chapter FIFTEEN
HE FORCED his eyes open before he jumped, his heart racing, unlike the slow dawn.
How he hated to dream, hated the fear that claimed him while unguarded. His dreams were now of babies, who were walking and talking, dreams of a hundred babies that looked like him.
He should let her sleep, Nico told himself. It was, after all, her first full night away from Leo, her first chance to sleep as long as her body dictated, though his body dictated otherwise. Nico did not like sex in the morning—it was too intimate for him, brought the reckless night into another day, made her think this closeness might continue.
This would.
Again he let himself glimpse the possibility—a future with Constantine as his wife and Leo his son, with a home and a garden of memories. His hands roamed her body and he could feel her soft and warm. What had made him think he might lose them? What, with her here, could possibly go wrong?
She lay there, feeling him awaken beside her.
Felt his hands softly probe her and she could not lie for her family, could not live with deceit for a second longer.
He was nudging behind her, his lips on the back of her neck, and she wanted him inside her, but she wanted to make love with the truth uniting them, not the terrible guilt of the lie she hadn’t told.
‘Nico …’ She wriggled away from him. ‘Can I tell you something?’
‘Tell me here,’ Nico said, pulling her towards him, but she rolled on her back.
‘Nico, please … it’s important.’
It was important.
He wanted to hear that Leo was his son; he wanted to know that she loved him.
Wanted to be inside her when she told him about the family they were.
‘Tell me.’ He rolled on top of her, he kissed her face, he welcomed the news, for he had been wrong. You did not lose, love did not leave. She felt his thigh part her legs, felt the claim of his kiss, and she turned her face away.
‘Nico, please …’ He slipped inside as if he belonged there. Her body was ready for him but her mind was not, for she had to tell him. ‘I know who arranged your adoption.’
She waited for him to stop, for him to die inside her, for him to haul himself off, but there was just a pause, not even a second, an energy that changed.
He looked down at the woman who would have made him a father, who he would have loved for the rest of his life, and she held the answers he had been seeking, just not the ones for which he had hoped.
She knew it was over even as he thrust inside her, she knew from this they could not survive—that he would never hold her again, that she would never feel him again—and she wanted this time, shared in his anger, for she, too, lost.
He pinned her with his body, and she wanted the weight because she wanted to feel him. She wanted the power and the energy and anger of this man, and the anaesthetic of being conjoined.
She tightened around him and tried to halt her own orgasm, tried to calm the flare, tried for it not to be over, for then she would have to face him.
But Nico wanted otherwise.
He wanted it over, he wanted release; he felt her body tame when he wanted it wild, and he worked faster for it, harder for it, till her body could hold back no more and she cried as he pulsed inside her, because she knew now she must face him.
‘You know?’
He looked down at her. He was still inside her and there was no escape from his eyes.
‘How long?’ He did not ask about his past, his questions were solely as to her part in this. ‘How long have known?’
‘I found out last year.’ She wanted to be back in his arms, but he rolled from her, breathless, ominously calm. He sat up in the bed, shot out an incredulous, mirthless laugh and then his face turned to hers and she saw him look now at the witch who had deceived him, for the love had gone from his eyes.
‘And you let me keep looking? You’ve seen me searching …’ His mouth was in the shape of a smile, but she made no mistake that he was taking it well. She could see the muscles on his shoulders tighten, fury descended as he took it all in.
‘I didn’t know how to tell you.’
‘Well, darling, you’d better find the way now.’ It was no endearment. The word curled with disdain as he voiced it.
‘I found your birth certificate, the real one …’ There was no easier way to say it. ‘In my father’s office.’
Had he gone mad or had she?
How could she have known it had been his? It made no sense, and he didn’t want it to. The truth was nearly here and suddenly he didn’t want to know.
‘My father arranged …’ It wasn’t even been an adoption and her mind begged for a different word. ‘My father facilitated …’ And she searched for words that were kinder, tried to minimise even then what her father had done, but Nico did not wait for her to find the right words. Nico got straight to the brutal point.
‘He sold me.’
‘No.’ It was too hard, even now, to face. ‘A couple, your parents, wanted you. He arranged your birth certificate …’
‘He sold me.’
‘It wasn’t like that …’ She started to crumple, for she had seen the fees. She watched as he dressed, could feel the anger, the contempt, the rage that was building and would soon explode. She pulled the sheet around herself, wrapped it around her and held it tight as he demanded that she be honest. ‘Yes,’ she sobbed, ‘yes.’ She covered her face. ‘Yes, he sold you.’
It was true, and now he knew it, and he knew too why he didn’t belong—his father had swanned in and bought him, thought a baby was his God-given right. His father had taken him from his parents and he was taking from him now, because how could they come back from this?
‘There’s something else …’
Now, please now, silently he pleaded to a mind that was racing. Tell me I have a son, that I do have a family, a real one. Adrenaline coursed and he begged for reprieve, his head felt as if it were splintering. He could see her on the bed and he wanted to go back in there; he did not want it to be true. He wanted her and he wanted Leo, he wanted the family he had never been allowed to have.
‘You have a brother.’ Her words came like aftershocks, each one more violent than the last. He was pulling on his clothes and still the earth was moving. ‘A twin.’
And he wanted it to stop, his anger taking aim, loss sweeping in, because always you lost, in love you lost.
‘I should have told you!’ she attempted. ‘I wanted to.’
‘There are so many things you haven’t told me,’ Nico shouted. ‘So many things that I had every right to know.’ He stood there, her accuser, and she sat guilty with shame but confused by his next question. ‘Say it.’
‘Say what?’
‘Oh, please …’ He could not believe that she didn’t know what he was referring to. ‘When are you going to tell me? Through a lawyer? Perhaps your father could draft the letter and tell me what I have to pay, in cash this time, because he’s already taken everything else.’
She knew then he was talking about Leo as he raged on. ‘When I came to your door, when I brought you here.’ Nico’s anger was growing now. ‘Still you said nothing and now, even now, you sit there are refuse to tell me the truth!’
‘Tell you!’ It was Connie who was shouting now, Connie sitting there with anger growing inside her. ‘We both know that it’s eight o’clock.’
‘What are you talking about?
‘There’s a clock by this bed and we can both see it, so why would you ask me the time? Do you want to split hairs? Do you want to say if it’s a.m. or p.m.—when we both know?’
‘I’m talking about Leo,’ Nico roared. ‘I’m talking about my son!’
‘Your son,’ Connie said. ‘I am supposed to formally say it? What, will you demand DNA?’ She could not match his anger but still hers was growing. Indignantly she ripped the sheet around her and stood, looked into his eyes and wanted to slap him. ‘How dare you doubt me in this,’ Connie sneered. She the injured party now. ‘How dare you stand there and demand that I say that Leo is your son? I was a virgin, Nico, I had slept only with you and I have loved only you …’ She stopped then because love did not count with him, love was the thing he did not want. Clearly did not want it, for he was walking out the door. ‘Where are you going?’ She had thought he’d want more answers, that he’d demand every detail, but realisation dawned and she ran at him and tried to halt him.
‘Where do you think?’
She grabbed at his arm, but he flicked her off, and there was nothing, nothing that would stop him.
She watched as he charged from the house, heard a car screech from the driveway and gun down the hill, and he left her in chaos behind.
She wanted to ring her father, to warn him, to hate him.
To stop Nico, not just for her father’s sake but to prevent what Nico would surely do.