He cleared his throat. “I came home one day and she was gone. I never looked for her. I didn’t want a girlfriend anymore. I didn’t want someone to care for me. I didn’t want to care for them.” He closed his eyes and a single tear rolled down his lean cheek. “What kind of father cannot protect his son? If I accomplish all these things, earn money in unimaginable quantities, improve my station in ways others would see as impossible... What does it mean if I allowed my little boy to die?”
“Leon... You didn’t let him die. It was a tragic thing.” Emotion was creeping over her, threatening to choke out her words. This was his grief, and yet she felt as though it was a part of her. “It was something you couldn’t have prevented no matter what.”
He dragged his hand over his face. “I suppose there should be comfort in that. And yet I do not see any. I see only the futility of being at the mercy of fate.”
“I’m not sure it’s fate. Life is a series of unpredictable things. Beautiful. Terrible. Some are direct consequences for our actions, and others don’t make sense. They aren’t payments or punishments. They simply are. But the measure of it is what we do after. Those are the things that you can control.”
“And what have you controlled? What have you controlled in your life, Rose?” His words were hard, cynical. He sounded much more like the Leon she had spent the past two years married to than he had over the past few weeks.
“Nothing.” She blinked back tears. Tears of frustration, of sorrow. Tears because everything about this situation hurt, and no one was left undamaged. “I went along with everything my father wanted from me because I had the idea that if I did he might be happy. That was how I chose to deal with the loss of my mother. I thought you would be my reward. But I’m realizing something.”
“What is that?” he asked, his voice sounding rung out, scraped raw.
“Another person can’t be your reward. Because they’re yet another thing you can’t control.” She laughed, but nothing was funny about it. “A person isn’t cake. They can’t just exist to be a treat for you. They have their own baggage. Their own needs and desires. And it wasn’t until just before your accident that I started to fully realize that you weren’t just going to magically become that reward I felt I deserved. And it wasn’t until this that I... Leon, I didn’t know about your son. I’m embarrassed to admit how little I know about you. I expected you to be something for me, only for me. And I never realized that whatever you were, as broken and debauched as it was...maybe you needed to be that for yourself. For your own pain. I never... I never once considered that.”
It didn’t fix the past. It didn’t make her trust him. It didn’t really even make her forgive him. But understanding that he had suffered a loss greater than any she could possibly imagine did help cast him in a new light. It helped explain some of his behavior. His drinking.
It didn’t remove the deep wound from her heart. There was no magic here. Only grim understanding that didn’t do a thing to revive the scorched earth that surrounded them.
“I was afraid when I came in here,” he said, not addressing what she had just said. “I was afraid that she would be...”
“She’s fine,” Rose said, knowing that the assurance was empty.
Because she knew what he would always see. She knew what he would always fear as he approached the crib.
And she knew then with absolute certainty why he had signed away his parental rights to Isabella.
“That’s why,” she said. “It’s why you didn’t want her.”
“If you had asked me what love was after my accident I would have told you... I don’t know. But if you ask me now... Love is pain, Rose. It is a hope that blooms with no thought for what might lie ahead. No cares about what could go wrong. And that makes it all the more painful when it’s cut away. Devastating. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want to do this again.”
“She’s here now,” Rose said. And as hard as it had been for her to accept Isabella, she couldn’t imagine sending her away. It was a process. There was no getting around that. For Rose, there had been no magical maternal bond between herself and this little baby. But there was something growing in her chest. Blooming, just as he had described it. The beginnings of love.
And protectiveness. She felt that, too. The desire to prevent Isabella from feeling unwanted. Unwanted by Leon or herself.
“Yes,” he said, “she is.”
“You can’t send her away.”
“I never said I would,” he responded.
“It’s my turn to be fearsome about it,” she continued. “Things are changing. You are changing. The more memories fall into place, the more you’re going to become who you were. And if you think that your original reasoning can stand in light of that—”
“I don’t,” he said, pushing himself up from the floor, beginning to pace the length of the room.
“And if you do? If you do then I’m going to fight you. Every step of the way. No more secrets. We can’t afford to have any between us. This is our life.” She was making a stand, a stand she wasn’t entirely certain she wanted to make. A commitment. “I want to be a family.”
“I don’t know if I can promise that.”
“You will promise it. You will, or I’m going to have to fight you. For this house. For her.”
“You couldn’t win a fight against me. As you’ve already explained if you do not stay married to me for three more years you don’t get the house. And as for Isabella... Biologically she’s mine. You don’t have a right to her.”
She was remembering now. Remembering all the ways he could be so impossible. So arrogant. It had been easy to forget because the Leon of the past few weeks had been held at a disadvantage. But this was the man she had always known. Strong. Driven. Occasionally ruthless.
He had done nothing but reveal vulnerability over the past weeks. And she could tell he was fighting now to reclaim these traits.
“So what, then? What is it you want?”
“You will remain my wife.”
“And you think you will continue to live as you did? Only instead of abandoning me alone in the manor you’ll leave Isabella here, as well?” She stood, closing the distance between them. “That would be in keeping with your past behavior. Shut away the women that cause you grief, that might get in the way of your good time.”
“It is not so simple, and you know it. Especially now that you know about Michael.”
“Love scares you. You, big bad Leon Carides. It terrifies you, and you run from it.”
“Only a fool isn’t afraid of a lion, Rose. Even I know well enough to be afraid of things that can be fatal.”
She was pushing too far. She knew it, but she couldn’t help it. “I know you’ve suffered loss.