Carides's Forgotten Wife Page 15

  “And you thought you knew what I wanted?”

  “Yes. You want this. You want love. You want things that I can never, ever give. You would stand there and tell me that I’m wrong? Even as you prove me right? You cannot do that.”

  “But things have changed. You have Isabella… You have me. Surely…”

  “I remembered,” he said. “I remembered when we were in there. When April came to me to tell me she was pregnant. If only my reaction were one half so steeped in grief as I imagined. I did not want the responsibility. I couldn’t bear it. My life was perfect. I was a carefree bachelor with everything I wanted. Never mind the fact that I actually had a wife. You were a wife that I never had to see, a wife that I never had to speak to. Out of sight, out of mind. I had established for myself a perfect life. And, while I considered taking the child and giving her to you to raise, since I certainly wasn’t going to get you pregnant, I decided in the end that perhaps you wouldn’t take so kindly to that.”

  “Leon…”

  “It started with grief, Rose. It definitely did. But it twisted me into a cold, selfish man, and by the time I rejected my own child that was the only thing that was driving me. I lost the capacity to love. I felt no sadness signing away the rights to my flesh and blood. Do you think I once mourned the fact that I wasn’t in your bed? Do you think I felt even the tiniest sliver of guilt when I took another woman into my arms in spite of the vows that I spoke to you? I didn’t. I could pledge faithfulness. I know that I can. I don’t want the things that I did. I find that I’m satisfied with you. Love? I don’t love anything. I’m never going to love you.”

  The words poured from him, a toxic kind of black ooze that covered everything it touched. He hated himself. He hated her even more for asking this of him. For making him hurt her. For making him destroy this beautiful thing that they had built between them. But he couldn’t love her. He couldn’t.

  Already, there was Isabella. And he loved her in spite of himself. Perhaps, she would even love him in spite of himself. But…when he looked at Rose, when she demanded love from him, there was nothing but fear. Loving Isabella… Loving Rose… If he did that and he lost them, it would bleed him dry. There was no way he could ever endorse such a thing.

  “Leon, I know you love me.”

  “No,” he said, his tone final. “I don’t.”

  “But these past few months…”

  “When we began a physical relationship it was when I had no memory. I had no idea who you were. I had no idea who I was. But I know now. I am simply a man too scarred, too damaged to ever care for anyone. I am not the man you wish I was. I’m not even the man I wish I was. I can promise you faithfulness, but I cannot give you love.”

  “A promise doesn’t mean anything without love.”

  “Then that is your decision,” he said. “I cannot make you change your mind.”

  “So you’re telling me I should simply believe you? With nothing else but your word?”

  He saw it then. The chance to do the right thing. For the first time in too many damn years. He met her gaze, watched the rain pour down her beautiful face. And he memorized her. Memorized every slope and curve of her face. Memorized that exact color in her eyes, and deeper, the way they looked at him now. With hope. With love.

  One last moment before he drove it all into the ground.

  “You are right not to trust me, Rose. Very few things matter to me less than the truth. I know who I am now. I’m Leon Carides. I was a boy in Greece who hated his impoverished life and lied his way into the US. Who seduced a girl from a nice family and promised to care for her, and instead devastated her existence. Who married his mentor’s daughter with no intention of ever honoring his vows. Who had a child with a lover whose name he barely knew and was so comfortable piling deceit on yet more deceit he thought nothing at all of concealing it from the world. From his wife. I don’t even know what the truth is. Much less love.”

  “I want to show you,” she said, the light still shining in her eyes.

  “But I won’t be able to see it,” he said.

  “I told you once that you asked the impossible of me. And you said—” her voice broke “—you said someday I could ask you for the same. And that you would try. Why won’t you try?”

  Something broke inside him. Or maybe it was already broken. Maybe now he just remembered that it was. “Because I don’t want to.”

  And with that, he extinguished it. Finally. With that, she turned and left him, standing alone in the rain.

  She left him there with all of his memories, all of his pain.

  And he simply stood there, and longed for that moment when the only thought in his head had been Rose.

  When they had simply been the truth. And there hadn’t been a single lie in him.

  He had loved her then.

  He realized that now. When everything else had fallen away, he had loved Rose. There had been nothing to stop him then. When he was clean, and new. There had been only him, only her, and loving her had been both instant and simple.

  But with each new memory that crowded in, each new wound reopened, he’d found love pushed further and further away. Until it was out of his reach.

  Until he envied a man lying broken in a hospital bed without a single memory beyond his wife’s blue eyes.

  * * *

  Rose couldn’t face going back into the party. Instead, she turned, leaving Leon standing there in the rain, and ran. She didn’t realize quite where she was running to until she found herself in the rose garden. She knelt down in front of the stone bench, not caring that her dress was getting soaked. Not caring that it was getting dirty. She laid her head across the hard, cool surface and allowed her tears to mix with the drops of water that were falling from the sky.

