In Italy for Love

Chapter 29

29

‘I saved him,’ she pointed out, aiming for pragmatic, but suspecting he’d hear the waver in her voice.

‘You disappeared into the water under the bridge. Did you think I’d be happy to witness that?’

‘I knew what I was doing,’ she insisted.

‘You obviously didn’t. There is no safe way to walk into dangerous waters. I know Luca didn’t appreciate you, but that was his problem. You don’t need to prove anything to us.’

‘I wasn’t trying to prove anything!’

‘You don’t have to be useful . We would be here for you even if you didn’t work yourself to the bone and I thought I’d made that clear!’

His expression was hard and when she finally accepted that he wanted a fight, she was ready to give him one. Arco sat up from his blanket by the stove and whined, but she kept her gaze on the man currently hemming her in and thrumming with emotion.

‘Alex,’ she said, her tone just as hard as his had been. ‘I saved him. I saved Laura’s cat. For you.’ She poked him in the chest. ‘You should be thanking me.’

‘You think I should thank you for terrifying me? For thinking I might watch two women I— Watch you die too?’

Her heart sank. In those few words were a whole world of meaning – a world of suffering she was only beginning to understand. She stared at him as he took a deep, unsteady breath.

‘I only thought— Attila is…’

‘I know what that cat means to me,’ Alex said, his voice softer, but still dark. Lifting his hands slowly to her face, he turned her head so she couldn’t escape his gaze. It was an onslaught, all these feelings rushing in her arteries. ‘I sat in that waiting room today unable to function, imagining that was the end – or worse, that I’d have to make an impossible decision. I didn’t want to lose him, my last living connection to the family I had.’

His expression didn’t shift, the line of his mouth as hard as ever and Jules could only watch – and feel her own heart ready to break – as he said what he needed to say.

‘I understand the enormity of what you did today.’ His voice turned husky. ‘For me. I don’t know how I feel about that, because it’s too much.’

Her hand sneaked to his cheek. Too much . That feeling was familiar.

‘But Jules, don’t ever do it again.’ His tone was pleading now and he came closer, his breath a gust as he slipped a hand around the back of her neck and kissed her, rough and raw and a little desperate. ‘I’m sorry,’ he breathed, kissing her again – hard.

Wrapping her arms around his neck, she held tight, shaking her head. ‘No, I’m sorry. I didn’t think.’

He hoisted her onto the kitchen bench, sighing as he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her tight against him. When he said her name, it was with a quality she’d never heard in his deep voice before. And he kissed her again, long and deep, right in front of the kitchen window with its gauzy half-curtains, where anyone could see them. She kissed him back, even though the fleeting thought dashed across her mind that she’d never kissed anyone quite so violently and she might never again.

They stumbled down the hall, pulling each other, the lingering combativeness colouring the experience with breathless fervour. Each touch was a reward and a punishment and a manifestation of the emotions between them that burned brightly. As his mouth seared her skin and her hands fumbled for him, the need to be close rampaged over her lingering reticence.

With his body heavy on hers and his expression harsh, he gripped her tightly and they tumbled over the barriers into somewhere new.

Jules dozed for a minute – or half an hour, she wasn’t sure, since time didn’t seem to exist in the melty haze that settled over her. The cold – and then the heat – and then the intense fervour of their lovemaking had drained every solid substance from her body. When her eyelids blinked sluggishly open, she found Alex watching her across the pillow, his expression clouded.

Fumbling a hand to his cheek, she said, ‘Hey, you okay?’ She wasn’t surprised when he shook his head. ‘You want to tell me? You don’t have to.’

‘You’re wondering?’ he asked softly, propping himself up on an elbow and tucking her hair behind her ear. ‘You must be. I know I behaved strangely today and… thank you for letting me be.’

‘I’ve never lost someone like you have,’ she said as gently as she could. ‘But yeah, sometimes it seems like there’s something you haven’t said.’

She wasn’t happy to be right when he replied with an almost imperceptible nod. ‘Today, I was afraid of having to go through it again, even though I’ve been so careful since she died.’

She felt it, the way he struggled against himself and his own feelings. ‘You can’t stop things happening by being careful.’ Although Jules wasn’t the best person to give advice. She’d never learned to be careful.

‘That’s not what I mean,’ he began, hauling himself up into a sitting position.

Jules followed suit, groping for her discarded shirt and knickers and facing him, cross-legged on the bed.

‘He’s an animal,’ Alex muttered. ‘One day he’s going to die and I’m probably going to be the one to make it happen.’ He took a sudden, heaving breath. ‘I don’t want to do that again. I can’t.’

She watched in dismay as he crumbled in front of her, his head dropping into his hands. She wondered if he’d even bear to be touched right now. In the waiting room today, he’d withdrawn so completely that if she hadn’t got to know the grumpy version of him when she first moved in, she might have been alarmed.

But she waited. And trusted that he’d come out when he was ready.

He closed his eyes and his mouth opened slightly to allow an even breath out and then in again. As he calmed down, she could focus on what he’d said, her own heartbeat accelerating when she considered what he might have meant – to make what happen? Death?

‘Can you tell me? About Laura?’

‘I’ll try,’ he said faintly. ‘It’s better than you wondering, not understanding why…’ Lifting his head, he stared blankly at the wardrobe against the far wall. ‘I told you she had a car accident – with a lorry. But that wasn’t the day she died – that happened three weeks later.’

Her throat clogged as she pictured him at her bedside for three weeks in a time lapse, transforming slowly into this sleepless, sunken-eyed version of himself.

