Chapter 43

Polly

“I know you’re surprised to hear from me, but I need advice, and no one else thinks like I do. For once in my life, I don’t want to run or pretend or manipulate.” I waited for the inevitable, are you even capable of that? But it didn’t come.

“I’m proud of you, darling. And I’m so happy that after everything, you trust me enough to come to me.”

“Mum, are you crying?”

“No. Don’t be ridiculous.” She totally was. “I have hay fever.”

“Oh, of course. So, what do you think?”

She sighed, the cane squeaking as she wriggled in her chair before sighing again. “I don’t think you should leave. I think you should stay. Janet Myers says Luca is a wonderful young man, and Evie told her he loves you very much. If Evie says that, well … you know. “

Evie said that? My heart almost burst. “But what if I ruin everything he’s worked so hard to repair?”

“You won’t be ruining anything. Those sicko siblings would be, and if you leave now, you’re letting them win. As far as I’m concerned, you, with more than enough help from me, have kept yourself from a happy future for long enough. This time, you need to fight that urge to self-sabotage. You need to let your heart decide.”

The problem was, I didn’t know how to do that.

“I have an image to repair and so do you. This will get the team off my back, your mom off yours and get you away from Elias the smiling jerk. Plus, we can have an awesome time together while doing it. In six months, if you’re miserable, you can just come home. No biggie.”

In knee-high grass on the side of a road, while breathing in the stench of a truck hauling a few hundred sheep, the love of my life spoke those words. It may have been the most unromantic, worst-smelling proposal in history. But it was mine.

Nothing could ever take that away.

But that didn’t mean I could stay.

Mum told me to follow my heart. To do the right thing. So, I was going to. This time I couldn’t be Nyx. Couldn’t bear to be the darkness that swept away his light. My sense of dread was crippling in weight, cracking my ribs, stealing my breath, destroying the heart I once thought I didn’t possess.

This is why I don’t do relationships .

Suffering a pain entirely of my own doing, Toto had been kissed within an inch of her life and dropped off at Tilly’s. The house was cleaned from bottom to top, my things packed. By the time Luca’s headlights cast ominous shadows on the kitchen walls, I was ready to say goodbye.

“Pol! You here?” He hollered, bursting through the door with an enthusiasm that brought a smile to my face, “You won’t believe what just happened. Hey, why are all the lights out? Pol, where are you? Shit, are you naked? Are we going to fuck in the kitchen again? Wait… Please tell me this isn’t a surprise party, and my mom’s here and heard that.”

“I’m here, Luca.”’ I giggled, “You’re safe. There’s no party.” Trust me.

A light flicked on, turning the windows into mirrors and giving me the first in-the-flesh glimpse of my beautiful boy in two weeks. Dashing in his lucky grey suit he always wore while traveling, his eyes shone, his hair was a mess, and his dimples popped. “What, no running to greet me with open arms. No nudity? No … Polly, why are you crying?” He rushed toward me, plucking me from the seat I’d been frozen to for the past two hours and pulling me into his arms. “Is it Toto? Where is she? What happened—” His words caught in his throat as he glanced around the room. “Polly. Why are there suitcases by the back door?”

“Toto is fine, and they’re there because I’m leaving.”

“What do you mean? Where are you going?” I saw on his face that he knew, and six feet and four inches of muscle collapsing on top of me confirmed it. In seconds, my hair was soaked with tears. Where they his? Mine? I didn’t know or care. I just needed them to stop.

“I’ll tell you everything, I promise, but I need you to get off me and sit down. I can’t quite breathe.”

“Shit.” With one final squeeze, he relaxed his grip but didn’t let me go. Instead, he dropped like a stone, collapsing against the tile floor with a thud I felt in every bone and taking me with him. “Princess, I don’t understand. Why? Where are you going?” He paused, then tensed. “Does Clara have something to do with this?”

“No … she doesn’t. I’ve just decided to go home.”

“You are home. This is your home.”

“It’s not anymore, Luca. It can’t be.”