  She felt hollowed out. Hopeless. She felt utterly and completely alone.

  She shivered, cold and panic washing over her in equal measures.

  This was the thing she feared the most. Being alone. Demanding so much that the person standing before her would decide she wasn’t worth it. It was why she had never demanded her father pay attention to her. Why she had never done anything but play the part of meek, solicitous daughter.

  Why she had never once commanded Leon treat her more like a wife, rather than like she was invisible. Why it had taken her so long to get to the point of asking for a divorce.

  Why she had preferred a divorce, running, to asking him to be her husband. To asking for what she wanted. Because she had been afraid that if she did he would prove that he truly didn’t think she was worth the effort. And then she would have to know, not just suspect deep down that there was nothing about her that grabbed hold of anyone tight enough to incite change.

  Her father had been so lost in his grief over his wife that he had not been able to pull out of it for the sake of his daughter. Leon, on the other hand, had drawn him out in a way she never had. Perhaps it was their matching grief. She could easily see that now. At the time, she hadn’t realized the loss that Leon was contending with.

  Still, at the time it seemed very much like there was something missing in her that other people seemed to possess. A spark that she just couldn’t seem to ignite inside of herself.

  And now, she had finally tried. She had finally demanded the impossible.

  He hadn’t been able to give it. Not to her.

  She lifted her head, raising her face toward the sky, not caring as the droplets landed on her skin, rolling down her face. She could feel something expanding inside her chest—anger, desperation. She could feel herself expanding, changing. Perhaps because she was out here alone. Perhaps because she was no longer trying to shrink herself, contort herself to fit someone else’s view of who she was.

  It was so easy for her to imagine she wasn’t worth it. That she didn’t have what it took to inspir
e passion in someone. But who knew her? Did anyone? She had spent so long being quiet. Not making demands. How would anyone know what she wanted? How would anyone know that she was worth it?

  She had never once behaved as though she was worth it. She had hidden herself away, made herself quiet. Made herself pale. And it had been easy, earlier in the rose garden when Leon was looking at her, when he was kissing her, to imagine that she could be loud. In that space, with his permission. But it was much harder when he had been looking at her with cold, dispassionate eyes. When he wished she would shrink again, and not ask quite so much. That had been the true test.

  The test of whether or not she had the strength to be heard. Whether or not she could stand her ground and ask for these things when someone else said they didn’t want to give them.

  She realized finally that even if Leon didn’t think she was worth it, even if her father had never thought she was worth it…she thought she was.

  She realized it with a rush of absolute certainty and strength. How could she be a mother to Isabella if she taught her that a woman should twist and contort and bend endlessly in order to accommodate other people in her life?

  She didn’t want that little girl to bend, not even once. The world should bend around her, because she had value that was beyond estimation.

  But Rose would never be able to teach her that if she didn’t live her own life in that way.

  So she got up off the ground.

  She spread her arms wide, still facing the heavens, water cascading down her body. Her dress was soaked, probably ruined. Her marriage was ruined.

  Her life was not.

  Her life would be what she made it. She wanted love. She deserved love. She did not deserve to tiptoe around musty halls hoping for attention. She did not deserve to spend her entire professional life continuing to pour into her father’s legacy. She deserved to create her own.

  She did not deserve to have her love defined by Leon. To have him put limitations on it. Because she deserved to give it to someone who loved her back.

  God knew, he would probably always have her love. That was the simple truth. She had loved Leon Carides from the moment she had first seen him and she very seriously doubted that that would change. But the way she responded to it had to.

  Her only real concern was how this would affect her relationship with Isabella. She truly had grown to love the baby as her own. But then, Leon did love his daughter. And he wanted her to have a mother. They could come to an agreement, on that she was confident.

  But she would have to leave this house behind. This thing she had been clinging to for so many years. This place that had held memories and dreams that she had so longed to live over and over again.

  Tonight she had lived a dream. A fantasy. She had attended one of those beautiful parties in this wonderful home, but it hadn’t fixed anything.

  It was surreal, standing there, living out a scene you had always desired to be a part of, then realizing that there were no answers to be found. There were only more questions. It hadn’t magically brought her happiness. Because love had still been missing. And so it hadn’t mattered.

  In the end, the only answer she had truly received was that it was time to grow up. It was time to stop living in the past. It was time to stop wishing that old fantasies would become a new reality.

  It was time to move forward, knowing that she deserved it.

  Whether or not Leon ever believed it.

  She believed it. And that was all that mattered.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  IF THERE WAS one thing Leon Carides was well acquainted with it was grief.

  It was a truth about himself he was certain of as he sat on his bedroom floor, his back pressed against the wall, staring into the darkness. This feeling was old. It was familiar. A yawning cavern that was desperate to be filled.

