CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I WAS STANDING in my office, looking out at the view below. It was Christmas Eve. I was trying to remember why I loved the city.

And then I imagined walking my baby through Central Park. I imagined holding them up so that they could see a statue. So that they could put their chubby baby hands on the leaves as they changed for fall. I imagined Christmas. Like the one Hades and I didn’t get to spend together. Opening presents for them. Making a home.

My chest ached and I couldn’t breathe for a moment.

I could see it. What we could have had.

If he would have only...

I steeled myself. I wouldn’t let myself go down that path. I couldn’t.

I had not lost everything. I hadn’t.

There was a future there. And it wasn’t the one that I had hoped for. But it was still bright with hope. To have a home and a family that had some semblance to what I had wanted.

Because I was the mother, and I got to shape so much of what my child would experience. And I had decided that it would be good. Beautiful.

The city was blanketed in snow now, the glow of the holiday salt in my wound. Or it had been, until I thought of the baby.

Because there was always next year. Next year I would have this baby.

I heard a sound, the door to my office opening, and I turned, expecting to see Sarah. But it was Hades.

I stood there, completely in shock. “What are you... Doing here?”

“I have come to cut myself open,” he said, his voice hard.

“What do you mean?”

“You were right, Florence. I am afraid. And I have... I have done my best to hide my innermost self from you, from myself, from the world, because I never wanted you to know me. The truth is, I feel shame about what happened to my father, but I also know that if that hadn’t happened he would’ve tormented my mother till the end. Until he was able to kill her or someone that he loved. He was twisted with rage. In some ways, I have made my peace with what happened. But I used it. As another reason.”

“What reason?”

“Another reason to stay away from you. I...” He paused for a long moment. And I let him. And when he looked up at me again, I saw it. All of it. The truth of him. In all its brilliance. “I have loved you from the first moment I saw you.”

“Oh.” It was all I could say. A breath, a sound, of pure emotion.

“I did not think you loved me,” he said, his voice rough. “I told myself you didn’t. You couldn’t. It cut me, every time I touched you, but it made me feel safe too. If you didn’t love me I couldn’t hurt you. If you didn’t love me, we could keep it in hotels and bathrooms and coat closets. If you didn’t love me it wouldn’t hurt you when I decided to marry another woman.”

“But I did,” I whispered.

“I know now. It blindsided me. It...it made me feel so much regret. And so much...fear. Fear that has lived in me since the first time we touched. Because the things he could do to me if he knew there was a woman that I cared for. The daughter of his enemy? It would’ve been so much more than him beating me, Florence. My fear over what he would’ve done to you...”

This was him. All of him. I felt bowled over by it. I felt...singed. Burned by the endless glory of him. Of his truth. Of all that he felt. And all that he was finally, finally letting me see.

I truly didn’t know what to say. And then, I decided not to speak at all. I decided to give him the floor. I decided to listen. Because for all these years, I had known him, but it had never occurred to me that he had loved me from the very beginning.

“When you asked me to meet you in your room, I hoped. I knew that I had no right to you. I knew I should stay away, but I wasn’t strong enough. Florence,” he said, my name a whisper. “When you gave yourself to me, I knew that I could never touch another woman. Not ever again. I thought of nothing but you. After that weekend, until I saw you again in Geneva, I thought of nothing. And when I held you in my arms again after six months, it was like breathing for the first time.”

My heart felt bloody and bruised, thundering rapidly in my chest. An endless gallop, as if it was trying to race toward this truth faster than he could speak it.

“Everything was nothing, until those moments I was with you. When my father died, and I told myself... I told myself that I would never put those hands on you. Those hands that had been so violent. I hated myself for it. I told myself it was when I would stop tormenting you. Me. Both of us. But I couldn’t stay away.”

“I remember when you kissed me. Before we went on stage.”

“I could think of nothing else but you. I wanted to push you away, but you were also what I needed. At the exclusion of all else.”

I tried to reshape everything. With the knowledge that he had loved me. And it was like I had discovered a whole new thread in the tapestry of what we were. Gold that ran right on through. When I looked at his intensity and saw more than lust, my heart lifted. When I realized that he and I had been coming together because we loved each other...

“I was afraid,” he said. “The whole time. That someone would take you from me. That I would lose you. I thought of every reason that I should stay away. It isn’t the violence I exhibited toward my father that scarred me that day. It was seeing my mistake nearly cost my mother her life. It was facing losing the only other person on this earth, other than you, that I love. It was a window into pain I did not want to imagine.”

