from this moment. Find a way to handle the child that was now in their life, in the center of their marriage.
Find a w
ay to either repair this betrayal or go their separate ways.
But right now, there was this. Right now, they had each other. And she clung to him. Held tightly to his shoulders as he pushed her to the heights. As he shattered her completely beneath his touch.
She arched against him, crying out as she found her release, and he let out a hoarse growl as he found his own, spilling himself deep inside her.
And when it was over, when her heart rate returned to normal, she released her hold on him, sliding down the wall and sinking to the floor, allowing misery to overtake her completely.
* * *
Leon found himself dropping to his knees next to Rose. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her against him as she wept. She cried because of him. Because of the pain that he had heaped upon her. He held her, even though he had no right. Even though she would be better off with a stranger.
It seemed inappropriate to try and heal a wound that he had caused. Although perhaps there was no one else who could do it. Perhaps it was right really. To pour himself into atoning for his sins.
“I’m sorry,” he said, the words feeling frustratingly hollow.
He wished he knew everything he was sorry for. He wished he could give them more weight by being aware of each and every transgression he’d committed against her. He didn’t need to know what they were to know that he was sorry, but he wanted to list them. Wanted to feel the full weight of them. And he couldn’t. Just another in the long list of growing frustrations.
He wanted to answer for his sins. He couldn’t even name them.
He wanted to understand why he had betrayed the woman in his arms. Why he had abandoned the little girl sleeping in the crib in the room down the hall. He wanted answers, and his own mind refused to give them.
He was the only one who knew these things. He couldn’t tell himself.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, because he had no other words.
“This isn’t what I wanted,” she said, miserable, broken. “It wasn’t my dream to raise a child you had with another woman.” She drew in a shuddering breath. “I wanted to have your baby. I wanted you to love me.”
“Rose…”
“I sound like a child throwing a tantrum,” she said, her voice hollow. She drew her arm across her face, wiping in her tears. “It doesn’t matter what I wanted. All that matters is what we have. You have a baby.”
“I want her,” he said. He did. In spite of the ice block that seemed to grow larger inside his chest every time he looked at her. The fear. The uneasiness.
He had a feeling that even if he was in possession of all of his memories, coming into the care of a tiny baby would frighten him. But with nothing, with no background, with no reference for things like this, he was chilled to his bones.
“I know,” she said, her throat tight. “And I couldn’t ask you to do anything different. She’s your daughter.”
“But you don’t want her.”
“No. That isn’t it. I… I’ve known about you sleeping with other women, Leon. It has always been in tabloids. On gossip websites. It’s the world’s worst-kept secret. Everyone knows that you aren’t faithful to me. Everyone knows that you married a little homebody who can’t keep up with you. Who isn’t as beautiful as the other women you see.” She swallowed hard. “But this… Looking at the evidence of the fact that you were with other women… Knowing that someone else got something I wanted so desperately… It’s different. It isn’t something I can just brush off.”
“I understand that.”
“But it isn’t Isabella’s fault. She hasn’t done anything wrong. She’s so tiny and helpless, and her mother abandoned her… I can’t face the idea of abandoning her. I can’t.”
“I care about you. You are…the only memory I have, Rose. The one who has been there since I opened my eyes and came back to the world a man with no memory. And I am very sorry for my behavior. But one thing I know…beyond anything… If you feel like you will be angry with Isabella, in any way, if any of your feelings about what I have done might spill onto her…then it would be best if we worked out a different arrangement.”
It made his chest feel like it was cracking to say it. But his daughter would always have questions about what had happened to her mother. And if Isabella had to live in a house where her presence was resented he would never be able to forgive himself. He doubted he would forgive himself for any of this anyway. But for his sins, he had to do something to make it up to Isabella.
He waited. He waited to see if Rose would be angry. She would have every right to be. But it didn’t change the truth and what he said. She had every right to be angry. She had every right to punish him. She had every right to leave. But he had to protect Isabella.
