A Little Too Much

Chapter Twenty-Four

AT HIS QUESTION, and the intensity of his expression as he asks it, my stomach drops to my shoes. “What?”

“When was he born?”

“Um . . . why?”

“He’s adopted.” It’s not a question.

I start to ask how he knows, but then I remember him scrutinizing the photo of Mallory’s family when he was at their house. Henri looks nothing like either of his parents. My insides pull into a knot and the totally irrational urge to deny it flashes through my mind. But I can’t. “I wanted to tell you.”

His jaw tightens and he leans heavily against the inside of the door, his eyes closing. He rubs a hand down his face, and when he opens his eyes again he’s got that rabbit-in-the-headlights look, like he wants to bolt, but he’s frozen in place against his will. “Lorenzo’s . . . or mine?”

My racing heart feels like it screeches to a stop as a cold sweat breaks over my skin. I can’t believe we’re actually having this conversation. I focus on breathing. In. Out. “I don’t know for sure, but . . .” I feel my face scrunch, because I know what I’ve always believed. “I think I had a period after Lorenzo and . . . he looks just like you, Alessandro. The hair. The eyes. Everything.”

“But you don’t know for sure.” It’s slow and measured—a statement, not a question—as if he’s feeling around a dark room for his way out.

I shake my head. “No.”

He blows out a breath and I swear he blinks away tears. “Does he know?”

“No. Mallory doesn’t want him to.”

“So . . . when you went to Mallory’s . . . she knew you were pregnant.”

I nod. “I was way too screwed up to take care of a kid, so she and Jeff decided to get married and adopt him. They’ve been really great parents to him, Alessandro. He belongs with them.”

“But he’s ours.” Again, it’s not a question.

My thoughts are a chaos of hope and fear, colliding in my head and obliterating my ability to sort through any of it. I want him to get why I did what I did without having to explain it. I want him to fold me into his arms and tell me it’s okay. But from the look on his face, I don’t think that’s going to happen.

Tears sting the backs of my eyes, but I swallow them. “Yes.”

He drops his head and weaves his finger through his sable locks, gripping tight to the hair on the top of his head. “This is why you’ve avoided answering me when I’ve asked you repeatedly to tell me what happened after I left.” His voice is low and ominous and my heart collapses at the betrayal in it. He lifts his head and his eyes stab through me. “How could you keep this from me? You took me to meet him,” he says, pounding a fist into the door in frustration, “and you never thought to mention that he was mine?”

Suddenly, it’s too much. First Mom, and now this; everything happening all at once is more than I’m equipped to handle. His anger pushes me over the edge, and all the fear and pain I’ve stuffed down for years floods my sensibilities. The old defenses rise, the walls snapping back into place around my heart as if the last few weeks never happened.

“You’re the one who left!” It lashes out of my mouth like a whip before I even think it. “If you’d stayed like you promised, none of it would have happened!”

His eyes narrow and his gaze slices through me. “None of what, Hilary? What else happened after I left?”

I sink onto the couch, my legs too weak to hold me anymore. In my anger, I’ve said too much. He needed to know the truth about Henri, but it was never in my plan to tell him the rest.

Alessandro stays where he is, braced against the door, waiting for me to answer. I know from the look on his face that the only chance I have to make this right is to tell him everything. He’s always seen too much, and he’ll know if I’m holding back.

I lower my face into my hands, bracing my elbows on my knees, and draw a deep breath for courage as I remember everything.

We’re leaving.

His body was under mine on the couch in the rec room. I could touch him like this because no one else was around. He was kissing me, but then he stopped and looked up at me, his beautiful gray eyes clouding. “We’re leaving.”

At first I couldn’t speak. His hands ran over my back and I just stared at him. “What do you mean?” I finally asked. But I already knew.

“Our visas came. They’re making us move to my grandparents’.”

“Please, don’t.” The words choked out past my heart, beating in my throat.

He was the only thing that kept me grounded when everything in my life was spinning out of control. How could I stay here if he was gone?

“I don’t want to go.” He kissed me again, so soft, as a tear leaked over my lashes and fell on his cheek. He held me, and he kissed me, and he whispered, “I love you.”

“Please don’t leave me,” I whispered back.

I won’t.

After keeping everyone and everything out for so long, he made me trust him. I’d let him in. God, I loved him so much. I remember how desperate I was after he left . . . how I wasn’t sure I could live without him.

It was three months later, after Eric, that I decided not to.