He let out a hard breath. “And finally, I decided to marry another woman. With the clock ticking down on my father’s will, I thought I would simply cut ties. Set us both free. But when you came to me, pregnant with my baby, it was the perfect excuse to let myself have you. And I didn’t have the restraint to say no. I thought that I could control it. And you’re right. That is where the danger lies. I thought that I could manipulate you. Turn our passion into something that it was never able to be. Something softer. Something that didn’t burn quite so bright. Something that didn’t threaten me. Something that I didn’t fear the loss of.”

“Your father...he used Christmas. He used your love to make you afraid. Of course...of course you feared it. He used it like a weapon.”

“Yes,” he said, his voice rough. “But I love you. I love you, and it is killing me. It has been, slowly, for all these years. I love you, and I worry that it will be the death of me.”

It all dawned on me, like the slowly rising sun casting light over all the shadows.

“You said to me, that sometimes love was too broken. You meant your love for me .”

He’d been trying to tell me then. But it was all bottled up. Behind a protective wall. Because his father had taught him that loving something was dangerous.

“Yes,” he said. “I did. But I realize that my love for you is perhaps the only thing in my whole body that is not corrupted. It is perhaps the one good thing in me. Or maybe I just need it to be, because I don’t want to live a life without you in it. Because I cannot want anything but you. I don’t want to live in a world where I don’t have that.”

“Hades,” I said. “I will never leave you.” I tried to smile. “If I could have...”

He laughed, rough and hard. “You would have.”

“I wished away the feelings, because they terrified me.”

“I never wished mine away,” he said. “Because they were the only thing that kept me sane. The only thing that kept me going. My life was a wasteland, Florence. And you were the one oasis. You were the one thing that mattered. The one thing that I wanted. The only good feeling inside of me. The idea that we could just be together. That we can have a family... I spent so many years believing that wasn’t possible. I spent so many years pushing that aside. When my father died, the violence didn’t stop. It echoed. Lingered. I felt like a failure in some ways because I felt like I had given in to the creature he made me. He demanded that I marry because he knew there was a real risk I wouldn’t want to carry on the bloodline. Because he knew how much I despised him. I hated the ways in which he won. But now... Florence, watching you be so brave, so vulnerable, I have challenged many of my beliefs. He thought that he had control over me, leaving those terms in the will. He thought perhaps that he won the day that I hit him and ended his life with the same violence that he had lived with. But he didn’t. Because I’m different. Because something had already changed inside of me. You . The way that I love you. He never had the capacity for that. I told myself that he loved my mother at one time...”

I was close to bursting. I hurt for him. I rejoiced for us. He loved me. My journey had shown him how to walk out of the darkness. Just as I’d hoped.

“He didn’t,” I said. “That was never love.”

He shook his head. “No. I love my mother, though. And she left me. And in the end of all things, that is what terrified me most. Giving love again only to have it taken away.”

“I won’t leave you,” I said. “You were my destiny. From the first moment I ever laid eyes on you. You were meant to be mine. I know it. I believe it, down to my soul. From that first moment. Do you have any idea how much time I spent convincing myself that it couldn’t be love? We were lying to ourselves.”

“Not me,” he said. “I always knew.”

“Well, I did. I was simply a coward protecting myself.”

“I was the same. However different a shape it took. I love you, Florence Clare. Every chance that I ever took to spar with you, to kiss you, to be with you, was just about you. About having the chance to have your attention. To have your eyes on me.”

“I love you so much,” I said.

I knew then that this was the truth of it. That we had always been meant to be. That our times together had never been an interruption of a path that we were supposed to be walking. It was the real path. We had simply taken a long time to figure out the truth of it. This was where we were meant to be.

“I will spend every day of the next ten years at least, telling you exactly how much I love you. Twice.”

I smiled. “Why twice?”

“Because I’m ten years behind.”

I wasn’t worried about that. Because I knew that we were on the right path now. Because I knew that we had finally found where we were meant to be.

I had always believed that he was my match.

I simply hadn’t realized how true that was.

“I love you,” I said. “As much as I ever thought I hated you.”

“And I love you. As much as I’ve always known I have. Without fear. And nothing holding me back.”

“I can see the headlines now,” I said.

“And what do they say?”

“Clare Heir Lives Happily Ever After.”