GABE STOOD OUTSIDE the door to his Manhattan penthouse for so long he wondered if, in the week since seeing Abigail, he’d become some kind of madman. It was his home—at least it had been until she’d left Italy. He felt as though a nest of snakes was writhing in his chest cavity.
He clutched the soft toy he’d bought for Raf in one hand and lifted the other to the door and knocked. Twice. Loud. Confident. Nothing that betrayed the way his stomach was twisting and his mind was spinning.
It wasn’t until she pulled the door inwards that he realised how late it was. He winced at the sight of her—so beautiful, so sleepy, her long hair pulled over one shoulder, the oversized T-shirt she was sleeping in showing more leg than was helpful in that moment, for he needed to keep a clear mind.
‘Gabe?’ She blinked and rubbed her palms over her eyes.
‘It’s late, I’m sorry,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Were you asleep?’
It was a stupid question—he could see quite clearly that she had been.
‘What are you doing here?’ She didn’t invite him in. There was a wariness to her, a fear that he’d put there. At one time he might have pushed inside anyway, just as he had on the night he’d discovered Raf. But Gabe was done steamrollering Abby into submission. All along he’d been so wrong.
‘Abigail.’ The word came out as a hoarse plea. He cleared his throat and tried again. ‘I need to speak with you.’
‘Now?’ She swallowed, her throat shifting, her vulnerability making him ache.
‘I...can come back in the morning, if that’s better?’
His contrition obviously confused her. She frowned, blinked her big eyes and then stepped backwards, gesturing for him to come inside.
He did so quickly, before she could change her mind, shrugging out of his suit jacket and discarding it carelessly over the back of a chair. ‘This is for Raf,’ he said needlessly, holding up the little monkey toy.
She crossed her arms over her chest. ‘He’s sleeping. If you wanted to see him.’ She angled her face away from him and he wanted to shout, No!, because he needed to see her, to study her, but he didn’t. Instead, he clenched his hand into a fist by his side, urging himself to be patient, to be gentle. To respect her autonomy and to respect the fact she’d probably tell him to go to hell—with good reason.
‘I do, of course.’ He nodded. ‘But I meant what I said. I need to speak to you.’
She frowned. ‘Is everything okay? Are you sick? Is it Noah?’
His chest crushed. Why hadn’t he noticed the level of her compassion before? Why hadn’t he understood that she was full of care for others—which in part had led to her downfall? It was compassion for Lionel that had sent her to Gabe, and compassion for Raf that had brought her to Italy.
‘I’m fine.’ He didn’t mention Noah. It was early days there and he was keeping a close eye on the situation.
‘Good.’ She stepped away from him, towards the kitchen. ‘Would you like anything? Coffee?’
He shook his head but followed her, watching as she poured herself water and took a small sip.
‘How are you?’
‘Fine,’ she said, but her eyes shifted away from him and he ached for her, for the obvious hurt he’d inflicted.
‘I thought that if I married you I’d be a better man than my father. But it turns out I’m every bit as bad. Worse, actually.’
Her eyes lifted to his face and she said nothing, waiting for him to continue.
‘I told myself it was right for all of us; the best thing we could do for our son. But I ignored your feelings and needs. I should have helped you to live a better life here, in New York, but I was selfish. I wanted you in Italy and so I bullied you into coming there with me. I treated you so much worse than I accused your father of doing. How you didn’t scratch my eyes out is beyond me.’
She shook her head but he couldn’t let her interrupt. What if she told him to leave? He needed to at least say what he’d come to tell her, and then let her decide what she wanted. And he would need to respect that decision.
‘When I got back to Italy, after Christmas, I just knew I couldn’t be responsible for making you miserable. All I could think about was the way you looked when we argued. The things I said. The way you stared at me as though I was...’ He shook his head angrily, dragging his fingers through his hair. ‘You were falling apart. You hated living with me; you hated Italy. I had to send you here because I wanted you to be happy. Are you happy, tempesta?’