Lorenzo was a tweaker. Before he stole my virtue, he’d put a pill on my tongue. I didn’t know what it was, only that I floated away to a happier place for a little while.

Eric had roofied me. I knew he had a stash and I needed a pill. By that time I knew I was pregnant but hadn’t told anyone. I was scared and alone and I just wanted to forget, at least for a little while. I was willing to do anything to have that floaty, out-of-body feeling again, where nothing in the real world mattered.

So I went to Eric.

Like Lorenzo, he was willing to dole his stash out . . . for a price. He gave me a pill and I took it, then I closed my eyes and pretended he was Alessandro when he climbed on top of me. And somewhere in the middle of it, in the empty fuzz of my mind, I had an epiphany. If I just fluttered away like a butterfly and never came back, nothing could hurt me anymore.

After, I waited until Eric fell asleep, then grabbed the vial from where I’d seen him put it. There were seven pills. I didn’t know what they were or how many it would take to kill me, but I hoped seven was enough.

It wasn’t.

I rub my eyes and look up at Alessandro, still pressed against my apartment door, poised to leave in the blink of an eye. “I let everyone believe that the overdose was an accident.”

“Overdose?” I watch him understand, his eyes widening. “On purpose.”

I sit up straight and just look at him.

His olive skin goes pale and he stares at me for a long heartbeat. “You meant to kill yourself? Why?”

“Because I was alone,” I say, hating that just saying it dredges up all the old pain I’ve worked my whole life to hide. “I loved you and you left and I was alone.”

His face screws into a mask of guilt. “But . . . your sister. You had Mallory. You were going to live with her.”

“But it wasn’t happening. I was in that home for seven months. Seven months. That’s forever when you’re fourteen.” My insides twist into a painful knot. “I was pregnant, Alessandro. I didn’t want anyone to know. I was ashamed. I was scared. You were gone and Mallory was taking so long . . . I just gave up.”

He isn’t breathing. He’s just staring at me with wide eyes. “Who gave you the drugs?”

I lower my gaze, feeling too filthy to look at Alessandro as I say it. “Eric.”

For a long minute, the only sound is the rush of traffic pulsing up from the street below, and the pounding of blood in my ears. Then finally, Alessandro’s voice: “Eric.”

It’s barely a word, more air than sound coming from his mouth, but from the despair in it, I know he’s guessed at the truth of what I had to do to earn those pills.

Dread slithers through my insides and wraps around my sinking heart like a python, threatening to squeeze the life out of it. “I didn’t know what else to do. I was so ashamed. When I didn’t die, it was easier to let everyone think the overdose was accidental. By that time they’d figured out I was pregnant.” I blow out a bitter laugh. “Hell, I was already starting to show, so there was no hiding it. At first, Mallory wanted me to get an abortion, but then . . . I don’t know . . . I guess I was already, like, four months or something, so . . .” I shrug, still hiding my face, feeling more vulnerable than I ever have in my life. I wait for the better part of the rest of my life for him to say something. When he doesn’t, I lift my face and look at him. “I’m sorry, Alessandro.”

Rage flickers in those charcoal eyes that have always been so soft and patient, and stiffens his body to stone, his fists clenched at his sides. “You didn’t trust me enough to tell me this?”

“No, that’s not it!” Panic chokes the words in my throat. “I swear, Alessandro, I was going to tell you, but then Mom died . . . and . . . I was trying to work out what to say.” I swallow the lump in my throat, my face scrunching with doubt. What if he doesn’t believe me? “I was going to tell you tonight.”

His expression softens, and I’m so relieved he believes me that warmth floods my frozen heart . . . until I realize what I see in his eyes isn’t understanding. It’s his endless guilt resurfacing.

For the last two weeks, when I’ve looked into those beautiful gray eyes, they’ve be clear; all the anguish over the wrongs he’s believed he did me, finally gone. But I threw it back in his face just now, blaming him for leaving me when he promised he’d stay, and he’s all too willing to shoulder all that guilt again. Only, now it’s compounded by the knowledge of what he left me to. “Tell me what happened . . . with Eric.”

My lungs stall for a breath, and my head’s shaking an adamant no before I realize I’m doing it. I swallow the acid rising in my throat. “I can’t.”

As I watch, his expression makes the subtle shift from guilt to pity, and it pushes me over the edge. I’m not going to be anyone’s pity project.

I stand from the couch. “Don’t look at me like that.”