“You mean I shouldn’t be involved with her if I can’t treat her like my own child.”
He shook his head. “I can’t ask for a promise quite like that. I only mean if you find it impossible not to resent her. If you cannot be in the same room with her. Those things… I deserve them. But she doesn’t.”
“I know.” She blinked. “I feel like I’m being scolded. And you’re the one who deserves to be scolded.”
“I’m not trying to scold you. It’s just… This kind of beginning… If I don’t make up for what I did to her then what future does she have? I signed my rights away. And now I’ve taken them back, but only because her mother has abandoned her. I never want her to feel like she was a child unwanted by so many. I don’t want her to be wounded beyond repair because the adults in her life were too selfish, too broken, to see beyond themselves.”
Rose nodded. “I understand. She’s just a baby. I’m not angry at her. It was hard for me to look at her. It was hard for me to hold her.” Another tear slid down her cheek. “Because I wish she were mine.” She pulled away from him, leaning back against the wall, drawing her knees up to her chest. “I wish that things had been different. If they had been, then she very well could have been mine.”
“I can’t fix the past. I can’t even guarantee the future. I can only try and fix what we have now. She can be ours. And I don’t say that lightly. I don’t say it expecting that you can drop every last piece of baggage you’re carrying because of this. I don’t say it as though it’s a magical fix. But she is here. And so are we. I still… I want to make this work with you.”
“Sometimes I feel like you’re just going to keep asking impossible things of me,” she said, sounding weak, sounding reduced.
“Someday I hope you’re able to ask something impossible of me, Rose.” He leaned in, cupping her cheek. “And I pray that I am able to rise to the task.”
“I want to try.” Rose nodded. “For both of us. For all of us. I want to try. Where is she?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
OVER THE NEXT few weeks things seemed to progress slowly with Rose and Isabella. They employed a nanny—a married, grandmotherly sort, at Rose’s request—who helped care for Isabella during the day. Though Leon tried to assume as much responsibility as he could. It was just that given the state of things, he wasn’t sure he entirely trusted himself. What if he forgot some essential bit of information regarding the care and keeping of babies that everyone else knew? Or, more likely, what if he had never possessed it, but didn’t know enough about himself to ask the appropriate questions?
Employing someone to assist had seemed the best option. He could hardly ask Rose to interrupt her life to care not only for him, but for his child.
Still, Rose was beginning to take some charge of Isabella on her own. When Isabella cried, Rose was often the first to move to comfort her.
Seeing them together made his chest feel like it was being torn in two. Earlier today Rose had been standing by the window, Isabella held tightly to her chest as she stared out at the garden below.
It had been like looking at something
much clearer than a memory—especially since he had none that extended beyond the past few weeks. But it hadn’t been wholly reality, either. It was a window into a life he didn’t truly possess. Something the two of them didn’t really have.
In that moment it was easy to believe this was his wife and child, and they had nothing but love between them.
Rather than the dark, tangled mass of lies and betrayal that wound itself around them like a vine covered in thorns. Thorns that wrapped themselves tightly around his gut, making it hurt every time he breathed.
He rubbed his hand over his face and eyed the bar on the other side of his bedroom. It was stocked with alcohol, evidence of the man he’d been before, he imagined. A man who had a drink as he brushed his teeth in the morning and at night.
A man who had sought oblivion with tenacity.
He laughed bitterly, the sound echoing in the dimly lit room. He had his oblivion now. And with it, he found no peace.
Improvement only described the relationship between Rose and Isabella. Improvement did not apply to his relationship with Rose. She would not touch him. She would barely talk to him.
He had imagined—erroneously, as it turned out—that after he had held her in his arms while she wept in her bedroom that she might continue to seek out an intimate relationship with him. That was not the case. She scarcely made eye contact with him unless she absolutely had to. She very solicitously inquired about his well-being, never asking about his memories, as she assumed—rightly—that if there were any change he would let her know.
