ONCE the tears came, it felt impossible to stop them. Freya’s shoulders shook and her breath came in hic-cuppy gasps as Rafe stroked her hair. Distantly she realised he was murmuring endearments: cariña, querida, mi corazón. My heart.
She’d expected condemnation, not comfort. Rejection instead of acceptance. And yet he still didn’t know the whole truth.
And when he did …
She pulled away, wiping her cheeks, trying desperately to pass off this moment as a temporary weakness rather than a life-shattering event. ‘I’m sorry,’ she finally managed in a wobbly voice. ‘You probably weren’t expecting that.’
‘I’ve come to realise I don’t know what to expect,’ Rafe said.
He didn’t sound condemning, yet she still heard a thread of steel in his voice. He wanted answers. ‘Freya?’ he said, and waited.
She looked away, knowing she had to tell him. She wanted to tell him. She was so tired of secrets; she’d kept them for so long, and they were such a heavy burden to bear alone. Yet her throat was so tight and aching she could barely force the words out.
‘I went to Spain for my gap year,’ she began hesitantly. She kept her face averted. ‘I was so excited. I’d done an A-Level in Spanish and I really wanted to become fluent. And see Spain, of course. I thought it was going to be such a grand adventure.’
She paused, biting her lip, and Rafe waited. ‘I lived with a young couple—Anita and Timeo.’ It hurt to say their names even now. ‘They were so glamorous and fun. It was a whole new world for me. My parents had me later in life, and they’ve always been very formal. Traditional. Wonderful, but not fun like that.’ She stopped, not wanting to go on.
‘And?’ Rafe prompted quietly, when the silence had stretched to several minutes.
‘I was stupid,’ Freya said in a low voice. ‘Really, really stupid—and selfish and naive, too, I suppose.’ She shook her head. ‘Anita was a doctor, and she worked all sorts of late hours. Timeo was a freelance photographer, and he was often home during the day. He was—he seemed very kind.’ She felt Rafe tense, knew he’d started to suspect where this was going. ‘I let my head be turned,’ Freya said, her voice thick with bitterness and self-loathing. ‘And—and more than that. The worst.’
Rafe remained very still, yet Freya felt as if he’d moved away from her. Withdrawn now that he was learning the truth. And why shouldn’t he?
‘I was old enough to know better. I know I was. But I listened to all the things Timeo said—that I was beautiful, that he wasn’t happy with Anita …’ She shook her head, felt the hot sting of tears under her lids once again. ‘I bought into it all.’ She stopped, not wanting to go on.
‘And?’ Rafe asked, his voice very low.
‘And we had an affair,’ Freya said dully. ‘For several months.’ Even now, ten years later, it sounded so sordid. She would never be free. ‘Until I fell preg nant.’
‘What happened then?’ Rafe asked.
His voice was toneless, so Freya couldn’t tell what he thought. Felt. She could only imagine.
‘Anita found out. She recognised the signs before I did, actually. Just like you did. She guessed right away. I’ve sometimes wondered if—if I wasn’t the first. In any case, she wanted me out of there. She drove me to a doctor—at least I think she was a doctor.’
Freya shivered, the memories making her cold to her soul. She’d never told anyone so much—not even her parents. She knew they wouldn’t have been able to handle the truth; what they’d known had been bad enough. And even though she knew she was damning herself with every word, it felt good to tell someone. Tell Rafe. Like lancing a boil.
‘She was awful,’ she whispered. ‘She performed the termination. I was in such a daze I couldn’t even think …’ She swallowed, then said in a voice so low it was barely audible, ‘Sometimes I wish I could go back and have that moment over again. I’d choose differently. Except it didn’t even feel like a choice. Not for me.’
Rafe was silent for another long moment. Freya wished she knew what he was thinking, but she was afraid to look him in the face.
‘Terminations were illegal in Spain then,’ he finally said, without any expression at all.
‘I know. Anita had a connection somehow—it wasn’t in a normal office, and it was … awful.’ She shook her head, not wanting to say any more. She still had nightmares about that room, the blood. ‘I didn’t want to tell my parents any of it. I knew it would be horrible for them, and I was so ashamed.’ She drew in a ragged breath. ‘But in the end I developed a severe infection, and they had to come to Spain to fetch me home.’
She didn’t go into details—didn’t want to tell Rafe the want truth. How Anita had thrown her out and she’d had nowhere to stay. She’d been picked up by the police for sleeping on a park bench, feverish and delirious, full of shame and guilt. It had been the lowest point of her life.
‘That’s why I didn’t think I could have children—I had scarring from the procedure. They told me I was infertile.’
Rafe was silent for a long moment. Freya’s nails bit into her palms as she waited for his verdict. This changes everything. I can’t marry you now. You’ll leave immediately.
‘So,’ he said slowly, and Freya closed her eyes, waiting, aching, ‘this baby really is a miracle.’
Her breath came out in a ragged gasp of shock and gratitude and tears slipped down her cheeks. It was just about the last thing she’d expected him to say. ‘Yes …’ she managed. ‘I hope so. I hope this baby can banish what happened before. I know I can never actually forget, but to not always remember—’ She stopped, wiping her cheeks. ‘No one tells you how awful it is. How you keep thinking—’
Rafe pulled her to him, and Freya did not resist. She needed his touch, craved it. Yet she wanted more, longed for absolution, or perhaps just obliteration. Some deep need inside her compelled her to lift her face up to his, and when she felt his hesitation she closed the distance between their mouths and kissed him with all the desperation she felt.
She felt Rafe tense in surprise, and she pulled him closer to her, threading her fingers through his hair. After another taut second Rafe responded, his mouth opening to hers, and desire and relief flooded through Freya in equal amounts. She needed this. Needed this comfort, this closeness.
