Carides's Forgotten Wife (14 page)

“Really?” The word was soft, strangled.

“I asked you to come here today because I needed to ask the impossible of you one more time.”

Hope, joy and pain washed over her in equal measure. “It doesn’t hurt to ask.”

“I am a man with nothing. Being with me will give you nothing. The house is yours. The company is yours. I have nothing to offer you but myself, and it is a sorry offering indeed. This place is yours. You could have me thrown out for trespassing, erase my name from the door at Tanner Investments as though I were never there. The power is yours. But I need to ask this. Please forgive me. Please give me a second chance.”

She swallowed hard, using every ounce of her strength not to launch herself over the desk and throw herself into his arms. “Why? Why should I give you a second chance now?” She was trembling. Inside and out. “The house, the company. None of that means a damn thing, you foolish man. I was ready to leave it all. I don’t want it. The only thing that matters is your heart. Are you prepared to give the impossible back to me?”

He rounded the desk, moving to stand in front of her, taking her hand in his, his dark eyes blazing into hers. “No,” he said, “no, I’m not.”

Her heart sank down into her stomach. “Oh.”

“Because loving you was
never
impossible. And you should never have felt as though it was.”

A rush of breath escaped her lips. “I’m sorry, you’re going to have to be a little bit more explicit.”

“I love you, Rose. When everything inside of me was a lie, you were the truth. When I knew nothing, I knew you. When I lost touch with everything, with the man I was, the man I wanted to be, you brought me back home. I loved you, but I was afraid to embrace you. And I love you now, without fear. Without reservation.”

She was trembling. Shaking from her core. She could scarcely breathe, scarcely speak. But one thing was certain. No matter the pain they had endured together, no matter who owned the house, no matter how she’d been hurt by his rejection...

Her love for him remained.

“Tell me more,” she said.

“I love you,” he ground out. “And I am terrified to my soul over it. It is why I ran from you, so far and so fast. It’s why I’m giving you all of these things...my possessions, because I feel too unequal, too empty to offer only myself. I am a sinner, Rose. Some would say beyond redemption. Perhaps they are correct. Perhaps I have no right to ask for love, not after what I’ve done. But I am. Because I have to. As certainly as I have to breathe to live, I have to love you. And beg for your love in return.”

A tear slid down her cheek, the clouds parting in her soul and allowing a shaft of light to shine through.

Hope.

It was brighter than fear. Brighter than anger. Stronger than pain. It flooded her, warmed her. And she knew that this was the moment. When she stayed safe, but wounded, hiding in the dark.

Or when she stepped into the light and embraced forgiveness. Redemption. Love.

There was no question. Because all she had ever wanted was there, in the light. And all she had to do was reach out and take him.

“Oh, Leon, I love you, too.” She wrapped her arms around his neck, kissing him on the cheek, the jaw, the corner of his mouth. “I really do.”

“Why do you love me?” he asked, the words raw and tortured.

She traced his features with her fingertips, memorized his face. “That is the hardest and easiest question. Sometimes I think my love for you simply walked in right along with you, that very first day you came to Tanner house. That in that moment it lodged itself in me, and I have never been free of it since. But it’s more than that. Deeper. You always saw me. Who I could be. Not just the small, mousy creature I felt like. And you challenged me. In a lot of ways I wish you hadn’t. And in the years since, in this moment, it has become a choice. One I have made knowing you, all of you. Your perfections and your broken edges. It is more precious because of that. More real. More costly and more special than you’ll ever know.”

“I know you have no reason to trust me.”

“That isn’t true. Because for all your sins you didn’t lie to me.”

“Except for the marriage vows.”

“Yes. That was wrong of you. Though given the circumstances...you were not given much choice but to marry me out of your loyalty to my father.” She cleared her throat. “I never went and asked you for what I wanted. You know, before your accident, I was going to ask you for a divorce.”

He took a step back. “You were?”

“Yes. I thought I was being brave. I thought I was moving on with my life by separating from you. But the simple fact is I was just running. I either hid, or I ran. But I certainly never asked you for what I wanted.”

“Ask me,” he said, his voice raw as he gathered her back into his arms. “Ask me now.”

“Be my husband. In every sense of the word. Love me. Love our children, and in that I include Isabella. Be faithful to me.”

