A Hunger for the Forbidden

chapter TWELVE

ALESSIA WOKE UP a few hours later, feeling cold. She wasn’t sure why. It was a warm evening, and she had blankets, and Matteo, to keep her warm.

Matteo.

He made her heart feel like it was cracking apart. She wanted to reach him. Wanted to touch him. Really touch him, not just with her hands on his skin, but to touch his heart.

This was so close to what she wanted. A baby. The man she loved. Dio, she loved him so much. It made her hurt. Not just for her, but for him. For what she knew they could have that he seemed determined to wall himself off from.

A tear slipped down her cheek and she sat up, getting out of bed and crossing to the window. Now she was crying. She wasn’t really sure why she was crying, either.

But she was. Really crying. From somewhere deep inside of herself. From a bottomless well that seemed to have opened up in her.

Why did she never get what she wanted? Why was it always out of reach?

Her mother’s love had been there, so briefly, long enough for her to have tasted it, to know what it was. Just so she could feel the ache keenly when it was gone? And then there was Matteo. The man she’d wanted all her life. Her hero. Her heart’s desire.

And when her father said she would marry a Corretti, of course it was Matteo who had come to mind. But she’d been given to Alessandro instead. And then, one more chance, Matteo at the hotel. And she’d managed to mess that up.

In the end, she’d gotten Matteo, but in the clumsiest, most dishonest way imaginable. Not telling him she was engaged, announcing to the world she was pregnant, forcing him to marry her, in a sense.

And now there was this … this heat between them that didn’t go deeper than skin on his side. This love that was burning a hole through her soul, that he would never, ever be able to return.

“Alessia?” She turned and saw Matteo sitting up, his voice filled with concern. “Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”

“No.” She shook her head. And he hadn’t. She’d hurt herself. “I was just … thinking.” There was no point in hiding the tears. Her voice was wobbly, watery. Too late to bother with the fiction that she was fine.

“About what?”

She bit her lip. Then opted for some form of honesty. “I’ve been pretending.”

“What do you mean?”

“My whole life. I thought if I pretended to be happy, if I made the best of what I had, that I would be okay not having it all. That if I smiled enough I would get past my mother being gone. That my father’s most recent slap to my face hadn’t hurt me deeper than I wanted to admit. I had to, because someone had to show my brothers and sisters that you made a choice about how you handled life. We only had what we had, and I didn’t want them … I didn’t want them to be sad, or to see me sad. So I protected them from what I could. I made sure they didn’t know how hard it was. How bad it was. I’ve been carrying around the burden of everyone’s happiness and just trying to make what I had work. But I’m not happy.” It burst from her, truer than any words she’d ever spoken. “I don’t want to smile about my childhood. It was horrible. My father was horrible. And I had to care for my siblings and it was so hard.” She wiped at a tear on her cheek, tried to stop her hands from shaking. But she couldn’t.

She couldn’t stop shaking.

“I love them, so much, so I hate to even admit this but … I was willing to give everything for them. And no one … no one has ever given even the smallest thing for me. And I’m sorry if that makes me a bad person but I want someone to care. I want someone to care about me.”

“Alessia …”

“I’m sorry,” she said, wiping at more tears. “This is … probably hormones talking.”

“Is it?”

She nodded, biting her lip to keep a sob from escaping. “I’m feeling sorry for myself a little too late.”

“Tell me what you want, Alessia.”

It was a command, and since he was the first person to ever ask, she felt compelled to answer.

“I wish someone loved me.”

“Your brothers and sisters do.”

She nodded. “I know they do.”

Matteo watched Alessia, her body bent in despair, her expression desolate, and felt like someone was stabbing him.

Her admission was so stark, so painful. He realized then that he had put her in a position, as his angel, his light, and he had never once sought out whether or not she needed something.

He was taking from her instead. Draining her light. Using it to illuminate the dark and void places in himself. Using her to warm his soul, and he was costing her. Just another person intent on taking from her for his own selfish needs.

“It’s not the same as what you mean, though, is it?” he asked slowly.

“It’s just … I can’t really be myself around them,” she said. “I can’t show them my pain. I can’t … I can’t let my guard drop for a moment because then they might know, and they’ll feel like they’re a burden, and I just … don’t want them to carry that. It’s not fair.”

“But what about you?”

“What about me?”

Matteo felt like someone had placed a rock in his stomach. Only hours ago, he had been content to hold Alessia tight against him. Content to keep her because she had accepted who he was, hadn’t she?