‘No.’
Rafe pulled away, his breathing ragged, and desolation swamped her soul once again. He was disgusted by her, no matter what he’d said.
‘Not like this. Not like—’ He stopped, but Freya knew what he was thinking. Remembering. Not like last time. And she knew, despite the desire coursing through her, that he was right. Sex was only a temporary release. Regret came after. Yet she didn’t want him to go.
‘Rafe—’
‘You need to rest,’ Rafe said. ‘There will be time to—to talk through things later.’
Freya didn’t know if they were, but his words felt like a rejection. She didn’t need to rest; she needed Rafe.
‘All right,’ she whispered, because she didn’t want to admit how much she needed him. Wanted him. She felt his emotional withdrawal like a physical thing–a coldness in the air, in herself.
He rose from the bench and she followed him out of the darkness of the garden into the villa. He paused on the threshold of his study, his expression shadowed, unfathomable. ‘Goodnight,’ he said.
The word sounded final somehow, and Freya did not have the strength to respond. She simply nodded, her heart aching, and turned to the stairs. Behind her she heard the door to Rafe’s study click shut, and it felt as if something far greater was being closed. The door to his heart, to hope. She had not been imagining the coolness in his gaze, the way he’d distanced himself.
In her bedroom she undressed and slid between the cool sheets. She felt emotionally exhausted from her confession, and yet her mind and heart seethed with anxious uncertainty about the future.
For a moment—a wonderful moment—she’d felt forgiven.
‘This baby really is a miracle.’ Rafe had offered her comfort in that moment of desolation, but that was all it had been. A moment. Moments, Freya thought bleakly, seemed like all she would ever have.
Lying there in the darkness of her bedroom, she knew her feelings for Rafe were deeper and stronger than she could ever let him know. She loved him—loved his gentleness with Max, loved the kindness and sensitivity she knew was inside him even though the anger and suspicion he still harboured from his unhappy marriage hid them at times. Lying there, tears streaking silently down her cheeks, Freya knew what she wanted. What she’d never felt she deserved.
She wanted love. Marriage, children–everything. And she wanted it with Rafe. The only problem—
the huge, agonising dilemma—was that she was desperately afraid he didn’t want the same. And after he’d thought about all she’d confessed, Freya wondered if tomorrow Rafe would send her away for ever.
Alone in his study, Rafe stared sightlessly in front of him as all Freya had said—confessed—echoed through his mind. And his heart. He was shaken by what she’d endured, what it had made him feel. Anger. Sorrow. Regret. Guilt.
The last emotion surprised him, because he realised in all the years of his marriage, and all the years after, he’d never felt guilty. Confused, enraged, even sad and despairing. But guilty? No. He’d never thought he had anything to be guilty about. Rosalia was the one who had lied to him. She’d tricked him for five years, and then wounded him in the worst way possible.
‘I never wanted your baby, Rafe. I never told you because I knew you’d divorce me.’ The words had been snarled, punctuated by sobs, a testament to Rosalia’s anger and grief, and yet Rafe had never let himself think what her admission said about him.
Now, in light of Freya’s own honesty, he knew he needed to be honest with himself. About himself. What kind of man had Rosalia thought he was? What kind of man had he been? For the very fact that Rosalia had been so afraid of his rejection made Rafe realise how cold-hearted and single-minded he must have seemed to her all the years of their marriage. He’d been obsessed with having a child, with creating a family to replace the one he’d had … A mother who couldn’t look at him because he reminded her of her own shame—a father who hated him and never told him why. And he’d thought marriage and a family of his own would wipe away those sins. Those sorrows.
He’d never been more wrong.
His marriage to Rosalia had been a mistake, and one that had cost both of them their happiness. He’d never loved her—not the way he should have. She’d simply. Rafe acknowledged bleakly, been the expedient means to an end. And she must have known. He’d told her from the beginning that he wanted children as soon as possible. Had she agreed? Had she lied then? Rafe didn’t know anymore.
She had only been twenty years old, beautiful, young, orphaned. Her mother had died—in childbirth. That must have contributed to her reluctance to have children, yet Rafe had never given it a thought. He hadn’t given Rosalia much of a thought, he acknowledged grimly. He’d been consumed with his work, with establishing himself, with proving to his father and the world that he was worthy.
And the result had been success—and tragedy.
Now, instead of feeling angry at her deception, he felt the lacerating pain of guilt for his own part in the tragedy of their marriage. And Freya had been living with guilt for so long—guilt for poor choices, terrible mistakes. She needed, Rafe knew, to let go of her guilt. He needed to accept his.
And they both needed to move on. Yet how? How could he contemplate another marriage when his first had been such a failure? How could he make the same mistake twice? Entering into a loveless union for the sake of a child, or the hope of a child?
Rafe drove his fingers through his hair and let out a weary sigh. He thought of Freya’s choked words, her desperate kiss, the softness of her hair and her skin as she twined her arms around him. He’d wanted to kiss her back. He’d wanted to make love to her properly, not something rushed and regrettable like before. He’d wanted to love her.
Love her.
The word stilled him. Could he love her? Did he? After the failure of his marriage, Rafe wasn’t even sure he knew how to love. Yet he knew he could no longer imagine a life without Freya—without her tender smile, her cool gaze, the sudden warmth of her embrace. He needed her in his life, in Max’s life. Their unborn child’s life.
Their family’s life.
Rafe dropped his hands and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. Freya had given him something precious and dangerous tonight: her honesty. Her vulnerability. She’d given him the secrets he’d demanded, and now Rafe knew what he had to do. He needed to give her his.
Yet even as this knowledge thudded through him he remained motionless, in conflict, afraid as he stared out at the unrelenting darkness of the night.