“I swear it,” he said. “With all of the memories of my grief, all of the memories of my sins, with the man I have been and the man I hope to be, I swear it. I will be your husband, I will forsake all others and I will do it happily. I will choose love over fear, every day. And some days I know it will have to be a choice, a very purposeful choice, but I swear to you that I will come to you when it threatens to overwhelm me.”

“So will I. I’m not going to stay silent when I want something from you. I’m going to tell you.”

“Good.”

“I might make your life a living hell.”

He cupped her cheek, skimming his thumb over her cheekbone. “The only living hell I can imagine is a life without you. I know what love costs, Rose. I know it better than most. And I choose it anyway. I choose you.” He leaned in, kissing her lips lightly. “When I say that I love you it is with the knowledge of what that might cost. When I say that I love you, you can trust that it’s real.”

“I do,” she said, her lips brushing against his as she spoke.

Rose remembered clearly being told that Leon’s survival was a miracle after the accident. And it was. But here in her home—their home—safe in his embrace, she understood that survival wasn’t the true miracle.

It was living.

CHAPTER TWELVE

L
EON
WAS
LOST
in a memory that he had tried very hard to keep at bay. It was the look in Rose’s eyes that had done it. That earnest sincerity. It was imagining that that had propelled him forward during his discussion with April a little more than a year ago. He had been imagining what Rose might look like when he told her he had gotten his mistress pregnant. Because it had
absolutely
occurred to him to fob the child off on his wife. After all, he was never home. He wasn’t intimate with Rose. But surely she wanted a baby.

That thought had stopped him short. Because there was no way the baby could be in his house and he could keep himself from forming an attachment to it. He knew well enough that babies had a way of crawling beneath your skin. Of overtaking you completely. And of ripping your heart out when loss invaded your beautiful family.

“I’m pregnant, Leon. And I’m not going to get an abortion. So I don’t know what you want to do about it. But I can’t raise the baby without support—”

“I’ll pay you. Whatever you need. But I’m not going to take care of the child. If you need support putting it up for adoption, that’s up to you. Otherwise, I’m more than happy to set up funds so that you can make sure that you are both cared for.”

There was one thing he knew for certain. He could not undertake raising another child. He had never, ever intended to put himself through that ever again.

He hated himself for being so irresponsible. For putting himself in this position. But he was a man with money. And he could pay to make it go away. There was no reason on earth he would ever have to see the baby. He could pretend it had never happened.

And so he had established the paperwork, come to an agreement on the amount and promised to give April full payment once paternity had been established. He had never seen the child. He had been notified of its birth, and he had asked that she not tell him whether it was a boy or a girl.

He’d wanted to know nothing about it.

But the night of his baby’s birth, he had gone and gotten as drunk as he could remember ever getting. There wasn’t enough alcohol on earth to drown out the pain. And he had wished more than anything that he might find solace in Rose’s arms. Because there was something about her that had always seemed like home. Something about her that had always seemed like she might be the resting place he had wished for his entire life.

And it had been all the more reason to stay away from her. He had found another woman. A woman whose face he couldn’t even remember. And that had been so much the better because she hadn’t been special. He didn’t deserve special.

He snapped back to the moment and Rose was still staring at him, her blue eyes filled with concern. With pain.

“What did you say?” he asked.

“I love you. And I want for you to love me back.”

He could see the truth in her blue eyes, and it was all too harsh. Too clear and bright. It was everything he’d always feared.

That honesty. Real, and deep. Reaching out for him. Asking for it in return.

He realized it then, as he stared back at her. She was everything pure and true, and she always had been. While he was a lie. Down to his very core.

He did nothing, not a single thing, with a shred of honesty. He lied to everyone. To his wife, his mistresses, himself.

No wonder he had lost his memories so easily. No wonder they had slipped away into the darkness with such ease. They were nothing.

He
was nothing.

His mind was full now, but his hands were empty, and she wanted him to give her something that he...he simply couldn’t.

He released his hold on her and began to back away. Then he turned, walking out of the ballroom, straight out into the entryway of the house, and out the front door. A summer shower was pouring down, large drops of water splashing on the paved drive. He looked around, desperate for escape. Desperate for reprieve.

“Leon!”