But he saw now. He saw that Alessia accepted far less than she should. That she gave at the expense of herself. That she would keep doing it until the light in her had been used up. And he would be the worst offender. Because he was too closed off, too dark, to offer anything in return.

Sex wouldn’t substitute, no matter how much he wanted to pretend it might. That as long as he could keep her sleepy, and naked and satisfied, he was giving.

But they were having a baby, a child. She was his wife. And life, the need for support, for touch, for caring, went well outside the bedroom. He knew that, as keenly as he knew he couldn’t give it.

“I have to go,” he said, his words leaden.

“What?”

“I have to go down to my offices for a few hours.”

“It’s four in the morning.”

“I know, but this cannot wait.”

“Okay,” she said.

Damn her for accepting it. Damn him for making her.

He bent down and started collecting his clothes, running his fingers over his silk tie, remembering how she’d undone it only hours before with shaking fingers. How she’d kissed him. How she’d given to him.

He dressed quickly, Alessia still standing by the window, frozen, watching him.

He did the buttons on his shirt cuffs and opened his closet, retrieving his suit jacket. Then he took a breath, and turned his back on Alessia.

“I should be back later today. Feel free to go back to bed.”

“In here?”

“Perhaps it would be best if you went back to your room. You haven’t had your things moved, after all.”

“But I made my decision.”

“Perhaps I haven’t made mine.”

“You said you had earlier.”

“Yes, I did, and then you decided you needed more time to think about it. Now I would like an extension, as well. That seems fair, doesn’t it?”

He took his phone off the nightstand and curled his fingers around it. A flashback assaulted him. Of how it had been when he’d turned his back on the burning warehouse, leaving the people inside of it to deal with the consequences of their actions without his help.

But this was different. He was walking away for different reasons. It wasn’t about freeing himself. This was about freeing her.

And when he returned home later in the day, perhaps he would have the strength to do it. To do what needed to be done.

Alessia didn’t go back to sleep. Instead, she wandered around the palazzo like a zombie, trying to figure out why she’d exploded all over Matteo like that. And why he’d responded like he had.

It was this love business. It sucked, in her opinion.

Suddenly she’d felt like she was being torn open, like she was too full to hold everything in. Like she’d glossed over everything with that layer of contentment she’d become so good at cultivating.

She wanted more than that, and she wasn’t sure why. Wasn’t sure why she couldn’t just keep making the best of things. She had Matteo. That should be enough.

But it wasn’t.

Because you don’t really have him.

She didn’t. She had his name. She was married to him. She was having his baby, sharing his bed and his body, but she didn’t really have him. Because the core of him remained off-limits to her. Not just her, but to everyone.

She wanted it all. Whether she should or not. Whether it made sense or not. But that was love. Which brought her back around to love sucking. Because if she could just put on a smile and deal with it, if she could just take what he was giving and not ask for any more, she was sure there could be some kind of happiness there.

But there wouldn’t be joy. There wouldn’t be anything deep and lasting. And she was tired of taking less than what she wanted to keep from making waves. She was so tired of it she thought she might break beneath the strain of it.

“Buongiorno.”

Alessia turned and saw Matteo standing in the doorway, his hair a mess, as though he’d run his fingers through it a few too many times, his tie undone, his shirt unbuttoned at the collar. His jacket had been discarded somewhere else.

“Hello, Matteo. Did you have a good day at work?”

“I didn’t go to work,” he said.

His admission hit her hard. “You didn’t?”

“No. I was running again. Like I did the day of your first wedding. That was what I did, you know. You asked me to go to the airport, and I nearly went. But in the end I was too angry at you. For lying. For being ready to marry him. So I went to my house in Germany, mainly because no one knows about it. And I did my best to be impossible to reach, because I didn’t want to deal with any accusations. I didn’t want to hear from my family. And I didn’t want to hear from you, because I knew you would be too much of a temptation for me to resist. That if I read your emails or listened to your messages, I would want you back. That I would come back to you.”

“So you hid instead?”

“It was easier. And today I thought I might do the same thing. Because I don’t like to see you cry. I don’t like seeing you sad, knowing that it’s my fault.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Mainly I just drove,” he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. “A little too fast, but that’s what a Ferrari is for.”

“I suppose so.”

“I’ve come to a decision.”

“Wait, before you say anything, I want to say something.”

“Why is it your turn?”

“Because you left this morning before I could finish. All right, not really, I didn’t know what I was going to say then. But I do now.”

“And what are you going to say?”

“I love you, Matteo. I think, in some ways, I always have. But more over the past months, more still when you told me your story. I am in love with you, and I want you to love me back. I’m tired of not having everything, and I think you and I could have everything. But you have to let us.”