“Why?” he whispered, his voice broken, almost childlike.

“Let me go for a second, and I’ll show you.”

He shook his head, clung even tighter. “I don’t want to let you go.”

“You have to, Luca. Please.” He shuddered, but slowly did as I asked, his freshly calloused hands slipping over my form leaving goosebumps in their wake as I stood. “Have you ever wondered why you have seen and touched and kissed every part of my body but never my stomach?”

“Yes.” He swallowed, “But I knew there must be a reason, so I never … I knew you would tell me when you were ready.”

Words of understanding died on his lips as I lifted my shirt above my belly button, then lowered my skirt, exposing the puckered scars lining my abdomen. “I was a really horrible person for a really long time, and this was my punishment. I was in an accident, and it was bad, and they took all of it away. Almost every part that made me a woman was cut from my body. That’s why I have to leave. I can never give you what you want.”

“Polly … no. I don’t—”

“I saw you on the ice with that little boy, Luca. I saw you with Brittiany, Emily, and the babies back home, and I saw how devastated you were when you found out Clara was pregnant.”

“I don’t care about Clara. I don’t care about babies. It doesn’t—”

“Don’t sit there and tell me it doesn’t matter because it does.”

“Of course it does,” he cried, jumping to his feet. “Of course it matters. That’s not what I meant. It’s beyond cruel that you were hurt and had so much taken away, and yes, I do or did want to have a family, but I don’t want a baby more than I want you.”

With both hands, I pushed against his chest and stepped back. “You say that now, but what about a few years from now when the novelty wears off, and you’re left to rattle around in this big family house with no family to fill it?”

I could see the panic in his eyes as he shuffled closer. “We could adopt? Or there’s surrogacy?”

“What if I don’t want that? What If I’ve come to peace with that not being part of my life? No man wants a selfish woman like that.”

“Polly, I don’t know what fucked up, twisted shit your mom has put in your head, but not being able to have children does not mean you’re not a woman. Not wanting them is not selfish, and not wanting a woman who can’t have children certainly wouldn’t make me a man.”

“But—”

“But nothing.” He said, stepping into my space and cupping my cheeks in his hands. “You listen to me now. You are the only woman I could ever want. I don’t need anyone else. Yes, I wanted to have kids with you, but I need to have you.”

“Luca, you don’t mean that.” I whispered, shaking my head. “I’m not worth that.”

“But you are, Polly. You are worth that and so much more. I know you consider this your penance, but you are not a bad person. You’re a worthy and beautiful person who’s had horrible shit they’ve had to deal with. The secrets and anger and pain that you hid, that you carried alone for all those years, that you say festered and poisoned every part of you, is not you.”

“It is.”

“No! It’s not. You are Polly Hart, and you’re amazing and incredible and smart and so fucking beautiful it takes my breath away. You are not your past. You are not your mistakes. You are the most extraordinary person I have ever known. You are everything I want and everything I need.”

Fresh linen, soap, and his own naturally sweet smell swept me off my feet as he claimed my mouth in a kiss that was gentle and bruising and charged with everything I loved about him. I grabbed his tie and held him to me, never wanting our lips to part.

“Just you is more than enough. I choose you, Polly. Just you. Please. Will you please, please, just stay and talk. You can cry and then cry some more, but please, please don’t go.”

Given the numbing effect Luca’s declarations had over my heart, sitting on the beach while staring at a moody night sky with the frigid Atlantic Ocean lapping at our feet, was not as uncomfortable as it should have been.

“She was at the airport when I landed.”

“I bet she was,” I snorted. “But I bet you twenty bucks your conversation with her was remarkably different from mine.”

“You might be surprised.”

“Alright then, you go first. What did she say to you apart from, ‘I made a terrible mistake, please take me and my skanky ass back’?”

Luca grimaced. “That was part of it, but there’s more.” His face morphed into a scowl and then a pout and not the kind I often used to get my own way. It was the genuine, I’m hurting, I may explode into tears kind.

And I knew.

“She told you about me … didn’t she? About the babies.”

“She did.”