He turned, and saw Rose standing there in the doorway, her pale petite silhouette backlit by the golden light coming from inside the house. He knew right then she was everything he had ever dreamed of. She was warmth. She was light. She was home. And he could reach out and take none of it.

“No,” he said, his voice rough.

“Leon, don’t go.”

“We cannot do this.”

“Like hell we can’t.” Rose picked up her dress, holding the red silky fabric balled up in her fist as she made her way down the steps, and out into the rain. It fell across the gown, leaving dark splotches on it, as though she were bleeding out right there in front of him.

A wound for his every word.

He had hated himself. Hated himself for a long time, for a great many things, but he’d never hated himself more than he did in this moment.

“I can’t,” he bit out. “And there is the final piece of my memories. I can’t love you. That’s why I never touched you. That’s why I was never supposed to. That’s why it was better for me to spend the past two years warming the bed of every woman who would have me, rather than ever touching you. Because for all my sins, Rose, I never intended to hurt you.”

“But you did hurt me. You always hurt me. From the moment you agreed to marry me and then never touched me you hurt me. So it’s too late to pretend that you had any kind of self-sacrificing notion when you married me. You might have felt guilty, but surely you must’ve known you were going to hurt me.”

“I thought...” he ground out, the rain splashing down his shirt, sending trickles of cold water down his skin. He didn’t care. “I thought,” he continued, “that I might be able to have you. I thought perhaps I could condemn my conscience to hell and have what I pleased. I wanted you, Rose, make no mistake. Were it only down to attraction I would have had you on your back when you were eighteen, as I already told you. But it was more than that. Your father trusted me, and I knew that I could never give you what you would want.”

“And you thought you knew what I wanted?”

“Yes. You want this. You want love. You want things that I can never, ever give. You would stand there and tell me that I’m wrong? Even as you prove me right? You cannot do that.”

“But things have changed. You have Isabella... You have
me
. Surely...”

“I remembered,” he said. “I remembered when we were in there. When April came to me to tell me she was pregnant. If only my reaction were one half so steeped in grief as I imagined. I did not want the responsibility. I couldn’t bear it. My life was perfect. I was a carefree bachelor with everything I wanted. Never mind the fact that I actually had a wife. You were a wife that I never had to see, a wife that I never had to speak to. Out of sight, out of mind. I had established for myself a perfect life. And, while I considered taking the child and giving her to you to raise, since I certainly wasn’t going to get you pregnant, I decided in the end that perhaps you wouldn’t take so kindly to that.”

“Leon...”

“It started with grief, Rose. It definitely did. But it twisted me into a cold, selfish man, and by the time I rejected my own child that was the only thing that was driving me. I lost the capacity to love. I felt no sadness signing away the rights to my flesh and blood. Do you think I once mourned the fact that I wasn’t in your bed? Do you think I felt even the tiniest sliver of guilt when I took another woman into my arms in spite of the vows that I spoke to you? I didn’t. I could pledge faithfulness. I know that I can. I don’t want the things that I did. I find that I’m satisfied with you. Love? I don’t love anything. I’m never going to love you.”

The words poured from him, a toxic kind of black ooze that covered everything it touched. He hated himself. He hated her even more for asking this of him. For making him hurt her. For making him destroy this beautiful thing that they had built between them. But he couldn’t love her. He couldn’t.

Already, there was Isabella. And he loved her in spite of himself. Perhaps, she would even love him in spite of himself. But...when he looked at Rose, when she demanded love from him, there was nothing but fear. Loving Isabella... Loving Rose... If he did that and he lost them, it would bleed him dry. There was no way he could ever endorse such a thing.

“Leon, I know you love me.”

“No,” he said, his tone final. “I don’t.”

“But these past few months...”

“When we began a physical relationship it was when I had no memory. I had no idea who you were. I had no idea who I was. But I know now. I am simply a man too scarred, too damaged to ever care for anyone. I am not the man you wish I was. I’m not even the man I wish I was. I can promise you faithfulness, but I cannot give you love.”

“A promise doesn’t mean anything without love.”

“Then that is your decision,” he said. “I cannot make you change your mind.”

“So you’re telling me I should simply believe you? With nothing else but your word?”

He saw it then. The chance to do the right thing. For the first time in too many damn years. He met her gaze, watched the rain pour down her beautiful face. And he memorized her. Memorized every slope and curve of her face. Memorized that exact color in her eyes, and deeper, the way they looked at him now. With hope. With love.