Her eyes locked onto his for several long seconds and then she blinked, looking away hurriedly. ‘I’m getting there.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
Her smile was miserable. ‘That seems to be our problem. You never have believed me.’
His gut twisted sharply. ‘No.’ Regret made the word heavy. He ran his palm along the back of his neck, feeling the coarse hairs there.
‘On Christmas Day you asked me if I loved you and I said no. I’ve never been in love. I’ve never been loved. But I’ve been lonely and I’ve been alone. I’ve been miserable. Most of my life was that. And then I met you.’
Abby was very still, waiting, her breath held, needing to hear something that would lift the weight that had lodged permanently on her chest.
‘That night, last Christmas, my God, if you knew how I felt. How I wanted you. How I fell for you.’ He swore softly under his breath. ‘It was my fault that the Calypso debacle cut me to the quick. For the first time in my life, I let my guard down. I let you in. I wanted every single piece of you. Not just your body—all of you. I’ve never felt that way before.’
‘And I lied to you,’ she muttered.
‘You lied to me,’ he confirmed grimly. ‘And I couldn’t forgive you for that. But nor could I forget you.’
Only the sound of Abby’s laboured breath filled the room.
‘I spent a year proving to myself that I was over you and then, the whole time I was in New York, I looked for you.’ He grimaced. ‘I don’t mean I actually tried to find you. Just that my eyes were always scanning, hoping to catch a glimpse of you. Seeing you at the restaurant was an accident, but I don’t think I would have left the city without you. One way or another.’
‘Don’t say that,’ she said with a shake of her head. ‘You don’t need to pretend.’
‘I spent a year waiting for you. I told myself I was busy, that I was angry, but I didn’t so much as look at another woman.’
Abby’s stomach swirled. Disbelief warred with pleasure at his admission.
‘I’ve spent a long time pushing people away, tempesta. All my life. And then you came to Italy and I relaxed, because I had everything I needed. You were living with me. You were my lover, and we had a child. I had a family. But I didn’t realise how much that would hurt you. How much I was hurting you.’
‘And so you let me go,’ she said with a soft nod. ‘I’ve worked that much out, Gabe. I know why you ended it. Why you sent me home. It was very kind of you.’
‘No,’ he said with a shake of his head. ‘You don’t understand. It wasn’t because I didn’t want you to stay.’
‘You didn’t want to hurt me,’ she said, her smile one of sadness. ‘You’re a good person. Too good to lie to me, too good to use me.’
‘I didn’t want to hurt you so I sent you here, as though I could click my fingers and take us back in time. As though by sending you home I wouldn’t feel like I had been hollowed out, like all of me had been dug from my body at the same time you left. I didn’t want to hurt you but I didn’t have any idea how much it would hurt to see you go. I’ve pushed people away all my life, and it comes easier to me than anything else. Even more so than admitting how I feel.’
Abby squeezed her fingernails into her palm and forced herself to face him. ‘And?’ she asked, the word a thin breath. ‘How do you feel?’
‘I feel like I have stepped into a strange world with only sharp edges and darkness. I feel like I am sinking all the time, my lungs filling with water rather than air and with no way to breathe. I wake each morning and reach for you, craving you, and then I remember. You’re gone. You’re here.’
‘Are you saying...are you trying to say that you love me?’ she demanded, hope an uncontainable beast in her breast.
‘I know nothing of love,’ he admitted, the words gravelly. ‘What I am saying is that you are the beginning and end of my life. That without you everything is unbearable. I want to wake up and see you every morning, and hold you tight every night. I am saying that even if there were no Raf I would want you. I’ve spent my whole life pushing people away and I won’t do it now—I can’t. I want to do the opposite. I want to pull you close, to hold you near, to make you mine for the rest of my life, even when knowing how much I need you, how much power you have over me, terrifies me. Tempesta, you have run like a cyclone through all of me so that I’m not the same man I was the night we met. That man thought people—thought you—were disposable. I was so wrong. So very, very wrong. If you’ll forgive me for being so stupid, I will make you love me too.’
