“Just to talk,” he added quickly. “If you want me to leave, I'll leave. But I'm going to keep trying, Elena. Every day, until you believe me.”
I should have told him not to bother. Should have said there was no point. Instead, I found myself standing there frozen, too afraid to hope.
“Bye, Elena,” he said softly and walked out of the house.
I closed the door before I could do something stupid like call him back.
True to his word, Gastone returned the next day. And the next. And the next.
In the first few days, I barely spoke to him. He would arrive around noon, sometimes with lunch or a small gift—a book he thought I'd like or a set of watercolors.
The whole time, he never pushed me into speaking. That was, perhaps, the only reason I allowed him back. At first, Ianswered as little as I could and pretended to be engrossed in chores. But he still stayed back, even helped me wash the dishes.
But as the days passed, I found myself warming, despite my best efforts to remain aloof. The thing was, having him around was the only time I felt like myself. More…normal.
I hated that the man who broke my heart seemed to be the only person with the power to heal me. It terrified me, and sometimes I found myself wanting to bring up that day again, to truly talk through it and put it behind us. But every time, I bit down on my tongue.
Because I knew if I went back to him, he could ruin me. That’show muchhe meant to me.
On the fifth day, he brought a picnic basket and suggested we eat by the lake. I surprised myself by agreeing.
“Caspian used to bring me here when I was a kid,” I said, watching the water lap at the shore as we sat on a blanket he'd spread over the grass.
Gastone looked surprised. “I didn't know that.”
“There's a lot you don't know about me,” I said, then immediately regretted how harsh it sounded. “Sorry. That came out wrong.”
“No,” he shook his head. “You're right. There's a lot I don't know. But I want to learn, if you'll let me.”
The sincerity in his voice made my throat tight. “We'll see.”
By the next day, I started waiting for him to come. By the tenth, we were making dinner together, moving around the small kitchen like any domesticated couple. He chopped vegetables while I sautéed chicken, and for a moment, it was easy to forget how we'd started, how badly we'd ended.
But the day after that, he arrived with a serious expression, and I knew I couldn’t live in this fairy tale forever and pretend nothing happened.
“Elena,” he said, when we sat around the kitchen table with some tea. “How long will you…” He motioned around the house.
“What? Live like this?” I finished his thought.
He leaned over and stared at me with such intensity that I forgot where we were. “Come home. Please.”
I studied his face, trying to remember the contempt I had seen on it that day. But all I saw was hope. Such terrible, precious hope that I knew I didn’t want to break it for him.
“I won’t say I’ll come home,” I said finally. “But I think it’s time we talked.”
For a long moment, neither of us spoke.
“I met Ricardo,” Gastone began, his voice low. “Face to face.”
“You said that the day you came,” I nodded.
“I know, but there’s so much more I didn’t say. Elena, Adriana was, once upon a time, my everything. I would have died for her, you know? I don’t expect you to understand, but there are very few moments in life when the earth shatters beneath your feet and you don’t know what to do with it. When you told me about her, that the child I’d mourned for three years wasn’t even mine, I couldn’t believe it.”
There was such sorrow in his eyes, and he shook his head, averted his gaze. “Why am I telling you this?” he muttered under his breath. “It’s not your responsibility to understand.”
I felt a tug in my heart. He was beating himself up for simply speaking from his heart, and if we were talking, I needed him to be completely honest. Both with him and me.
“Something like when someone shows you who they are, and you don’t see it until they do something really, truly terrible. Right?” I gave him a little nudge. He looked up at me in shock, as though surprised I had heard him.