One last moment before he drove it all into the ground.

“You are right not to trust me, Rose. Very few things matter to me less than the truth. I know who I am now. I’m Leon Carides. I was a boy in Greece who hated his impoverished life and lied his way into the US. Who seduced a girl from a nice family and promised to care for her, and instead devastated her existence. Who married his mentor’s daughter with no intention of ever honoring his vows. Who had a child with a lover whose name he barely knew and was so comfortable piling deceit on yet more deceit he thought nothing at all of concealing it from the world. From his
wife
. I don’t even know what the truth is. Much less love.”

“I want to show you,” she said, the light still shining in her eyes.

“But I won’t be able to see it,” he said.

“I told you once that you asked the impossible of me. And you said—” her voice broke “—you said someday I could ask you for the same. And that you would try. Why won’t you try?”

Something broke inside him. Or maybe it was already broken. Maybe now he just remembered that it was. “Because I don’t want to.”

And with that, he extinguished it. Finally. With that, she turned and left him, standing alone in the rain.

She left him there with all of his memories, all of his pain.

And he simply stood there, and longed for that moment when the only thought in his head had been Rose.

When they had simply been the truth. And there hadn’t been a single lie in him.

He had loved her then.

He realized that now. When everything else had fallen away, he had loved Rose. There had been nothing to stop him then. When he was clean, and new. There had been only him, only her, and loving her had been both instant and simple.

But with each new memory that crowded in, each new wound reopened, he’d found love pushed further and further away. Until it was out of his reach.

Until he envied a man lying broken in a hospital bed without a single memory beyond his wife’s blue eyes.

* * *

Rose couldn’t face going back into the party. Instead, she turned, leaving Leon standing there in the rain, and ran. She didn’t realize quite where she was running to until she found herself in the rose garden. She knelt down in front of the stone bench, not caring that her dress was getting soaked. Not caring that it was getting dirty. She laid her head across the hard, cool surface and allowed her tears to mix with the drops of water that were falling from the sky.

She felt hollowed out. Hopeless. She felt utterly and completely alone.

She shivered, cold and panic washing over her in equal measures.

This was the thing she feared the most. Being alone. Demanding so much that the person standing before her would decide she wasn’t worth it. It was why she had never demanded her father pay attention to her. Why she had never done anything but play the part of meek, solicitous daughter.

Why she had never once commanded Leon treat her more like a wife, rather than like she was invisible. Why it had taken her so long to get to the point of asking for a divorce.

Why she had preferred a divorce,
running
, to asking him to be her husband. To asking for what she wanted. Because she had been afraid that if she did he would prove that he truly didn’t think she was worth the effort. And then she would have to know, not just suspect deep down that there was nothing about her that grabbed hold of anyone tight enough to incite change.

Her father had been so lost in his grief over his wife that he had not been able to pull out of it for the sake of his daughter. Leon, on the other hand, had drawn him out in a way she never had. Perhaps it was their matching grief. She could easily see that now. At the time, she hadn’t realized the loss that Leon was contending with.

Still, at the time it seemed very much like there was something missing in her that other people seemed to possess. A spark that she just couldn’t seem to ignite inside of herself.

And now, she had finally tried. She had finally demanded the impossible.

He hadn’t been able to give it. Not to her.

She lifted her head, raising her face toward the sky, not caring as the droplets landed on her skin, rolling down her face. She could feel something expanding inside her chest—anger, desperation. She could feel herself expanding, changing. Perhaps because she was out here alone. Perhaps because she was no longer trying to shrink herself, contort herself to fit someone else’s view of who she was.

It was so easy for her to imagine she wasn’t worth it. That she didn’t have what it took to inspire passion in someone. But who knew her? Did anyone? She had spent so long being quiet. Not making demands. How would anyone know what she wanted? How would anyone know that she was worth it?

She had never once behaved as though she was worth it. She had hidden herself away, made herself quiet. Made herself pale. And it had been easy, earlier in the rose garden when Leon was looking at her, when he was kissing her, to imagine that she could be loud. In that space, with his permission. But it was much harder when he had been looking at her with cold, dispassionate eyes. When he wished she would shrink again, and not ask quite so much. That had been the true test.