  And fill it he had done, for years. With alcohol, with sex. With work.

  But here he was, sober, desiring no woman besides the one who had left him, with no choice but to allow grief to roll over him in waves. That experience was new.

  It didn’t take a genius to figure out why he had spent so many years avoiding the emotion. It was desolate and raw. It forced him to examine every dark space inside of him and acknowledge the fact that in many ways he was severely lacking.

  Yes, he had defied the odds. Defeating poverty, climbing up the ranks in business… But it was empty. In the end, all of it was empty. What had it accomplished? What had it done for him?

  All of that money and he had not been able to buy himself a soul. He had not been able to banish fear.

  He had been so afraid that he had denied the existence of his own child.

  He stood up suddenly, ignoring the rush of blood that made his head swim. He walked to his bedroom door, slowly making his way into the hall. Terror, his old friend, gripped his chest as he walked down the hall toward his sleeping daughter’s room. Memories from the past mingling with the present as they often did in this situation.

  He pushed open the door to the nursery and walked inside, fear and love wrapping itself around his heart in equal measure. He put his hand on Isabella’s little back, breathing out a long, slow sigh of relief as he felt her warmth beneath his palm. As he felt her small heart beating, her back rising and falling with each indrawn breath.

  He could have wept with relief. Every time.

  And suddenly, a barrage of images flashed through his mind. But they weren’t memories. They were visions of the future. Of Isabella growing up. Walking, going to school, dating. Driving. Going away to university.

  The thousands of ways he would never be able to protect her. He would never be free of this terror that resided in his chest. Not where she was concerned. She was too precious to him. And the world around them was too uncertain.

  Love would always carry this terrible weight.

  He reached down and picked up his sleeping child, cradling her closely to his chest. She made a small, squeaking sound as she nuzzled deeper into him. He placed his hand over the back of her head, relishing the feel of her softness, the sweet scent that was unique to new life. He had never thought he would have this again. He hadn’t wanted it.

  The cost of it. There was no way to calculate it. It could tear you apart in a thousand different ways. With worry, with grief, with loss.

  But this moment… In this moment he thought it might be worth all of it.

  Something so valuable would never be free. It would never be without cost or risk.

  He sat down in the rocking chair in the corner of the nursery, something he had not done with Isabella before. He had done it with his son, all those years ago. Sat and rocked him endlessly, singing songs that were probably inappropriate because he hadn’t known any lullabies. Because he had been a seventeen-year-old father.

  A small smile tipped his lips up as he began to rock Isabella.

  Such a beautiful soul his son had been. He never let himself think of him. He’d buried this. This grief. This love.

  But he knew for certain that if he never allowed himself to feel pain, he would never experience anything true. The past sixteen years of his life were a testament to that. The buzz from drinks faded, the pleasure from meaningless sex lasted only a few moments. None of it was real. It was all too easy.

  The real things, the true things…they were quiet. They were darkened nurseries, sleepless nights. Vows that bound you to another person for life. They were simple. They were hard.

  Babies, and beautiful women with blue eyes.

  They were the impossible things.

  And the most important.

  It had been so easy to coast through life, as long as he wasn’t allowing himself to remember what it was to feel. Ironically, he had to lose all of his memories to feel. To remember what it was to feel.


  He had to get past the lies so that he could experience something true.

  He had told Rose he was hollow inside. He had told himself the same. That he couldn’t love her. He had told himself that from the moment he had begun to see her as a woman. He had prevented himself from touching her because he knew that once he did she would touch him, deeper than he ever wanted anyone to go. That she would reach down deep, all the way to his scarred soul and try to force him to feel again.

  He knew what love was. That was the problem. He also knew what it cost.

  But now he was sitting here, having lost Rose. Having hurt her. It didn’t matter if he had intended to avoid feeling things for her… It was too late. He had felt things for her from the moment he’d taken her into his arms on the night of her prom.

  And that was why when he had run from her, he had run so hard.

  He was still running. All these years later.

  “I think it’s time to stop.”

  * * *

  Leon had established a meeting with her so that they could discuss custody. She hadn’t seen him for a week. She hadn’t seen Isabella, either, and the loss of both of them ate at her like a vicious beast.

  She was miserable. This bid for independence, for self-worth, had a high cost. And she was still on the fence about whether or not it would be worth it in the end.

  As she walked into the manor, a wave of sadness washed over her. But it wasn’t memories of her childhood that made her ache for this place. It was memories of her time with Leon. Of her time with Isabella.

  The family she wanted to make, the real family, not a fantasy or a vague dream. The family she could have if she was just willing to take something less than love.

  But if she took something less now, then she would always take something less. She had proved that for the past twenty-three years.

  She blinked, continuing on up the stairs, and to Leon’s office. This was like submitting to torture. But for Isabella, it was worth it.