A Hunger for the Forbidden(58)

“It’s not the same as what you mean, though, is it?” he asked slowly.

“It’s just … I can’t really be myself around them,” she said. “I can’t show them my pain. I can’t … I can’t let my guard drop for a moment because then they might know, and they’ll feel like they’re a burden, and I just … don’t want them to carry that. It’s not fair.”

“But what about you?”

“What about me?”

Matteo felt like someone had placed a rock in his stomach. Only hours ago, he had been content to hold Alessia tight against him. Content to keep her because she had accepted who he was, hadn’t she?

But he saw now. He saw that Alessia accepted far less than she should. That she gave at the expense of herself. That she would keep doing it until the light in her had been used up. And he would be the worst offender. Because he was too closed off, too dark, to offer anything in return.

Sex wouldn’t substitute, no matter how much he wanted to pretend it might. That as long as he could keep her sleepy, and naked and satisfied, he was giving.

But they were having a baby, a child. She was his wife. And life, the need for support, for touch, for caring, went well outside the bedroom. He knew that, as keenly as he knew he couldn’t give it.

“I have to go,” he said, his words leaden.

“What?”

“I have to go down to my offices for a few hours.”

“It’s four in the morning.”

“I know, but this cannot wait.”

“Okay,” she said.

Damn her for accepting it. Damn him for making her.

He bent down and started collecting his clothes, running his fingers over his silk tie, remembering how she’d undone it only hours before with shaking fingers. How she’d kissed him. How she’d given to him.

He dressed quickly, Alessia still standing by the window, frozen, watching him.

He did the buttons on his shirt cuffs and opened his closet, retrieving his suit jacket. Then he took a breath, and turned his back on Alessia.

“I should be back later today. Feel free to go back to bed.”

“In here?”

“Perhaps it would be best if you went back to your room. You haven’t had your things moved, after all.”

“But I made my decision.”

“Perhaps I haven’t made mine.”

“You said you had earlier.”

“Yes, I did, and then you decided you needed more time to think about it. Now I would like an extension, as well. That seems fair, doesn’t it?”

He took his phone off the nightstand and curled his fingers around it. A flashback assaulted him. Of how it had been when he’d turned his back on the burning warehouse, leaving the people inside of it to deal with the consequences of their actions without his help.

But this was different. He was walking away for different reasons. It wasn’t about freeing himself. This was about freeing her.

And when he returned home later in the day, perhaps he would have the strength to do it. To do what needed to be done.

Alessia didn’t go back to sleep. Instead, she wandered around the palazzo like a zombie, trying to figure out why she’d exploded all over Matteo like that. And why he’d responded like he had.

It was this love business. It sucked, in her opinion.

Suddenly she’d felt like she was being torn open, like she was too full to hold everything in. Like she’d glossed over everything with that layer of contentment she’d become so good at cultivating.

She wanted more than that, and she wasn’t sure why. Wasn’t sure why she couldn’t just keep making the best of things. She had Matteo. That should be enough.

But it wasn’t.

Because you don’t really have him.

She didn’t. She had his name. She was married to him. She was having his baby, sharing his bed and his body, but she didn’t really have him. Because the core of him remained off-limits to her. Not just her, but to everyone.

She wanted it all. Whether she should or not. Whether it made sense or not. But that was love. Which brought her back around to love sucking. Because if she could just put on a smile and deal with it, if she could just take what he was giving and not ask for any more, she was sure there could be some kind of happiness there.

But there wouldn’t be joy. There wouldn’t be anything deep and lasting. And she was tired of taking less than what she wanted to keep from making waves. She was so tired of it she thought she might break beneath the strain of it.