Or he could set her free.
She rose on his lap, held his gaze, and waited for him to repeat her words. Her lie.
So he made his choice. The only choice he could.
‘I cannot love you back.’
Flora had expected it. His denial. And she smiled through the rejection because she knew the truth.
She loved him and he loved her.
She climbed off his lap and sat beside him, this man who had turned from fire to ice with those three little words. She fixed her bra, pulled the ripped seams of her dress together, and waited.
She was ready. Ready to teach a man who’d never known love how to accept it.
Raffaele tucked himself away and straightened his clothes, then turned to her, a pulse pounding in his bristled cheek.
‘I can never love you,’ he said, his face unreadable.
‘What makes you think you don’t already love me?’ she asked gently.
‘Because love doesn’t exist. This is sex, Flora. A chemical connection in order to procreate.’
‘But I’m already pregnant, so why do we keep making love?’ she asked. ‘Because you love—?’
‘Because I enjoy sex, and I enjoy having it with you. Desire is natural.’
‘And love isn’t?’
‘Love is a myth used to manipulate the weak.’
‘I’m not weak, and neither are you.’
She placed her hand on his thigh and gave the tight muscles a squeeze. She watched him looking at the hand on his grey-covered thigh. Saw the debate flickering across his taut features. His hand moved. Reached for hers and hesitated. A palpable pause. Then he picked up her hand and placed it on her lap and turned his unwavering gaze to hers.
Flora held up her hand and pre-empted his rebuttal with a shake of her head. ‘I’m aware that eavesdropping is a sin, but I will pay the price—because everything I heard you say to your mother I already knew. You only confirmed it.’
‘Confirmed what?’
‘That you don’t know what love is.’
‘I know exactly what it is,’ he rejected. ‘It is a myth. A lie.’
She shook her head. ‘All your life you’ve been told stories of the man who promised to love your mother, promised to come back to her, and rejected her in the most callous way. He hid you both in a village that was nowhere in anyone’s consciousness. He left you both to survive on the lie that he’d come back. That isn’t love.’
‘I never said it was.’
She ignored him. Because she understood him now. Understood his avoidance of anything other than providing the essentials. Food. Warmth. Shelter. But never love. Because he’d only ever experienced a kind of love that would have broken the strongest of men.
‘Your father tricked your mother into thinking his seduction was love,’ she continued, trying her hardest to keep her voice level. ‘He lied to her and she believed him. And she made you believe too, in some distorted view of love.’
He was looking at her, but she knew he was somewhere far away. His eyes were...haunted.
‘Why was she in so much pain if it wasn’t love?’ he asked between gritted teeth.
‘Love isn’t pain.’
She wanted to reach for him. Hold his hand and ask him her next question.