‘She was on life support. I mean, maybe she did die that day – inside. That’s something I’ll never know. But her body… With the machines, she kept breathing for three weeks, long enough for her parents to come to London, for all the endless discussions and appointments and tests and then…’ Two tears rolled down his cheeks. ‘It was my job, as next of kin, to say it was over.’ His gaze dropped. ‘I learned so much I wish I could forget. Did you know a brain-dead person still has some reflexes?’ His voice broke. ‘In recent decades there have been big advances in research into comas and brain activity and lots of people wake up, when they’re allowed the chance.’

Jules darted a hand out, clutching his forearm. It was for her own sake, because she couldn’t process the shock without reassuring herself that he was still there – perhaps not quite whole, but still mostly there. He studied her hand but didn’t remove it – or cover it with his own. Goosebumps came up on his skin and the light hairs stood on end and Jules couldn’t help contemplating reflexes and souls and what it meant to be alive.

‘It was the kind thing to do,’ he said flatly, as though reciting from a book. ‘Not for her – well, I have to believe she was already gone. But for the others. Her parents…’

It was her turn to feel the tingle of goosebumps as she realised how much he’d sacrificed for Laura’s family and the way her parents had repaid him: by breaking ties. But Maddalena and Berengario hadn’t and that wedged them a little further down in the crevices of her heart.

‘You imagined having to make a decision to put Attila down today,’ she said softly. ‘And it drew parallels, brought everything back.’

He nodded. ‘One day I’ll have to make that decision for Attila. You’ll have to for Arco. That dog is easy to love, but one day you’ll be telling the vet to end his life – the kind thing to do. I know you probably don’t want to think about it.’

‘You’re right, though.’

He lifted his gaze abruptly to hers. ‘This is why I’m careful,’ he said, his voice firm. ‘Attila… I have no choice. He was Laura’s cat – our cat. But otherwise, I can’t—’ He shook his head.

Jules heard what he was trying to say. I can’t love you . It was concerning how quickly she understood exactly what he meant, even though he probably wasn’t thinking specifically of her and definitely wouldn’t have landed on the ‘L’ word if he’d tried to explain himself more clearly.

But Jules had. She hadn’t been careful at all, despite arriving here fresh from the scene of her previous heartbreak. Studying his haggard face, so full of history and character, like this town, her feelings for him seemed inevitable. She had to hope she’d be gone before she fell too far.

She realised with a start that she hadn’t even thought about her passports for the past few days. Somewhere deep inside, she’d started to hope they would never come, that she had a curse – or perhaps a blessing – to always remain in Italy.

‘Saying you don’t want to get another pet isn’t quite the same as holding your heart away from other people,’ she pointed out tentatively. ‘Sometimes you can’t help it.’ Those words seemed to echo in her mind with more meaning than she’d intended.

‘It’s self-preservation,’ he said with a shrug. ‘My life has been self-preservation since the day I had to make that decision.’

‘That makes sense,’ she had to admit. At least this time she wouldn’t make the mistake of deciding to stay here – for him. If Luca had told her upfront he didn’t think he could love her, she would have been spared so much heartache.

The only problem was, with Alex, it felt like a choice between heartache now and heartache later.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and pulled on a pair of underwear. ‘I’m going to check on Attila.’

‘Sure, I’ll… I’d better go to my…’ She couldn’t find the end of that sentence.

She let him go before half-heartedly searching for her tracksuit bottoms. Her feelings were too raw to head back to her own cold room. She heard the rain pattering in the courtyard, the distant rushing of the creek, and she thought miserably to herself that she’d rather have the heartache later, thank you very much.

Dragging herself out of bed eventually, she was surprised Arco wasn’t sprawled in the hallway waiting for her. Padding to the kitchen in her thick socks, she peered in to see Alex sitting in a chair by the stove with Attila in his lap. He looked half asleep, which wasn’t a surprise. What she hadn’t expected was the woolly figure of Arco next to him, his snout on Alex’s knee.

Alex’s hand rested on Arco’s head and Jules’s gaze landed there and stuck. Arco was a young, energetic dog who couldn’t always be properly controlled, but he sensed something was wrong. He must be trying to comfort Alex. He’d never felt more her dog.

‘Alex,’ she said gently as she approached. His eyes flicked open. He’d made the most difficult decision a husband could make. It was clear he would rather have died in her place than give the instruction to turn off the machines. But he’d loved Laura enough to do what needed to be done.

When his gaze focused on her, his eyes crinkled and a smile stretched on his lips. ‘Jules,’ he replied, his voice rasping. ‘You didn’t go.’

Her knees threatened to give out. ‘Are you going to come back to bed?’

‘Are you going to stay?’

‘I don’t particularly want to be alone right now.’

Lifting his hand to her face and around to the back of her neck, he warned her, ‘I won’t sleep.’

‘I know,’ she reassured him. ‘I’m not expecting to fix you. I just want a cuddle.’

His smile grew broad with a flash of teeth and he leaned up to press a wobbly, affectionate kiss on her mouth. ‘A cuddle sounds good.’

After settling Attila on a side table in Alex’s room and fetching a blanket for Arco, Jules couldn’t help chuckling at the bedroom menagerie. She settled her head on the pillow with a hesitant glance at Alex, who stretched out sleepily beside her.

‘Roll over,’ he mumbled, nudging her to turn away from him.

She did as he asked, wondering if this was something to help him ignore her and go to sleep, but he shuffled closer and draped an arm over her, holding her against him with her back to his chest. His deep sigh blew her hair onto her forehead, but she didn’t care as the weight of his arm over her, the closeness of his body soaked into her skin – beneath her skin.

When he pressed a lingering kiss to her neck and nuzzled her ear, the sensation was so sharp and bright that she thought it had to be worth the heartache later . Much later , she hoped.