Octavio hesitated at the door a moment, but he’d come this far and wasn’t going to let a little something like last-minute nerves get in the way. He knocked on the door perfunctorily and then pushed it open, his gut twisting at the sight of Phoebe. His wife. His pregnant wife. His beautiful, kind, selfless, pregnant wife, who had also suffered so much in her life and deserved better than to ever feel like this. For the woman in the chair across the room was a study in grief and despair, and he had done that to her.
He closed the door and crossed the room, startling her out of her reverie just as he had the guard.
‘Octavio!’ Her eyes widened, her pinched features did their best to rearrange themselves and hide the sadness she was feeling. ‘What are you doing here?’ She wiped her hands over her skirt. ‘I thought you were flying somewhere or other.’
‘I was,’ he admitted. ‘I got up there and looked down at the palace and thought of you and realised that this, here, is exactly where I want to be. So I came back. I came home.’
Home. Yes. That’s what Phoebe made him feel—that he had a home. And it wasn’t about the palace, but rather wherever shewas. It had been so long since he’d felt anything like that. It was a revelation to Octavio, but the revelations kept coming.
‘Oh.’ But she was uncertain and unsure. Could he blame her? She’d put herself out on a limb for him, not once but twice. He thought of how brave she’d been to admit her feelings even to herself, but then to confess them to him that morning and chase him down this afternoon. She had been brave where he’d been determined to fight and hide.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, because it felt important to admit that. He’d messed up. He knew it, he wanted her to know it, too.
‘It’s fine. You were right. You were honest with me from the beginning. I let my own wishes get in the way of reality. I wanted this to be a real marriage. I wanted us to love each other and to be having a baby out of love. Maybe that’s because I never saw that with my parents and always craved the ideal of a happy family. For whatever reason, I imagined something that wasn’t there. You don’t have to apologise for not being as stupid as I am.’
‘You’re not stupid,’ he responded indignantly. But his gears were churning, his mind spinning. ‘Are you saying you were wrong about your feelings?’ And did that matter? Having realised how he felt, wasn’t it his job to be brave and admit that he loved her, even if she took back what she’d said earlier?
‘I’m saying I shouldn’t have brought any of this up. I wanted you to know how loved you are, but you don’t need that. You don’t want it. I was being selfish, saying what I wanted to say without respecting that it’s the last thing you wanted to hear.’
‘That’s just not the case, Phoebe. You are never selfish, and it’s certainly not selfish to tell someone you love them.’
‘With you, it is. So I’m the one who’s sorry.’
‘Stop. Don’t do that.’ His voice was raw and he realised then how much she was hurting him—without realising it. He pressed a finger to her lips, needing her to stop winding back everythingshe’d said. He couldn’t bear it. ‘Listen to me. I don’t know what you’re saying and what it means. Perhaps you don’t feel as you thought you did, or you have changed your mind. Regardless, I need to tell you what I realised, as the helicopter lifted up and took me in the opposite direction of you.’
She blinked across at him, her eyes so lovely and bewitching. ‘What?’ The word was whispered against his finger, her breath warm. He closed his eyes on a predictable wave of desire. This was not the time to let their chemistry run the show.
‘You’re where I want to be.’ It sounded so simple, and maybe it was. ‘You are my home,’ he said, because that was the best way to describe it. ‘And you have my heart.’
Her own heart was racing so hard she could barely hear him over the gushing in her ears. She heard his words and she was sure she understood them, but what if she was wrong? She needed to be very, very clear before she reacted, because so much was riding on this conversation. The nature of their marriage hung in the balance—because she knew one thing for sure. She couldn’t keep living with him, sleeping with him, when she loved and he did not reciprocate those feelings.
‘You are my wife,’ he said, but in a way that imbued the word with an almost mythical quality. ‘The only wife I would ever choose or want. You are the wife I want to live with and love for the rest of my days, to have by my side at all times—good and bad. You are the person I want to raise a family with, hold hands with as the sun sets, share meals with, talk to until our voices are raspy, wake up next to, reach out for in the middle of the night. You are everything I have ever wanted and thought so far out of my reach.’
