‘Because tonight,’ she replied, ‘I realised that the woman I was raised to be is someone else’s idea of who I should have become.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘The woman I might have been wasn’t ever given a chance to live.’
‘How can you grieve for someone who never lived?’
‘I’m allowing myself to grieve for all the things I wasn’t allowed to have. I’m grieving for the woman I could have become. For the life I could have had. They denied it to her.Me.Withheld information...’
‘Who are“they”?’
‘They’re not important. Not tonight.’
She blinked, shutting him out with those obscenely long lashes before piercing him with a penetrating look.
‘Who are you grieving for?’
‘My mother.’
Her eyes flickered over his face. Each flicker touched him. It was warm. Unnerving. Because it came from the softness inside her. A softness just for him. His abdomen tightened.
She stepped down into his space. Moved into his heat. The fire inside him spat embers into the cool winter night’s air and the air between them crackled with it.
‘I’m so sorry for your loss,’ she said.
And he pushed down the urge to draw her closer. To embrace her grief with his own and offer her the same tenderness shining from the depth of her eyes.
He checked himself.
He did not deserve tenderness.
He was not tender.
He didn’t know how to be.
‘Tell me of the woman who could have lived,’ he said, instead of responding to her sincerity. Because he didn’t know how to.
‘No,’ she refused.
‘Why do you not want to tell me?’ he asked, his lungs tight, his words hoarse. He wanted to understand it. This idea of grieving for something that had never existed. The idea was raw, because he’d never let himself grieve for the lifehecould have had.
But did he want to grieve for the life he could have had with his father? A liar? A cheat? Because even if his father had claimed him who would have provided for his mother? Protected her?
She’d needed love too.
His guilt was loud tonight.
He shut it down. Because what did he know of love?
Nothing.
He knew only how to brush his mother’s hair. Feed her.
He’d never been taught to love, and he didn’t want to learn. Because love was a myth whispered in the act of seduction.A lie.His father had seduced his mother—a naïve girl from old Sicilia, who’d left the orphanage behind her and was seeking adventure in Roma, where she’d become a nanny to his three children.
Raffaele’s half-brothers and sister.
His father had got his mother pregnant, and before his world could come tumbling down he’d hidden her away. Forgotten her and the dirty little secret that would’ve brought his world crashing around his knees had it been exposed. He’d fobbed her off with words likesoonandwhen the baby is grown. He’d shut her away, out of sight, and forgotten about her.