“Alessia … I can’t.”

“You can, you just have to.… you have to …”

“What? I have to forget a lifetime of conditioning? I have to ignore the fact that my losing control, that my embracing emotion, might have horrible, devastating consequences, not just for you, but for our child? I have to ignore what I know to be true about myself, about my blood, and just … let it all go? Do you want me to just forget that I’m the sort of man who walked away and left his father to die in a burning warehouse? To just take that off like old clothes and put on something new? It wouldn’t work. Even if it did it would be dangerous. I can’t forget. I have to keep control.”

“I don’t believe you,” she said.

“You don’t believe me? Did you not listen to what I told you? Did you not understand? All of that, breaking that man’s legs, leaving my father, that was what I am capable of when I have the most rigid control of myself. What I did to those men who attacked you? That blind rage? I didn’t know what I was doing. I had no control, and if you hadn’t stopped me … I would have killed them. I would have killed them and never felt an ounce of guilt for it.”

“So you would have killed rapists, am I supposed to believe that makes you a bad, horrible, irredeemable person? That you would have done what you had to do to save a young girl?”

“That isn’t the point,” he said. “As long as I control it … as long as I don’t feel, I won’t do something I regret. I won’t do something beyond myself. Even with control, do you see what I can do? What I have done? I can never afford to let it go. I can’t afford—”

“I don’t believe it. That isn’t it. You’re running scared, Matteo. You aren’t afraid of losing control, you’re afraid that if you feel you’re going to have to face the guilt. The grief. You’re hiding from the consequences of your actions. Hiding behind this blessed wall of cold and ice, but you can’t live there forever.”

“Yes, I can.”

“No, you can’t. Because at least for the sake of our child, our baby, Matteo, you have to break out of it.”

“Has it ever once occurred to you that I don’t want to?” he roared. “I don’t want to feel, Alessia, I damn well don’t. I don’t want to face what I’ve done. To feel the full impact of my life. Of what was done to me. I don’t want it. I don’t need it. And I don’t want you.”

She stepped back, her body going numb suddenly. Shock. It must be that. Her body’s defense because if it allowed her to feel the pain, she would collapse at his feet.

“You don’t want me?” she asked.

“No. I never did. Not outside the bedroom. I told you that if you didn’t expect love we would be fine. It was the one thing I told you could never be. I said no love. I promised faithfulness, a place in my home, my bed, what more did you want? I offered everything!”

“You offered me nothing,” she said, her voice quivering, a slow ache starting to break through the numbness, shards of pain pushing through. “None of that means anything if you’re withholding the only thing I really want.”

“My love is so important? When has love ever given you anything but pain, Alessia?”

“I don’t know because I’ve never had it for long enough to see.”

“Then why make it so important?”

“Because I deserve it!” She broke then, tears spilling down her cheeks. “Don’t I deserve it, Matteo?”

Matteo’s face paled, and he took a step back. “Yes.”

She didn’t take it as a sign that she had gotten what she wanted. No, Matteo looked like someone had died.

She didn’t say anything. She just waited.

“You deserve that,” he said finally. “And you won’t get it from me.”

“Can’t you just try?”

He shook his head. “I can’t.”

“Stop being so bloody noble. Stop being so repressed. Fight for us. Fight for this.”

“No. I won’t hold you to me. I won’t hold you to this. That is one thing I will do for you, one thing I’ll do right.”

“You really think removing yourself is the only way to fix something? Keeping yourself distant?” It broke her heart. More than his rejection, it was his view of himself that left her crippled with pain.

“It’s a kindness, Alessia. The best thing I’ve ever done. Trust me.”

He turned and walked out of the room, left her standing there in the massive sitting area by herself. She couldn’t cry. Couldn’t bring herself to make the sound of pain that was building inside her. Endless. Bereft.

She wanted to collapse. But she couldn’t. Because she had to stand strong for her child. Matteo might have walked away, but it didn’t change the fact that they were having a baby. Didn’t change the fact that she would be a mother in under six months.

It didn’t change the fact that, no matter what, she loved Matteo Corretti with everything she had in her.

But she would never go back and demand less. Would never undo what she’d said to him. Because she had a right to ask for more. Had a right to expect more. She was willing to give to Matteo. To love him no matter who he was. No matter what he had done.

But she needed his love in return. Because she wasn’t playing at love, it was real. And she refused to play at happiness, to feign joy.

She sank into one of the plush love seats, the pain from her chest spreading to the rest of her body.

She had a feeling there would be no happiness, fake or genuine, for a very long time.