And it was so ferociously determined that she laughed, a little unsteadily given that her chest was squeezing painfully.
‘You’re telling me you love me and still somehow doing it in a way that would control a room full of executives.’
‘Apparently, I can’t help doing that,’ he said with a shake of his head. ‘It makes what I say no less true.’
‘Gabe—’ she kept her distance ‘—I know enough of your upbringing to know how much loyalty means to you. Trust too. How will you ever trust me after what you found me doing?’ Her cheeks flamed. ‘You’ve told me again and again that you don’t believe me. That you think I was unequivocally going to give those images to my father. There’s no hope for us when you feel as you do. I’ve spent a long time coming to terms with that.’
‘And so have I. I cannot live without you, and I unequivocally believe what you said.’ He shook his head angrily. ‘I do believe you. I cannot explain it. The rational part of my brain demands proof and explanations, but the part of me that knows you, that understands you, simply believes.’ He took a step towards her and when she didn’t step backwards he lifted his hands and cupped her face. ‘You know almost as much about rejection and loneliness as I do.’ His gaze bored into hers, seeing all the secrets of her soul. ‘Your mother died and you were abandoned. Your father shut you out at every opportunity. Is it any wonder you were prepared to do anything he asked of you? In the hopes that maybe, just maybe, that might be the thing that would make him love you?’
She sobbed and shut her eyes, his interrogation, his understanding, all too much to cope with.
‘He was wrong not to see your true value. But I was more so. You gave me everything—you made me feel alive and real for the first time in years. You gave me your beautiful, kind heart and I shouted at you. I practically threatened to take your son from you.’ The words were loaded with anger, all directed at himself. ‘Believe me, if I could take that day back, I would. With all that I am, I wish I hadn’t said those things to you. I wish I hadn’t given you any reason to feel pain.’
‘This is about Raf,’ she whispered. ‘It has to be.’ For she couldn’t make sense of what was happening. All her dreams were coming true before her and she wasn’t sure they were strong enough to hold her weight. ‘You miss him.’
‘Sì. I do miss Raf, but I’m as prepared now as I was a week ago to leave him with you, if that’s what you want,’ he insisted gently. ‘This, right now, is about you. It’s about the woman I fell in love with last Christmas, and somehow found my way to again. It’s about the woman who gave me her innocence, who’d been waiting for me all her life, just as I had been waiting for her. It’s about the woman who took a broken, angry man and made him smile once more. It’s about the woman who has come to mean everything to me, who I do not wish to live without.’ He ran his thumb over her lower lip and she juddered, her breath escaping her slowly, brushing over his inner wrist.
‘I’ve trained myself not to want love. It’s never been offered to me anyway.’ He dropped his head so that their foreheads were touching and Abby breathed in deeply, letting his proximity chase the grief from her veins.
‘I offered you love,’ she whispered. ‘I loved you every day we were in Italy. Even when I was so mad I could burst, I loved you... I wanted our marriage to be a real one,’ she said. ‘I felt so close to having everything I’d ever dreamed of. It was so magical—such a magical Christmas—with the snow, and the tree, and you and then the wedding dress...’
‘From the moment we met, you have been all I’ve wanted. I’ve been stupid enough to run from that, but now I’m running right towards you. I want you, all of you, and if there were no Raf I would still be here, begging you, as a man who loves a woman more than any ever has, to marry me. To spend the rest of your life with me, letting me love you...’
Abby sobbed, a sound of pure, exquisite joy.
‘You’re going to marry me,’ he said into her mouth and she nodded, laughing, before kissing him again.
‘Can we go home now?’
He pulled away so he could study her face, see the earnestness there. ‘Home? Where is our home to be?’
‘The castle, obviously.’
His smile was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. ‘Ah. And so it is, mi amore.’