“That must have been quite a shock. What was your response?”

“I told her I was in love with the most incredible woman alive, and nothing or no one could change that. Then I told her to fuck off.”

Pride swelled my heart. “You did?”

“I did. Felt good, too. Should have done it a long time ago.”

“What else did Ms. Nightwing have to say for herself?”

“Not a lot. I got rid of her before she could say much more. But what she did say mostly centered around her being the only one who could give me what I wanted.”

“Did she mention her brother?”

“Christian?” Luca looked up, seeming surprised to hear that name. “Nope. She rarely did, though. Her family was a real sore point. I never met any of them until the wedding and even then, Christian wasn’t there.”

“Oh, but he was. Your boy Chris is Christian. As in your girl Clara’s brother, Christian.”

Luca’s blue eyes, glowing in light of the moon, widened. “Not my girl, and … he’s her what now … also, what?”

“ Your manager …” I repeated.

“Yep.

“Is the brother …”

“Right.”

“Of the girl he arranged for you to marry.” Luca nodded, then blinked the slowest blink I’d ever seen. “He’s also the reason you had to marry her and gives off some major Flowers in the Attic ‘ sister-loving’ vibes.”

The blank stare returned but for a much shorter period. “I genuinely have no response to that. I mean … what … Maybe you should just tell me what to think ‘cause I am blank.”

Sand squeaked between my toes as I twisted on my bum, then climbed into Luca’s lap. His hands automatically locked over the small of my back and slid down to cup my ass. “Chris or Christian or dickface, whatever you want to call him, is the one who leaked the photos … both times. Everything, the whole lot, was to get his sister married off to a rich hockey star.”

“No,” I dropped as Luca released my cheeks, his hands instantly flying to his mouth as he gasped. Had his eyes not been misting over with tears, his reaction would have been comical.

“But what about Clara and Dallas … the baby? How did leaving me at the church …” His voice trailed off before he grabbed me at the waist, shifted me from his lap, and jumped to his feet. “Chris was trying to make me look bad … to protect his sister.”

“At first yeah, but the baby changed everything. You were supposed to go to rehab, come out a new man ready to win back Clara’s heart, and live happily ever after.”

“That’s so …”

“Fucked up?”

“Yep. Really, really fucked up.” Luca kicked at the sand before dropping his face into his hands. “Oh my god. It’s so freaking obvious. Nightwing-Night! How did I not see it? God, I’m such a fucking idiot–”

“Stop!” I yelled, gripping his chin and squishing his perfect lips between my fingers. “If you expect me to let go of my shit, you need to let go of yours. Nothing in your history points to you being an idiot. You wanted to finish college before nominating for the draft, and you did, and guess what, Cowboy? Idiots don’t get straight A’s. Even Chris admitted how well you did without a manager before he came along. You are not stupid or dumb. You are kind and generous with the biggest heart of anyone I have known, and sometimes the wrong kind of people see that and take advantage of it.”

Luca pulled his head free, picked up a shell, and dusted the sand from its crinkled edges. After rolling it between his fingers a few times, he tossed it into the water, watching it disappear into the darkness before landing with a plop.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Princess, but if you truly think that, why would you leave and tell me to go back to Clara, knowing the kind of woman she was? How could you think I would be better off with someone who could do that?”

Bile rose in my throat as I remembered Chris’s arrogant contempt. “He called me Jasmine, Luca. God knows what dirt they have on me. You’ve worked so hard to come back from your injury and all the scandals. I didn’t want to be the one to ruin it.”

Part of me expected anger. Part of me wanted it. The familiar sting would almost have been soothing. But what I got was so much better and again proved what an extraordinary man Luca D’Cruz was.

“You know what? I would have done the same thing … sort of. I would do anything to protect you too, but I could never leave you, Pol.”

Without letting go of me, Luca stood, hitched me higher onto his waist, and kissed me. “If you want to go home and leave Chris, or Christian and his fucking sister behind, then go … But I’m coming with you because none of it means anything if I don’t have you to share it with.”