Rooted (Pagano Family #3)(67)
oOo
She read through the afternoon. People came in and then went back out, sometimes without saying a word. Carmen barely noticed unless they tried to engage her—at which point she made it clear that she didn’t want to be disturbed. When John came in and said they needed to bring the tree in, she went up to John and Joey’s old room. She finished Theo’s manuscript sitting on the chair on which he’d f*cked her the night before.
Reading his memoir was like seeing their summer through his eyes. More, it was seeing herself through his eyes. He’d once, very early on, told her that it was a powerful thing to be understood. She’d thought then that she’d known what he meant.
She hadn’t. But she did now. He had seen deep inside her, finding even the dark corners she hid from herself. The glimpse into herself through his eyes sobered her. It hurt her heart. It made her swell with love. And it terrified her.
I’m here alone in Paris, and what I felt, what I feel, is true. In the span of a summer, I felt the full complement of possible feelings for her. The scarred heart in my chest stretched and stirred to life again, and I’m as glad to have the pain as I am to have the love.
She is rooted in my heart, and I am free and full.
And time again moves forward.
With those lines, the manuscript ended. He’d never named her or Rosa, referring to them only by the initials of their first names. He’d preserved her privacy even as he’d bared her mind, heart, and soul. It was indeed a powerful thing to be understood.
oOo
She found him in the cellar, watching television and talking with Eli and Joey. Eli saw her first and smiled. He seemed to be as happy to have her and his father together again as anyone—or almost anyone.
But Carmen felt exposed and unsettled, and she could feel the urge to back away, to recede into familiar solitude, taking her over. She hated it—this time, more than any other, she wanted to feel at ease, to trust and be comfortable in the knowledge that she was first in Theo’s regard.
She saw now that she had nothing to fear from his love of Maggie. Her new fear was of his love for her.
She was a f*cking mess. But she was fighting it off.
“Hey, Carm.” Eli was sitting on the old plaid sofa with his father. He stood now, making way for her. “Wanna watch with us?”
“No, thanks. I came down to steal your dad.”
“I’m yours to be stolen.” Theo stood immediately, and she knew that he’d been expecting her to want to talk after she was finished with the manuscript. She wanted to just go back to her place, where they’d have almost infinite privacy, but dinner was almost ready, and she wasn’t in the mood to fend off the family pleas to stay. So she led Theo upstairs, back to John and Joey’s room.
They sat on the bed that had been John’s. Theo took her hand but didn’t speak. He was waiting for her.
“It’s beautiful. Truly beautiful.”
“Thank you.” When she didn’t, couldn’t, say more, he added, “Carmen, talk to me. You could have told me it was beautiful downstairs.”
Carmen took a moment and collected her courage with a deep breath. “You’re right. It’s a powerful thing to be understood.” Another moment, another breath. “It scares me. Badly.”
“Why?” There was no challenge, no ire in the word. Only gentle curiosity and patience.
“I don’t know. I feel…naked.”
“You’re beautiful naked.”
“Theo…” She huffed and tried to draw away, irritated that he would be puckish when she was trying so hard to master her fear. He held on, though.
He laughed softly and put his hand on her face. “No. I mean that the part of you that you try so hard to hide, that’s your real beauty. You let me see glimpses of that part this summer, little tendrils that reached out. When I say I’m entangled in you, that’s where. That tender part—it’s magnificent.”
“That little part—that’s enough? Because the rest of me is bitch.”
“No, it’s not. You’re not a bitch, Carm. You can be bitchy, definitely. But you’re not cruel, you’re not selfish, and you’re not uncaring. If anything, I think you care too much. More than you can contain. What you are is self-protected. It makes me want to protect you, to take some of the burden of it off your shoulders.”
“It makes me dizzy to feel like you know me better than I do. Really disoriented.”
“Do you trust me with the knowledge? That’s the real question.”
And so they’d come to a moment of truth—the moment of truth. But she knew the answer. She thought she’d known the answer even before she’d read his new memoir. She thought she’d known since he stood on her porch, peering into her house through the glass in her door.
“Yes.”
He pulled her close and laid her down on John’s twin bed. They made out like teenagers, Theo’s hand in her leggings, resting on the bare skin of her pregnant belly, until Carlo called them down for dinner.
That night, lying in her bed in the loft of her little beach cottage, Theo’s sleeping body spooned behind hers, Carmen finally comprehended that fizzy, airy feeling in her blood.
She was happy.
oOo