She gasped, her heart trembling now.
‘I realised, as I flew away from you, how conditioned I had been to believe I didn’t deserve this. That no one would ever love me. That’s why I fought you this morning, and again just now. How could anyone love me? But particularly, how couldyou? You are so perfect—an angel, here amongst men—there was no way I could believe you were actually saying these things. No way I could trust your love to be true.’
‘It is true,’ she said emphatically, sharply, furious at what those awful nannies had done to him, at the behavioural programming his uncle had employed. ‘I love you and you are so, so worthy of that love, my darling Tavi. My husband.’ And when she said the word, it was just as imbued with meaning as Octavio had made the wordwifeseem—so much more than a title or a statement of fact. It was everything. A statement of the truth in her heart and the gift she wanted to make of it for him. She caught his face with her hands, holding him steady so she could look at him—but more importantly, so that he could look at her and really see her.
‘In the dream I had, you couldn’t see me. I was calling to you, and I just couldn’t reach you, couldn’t make you see me nor hear me. It was a nightmare.’
‘I see you now. I see what I have, what I have been blessed with.’
‘WhatIhave been blessed with,’ she said with a shake of her head. ‘You don’t understand—I came to Castilona looking for my father. Needing family and connection, after my mum and after Christopher. I didn’t want to feel like this piece of meaningless flotsam any more, uprooted and disconnected. I didn’t want to be alone any more, even when I was also terrified of making the same mistakes all over again. But I had no idea that in coming here I would meetyou,my other half, and that we would on that very first night conceive two babies who would bind us for ever.’ A tear ran down her cheek. He lifted a hand and gently wiped it away.
‘You came to Castilona looking for family, and you found it,’ he said, dropping his forehead to hers. ‘And we will still try to find your father,querida, to complete the puzzle for you. But in the meantime, you are here, and you are mine, as I am yours.’
She nodded, with a levity in her heart because she knew, without a shadow of doubt, that he spoke the absolute truth. This was their destiny, and their fate, and they’d found their way to it despite everything they’d been through. Or perhaps because of it. Despite their determined efforts to avoid anything like love, perhaps their experiences had made them both recognise how special their connection was even before they were ready to admit it. Phoebe couldn’t analyse it more deeply than that, in the moment, but she was aware, as their lips brushed and held, that something almost magical had happened between them, and she would never stop feeling grateful and glad.
Except, as time passed and Phoebe fully stepped into a life with King Octavio—a life in which each knew how loved and valued they were and what a true partnership they’d formed—she found her mind turning to the key points of their relationship, analysing it, and her sense of wonderment only grew and grew. So much so, that one night, when they were standing on a private terrace of the palace, Octavio’s arm wrapped around Phoebe as they stared up at the starlit sky, Phoebe admitted something that she hadn’t fully comprehended herself yet.
‘That night we met,’ she started slowly. ‘Do you ever think it seemed almost beyond our control?’
He glanced down at her, frowning a little.
‘That sounds vague,’ she admitted, laughing softly. ‘It’s just…’ She searched for the right words. ‘I told you that my mother was a cleaner in a hospital, and that’s part of the reason I took the job at theclínica, but lately I’ve been feeling like it was more thanthat. Like maybe somehow, on some level, she was pushing me there. Towards you.’
He didn’t dismiss it. Instead, he nodded, thoughtfully. ‘The night I met you, I was thinking of my own mother. She would say to me, whenever she travelled,“We’ll always have the stars.”It was her way of reminding me that no matter where we were, if we were separated, we could both look out at the sky and see the stars and know we were thinking of each other. But that night, there were no stars. When I needed her most, in my grief, I felt only her absence. I felt alone. And then, there you were, right when I needed you.’
