She felt him stroking her back, seeking to reassure her. All she could think about was the way he’d disappeared before her eyes. And a voice, his mother’s voice, though Phoebe had never heard it, pleading with her to love him.
Her throat felt thick. She was caught between the dream and reality, between who they were and what the dream had seemed to push her towards.
Sadness clawed at her insides.
It was a construct of her own pregnancy. An amalgam of her hopes for their babies and a reflection on the things Octavio had endured.
‘Would you like to talk about it?’
She instinctively shied away from that. How could she talk about it when she barely understood it? How could she talk about it to Octavio, of all people?
She forced a smile but the effort physically hurt. ‘That’s okay.’ Her voice was hoarse. She cleared her throat. ‘It was just a dream.’
Except, it wasn’t just a dream. It was a tangible force that prevented her from sleeping, so for once she was awake when Octavio stirred and stepped from their bed a while later. Naked, glorious, but broken. Broken in a way she hadn’t fully understood before now. Broken in a way she saw and wanted to fix.
But why?
Why should she?
Would he even want that?
‘My nannies taught me to be tough. To rely on no one.’
Was it a lesson that could be unlearned? Would he come to understand that she could be trusted?
Phoebe stared at his back, rigid and strong, and her insides swirled. More importantly, could she trust him? What she’d been through with Christopher had been devastating, butPhoebe had been a grown woman who’d known herself to have been loved by her mother for her most formative years. Octavio had had the rug pulled from under him at a vital age and had then been raised by a man who—from the outside—seemed determined to destroy the young Prince.
‘Octavio?’ she said his name into the room, as the dawn light softened their surrounds and made everything seem almost coated in gold. He turned, frowning.
‘You’re awake?’
She nodded.
‘Because of the nightmare?’
‘In part.’ She hesitated. ‘Do you need to go straight away?’
His frown was infinitesimal. ‘Do you want me to stay?’ he asked as he moved back to the bed and sat next to her.
Her stomach was a tumble of nerves. She did. She wanted him to stay desperately, but she was terrified of this conversation. Just as she was about to tell him she was fine, that he could leave, she heard his mother’s voice; she saw Octavio disappearing from her and she sat up straighter, reaching for the sheet and folding it under her arms.
‘Just for a bit. I need to speak with you.’
But why had the dream devastated her so much? Why had the thought of losing Octavio flooded her with so much pain it had been like a visceral, gaping wound? What could she say to him now? Was she really going to tell him that a version of his mother’s ghost had come to her in a dream? It sounded ridiculous. She shook her head. This wasn’t about the dream; it was about what he’d told her.
‘Octavio.’ She put her hand on his thigh. His strong, powerful thigh. All of him was strong, his power was absolute. And yet he’d been emotionally stripped raw as a boy by an adult who’d been trusted to care for him. Her outrage overtook anything else. ‘What happened to you, after your parents died…it wasn’t okay.’
A muscle jerked in his jaw. ‘I’ve made my peace with it.’
‘But have you? Have you really?’
‘It was a long time ago, as I said.’
‘But isn’t it still affecting you?’
His nostrils flared. ‘My uncle has no ability to affect me any more.’
‘I can see why that’s important to you to feel, but he was the one person who could have loved you and shielded you and really cared for you, and instead—’