Despite my warning, his expression doesn’t change as he steps away from the door and folds me into his arms. I wanted this. Just a minute ago, I was wishing for him to hold me and tell me everything was okay. But his embrace feels different. Careful. “Let’s finish this conversation tomorrow,” he says, kissing my forehead.

And that’s when I know my nightmares of him running weren’t the worst thing that could happen.

If he stays out of pity, that would be much, much worse.

My head spins as he tows me down the hall to my room, and my heart pounds hard into my ribs. He closes the door, and the second he turns, I plaster him to the back of it and crush my mouth to his. I put everything I have into the kiss, because I need him to feel it in his bones. I need him remember us. I need him to stop looking at me like I’m some broken, pathetic thing that needs to be fixed.

I peel his clothes off as we kiss, and when he doesn’t do the same to me, I start on my own.

A minute later, we’re on the bed, doing what we’ve done dozens of times over the last few weeks. But it’s not the same. His hands aren’t sure and his kiss isn’t hungry. The whole thing feels cold and detached; more like what sex with anyone other than him has always been.

I move underneath him, willing him to feel me in his soul. Praying to see the fire ignite inside him again.

But it’s not there. Instead of the passion I want to see in those deep gray eyes, all I see is pity. He’ll never be able to get past it. Whatever trust we’ve built is gone.

I push him off and stare at the cracks in the ceiling, fighting the tears that are threatening to break through the dam. The bedsprings whine, and I turn my head to find him sitting on the edge, dressing.

“You’re leaving?”

He spares me a quick glance over his shoulder. “I’ve got an early morning at the youth center.”

I prop myself on an elbow and hold the sheets against my chest, my heart slamming into my hand. “You’re never going to forgive me, are you?”

He scoops his shirt off the floor, shrugging it on and starting on the buttons. “There’s nothing to forgive.”

I drop back into the pillows. “If you say so.”

“Do you have everything you need?” he asks without turning around.

“What do you mean?”

He glances at me as he stands and steps into his boots near the door, kneeling to tie them. “I could help with the rent, or . . . anything you need for Henri.”

My heart scrunches into a hard knot as I slide up and lean against the headboard. “Alessandro, stop,” I say, unable to contain the panic swirling into a hurricane inside me. “Nothing has changed. Don’t make me sorry I told you.”

Betrayal and anger flare in his eyes, and it’s suddenly clear the cool façade is his wall. “You didn’t tell me. I had to sort it on my own.”

I throw my hands in the air. “It’s not like you’ve been an open book either! You go all broody and cryptic anytime I ask you about what you did that was so terrible you have to beat yourself up over it for the rest of your life. You won’t open up and let me help you. You’d rather just shut me out and hate yourself.”

The storm of emotions he’s been working so hard to hide passes over his features in the next heartbeat: anger, fear, frustration, finally settling on anguish. He rubs a hand down his face, his deep charcoal eyes more tortured than I’ve ever seen them. “Damn it! Don’t you see, Hilary! You nearly took your own life, and Henri’s too, because of what Lorenzo and I did to you, and you’re not the only one. We ruined countless lives. But this . . .” He waves an arm between us. “You and Henri are my chance to finally do something right, if you’ll let me help you.”

It’s like someone just threw my heart into a meat grinder. I can’t breathe.

He thinks he loves me, and maybe he does, but I don’t think love can survive if it’s born of guilt. If we’re always questioning it, it will die a slow, ugly death.

And I’m not sure I’ll survive it this time.

The mortar sets on the walls I’ve raised around my heart, with Alessandro firmly on the outside. I’m not going to be anyone’s pity project. I’m not going to be weak. “Henri and I are fine,” I say, feeling my heart shrivel a little inside its fortress. “We don’t need any help.”

He closes his eyes and rubs his forehead as if it hurts. When he opens them again, his façade is back in place; everything he doesn’t want me to see hidden behind it. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lost my temper.”

“Why not?”

The pity in his eyes as they lift to mine kills me inside. “Because I don’t want to upset you.”

“Why not?” I repeat, my voice harder. “Do you think I’m weak? That I can’t handle whatever you’re feeling?”

He blows out a weary sigh as he crosses the room and sits on the edge of the bed. “There’s a psychologist that volunteers at the youth center. I think you should talk to her.”

I lower my head into my hands and grab fistfuls of my hair, fighting to keep from screaming at him. “So now I’m crazy?”

“I didn’t say that.”

I lift my head and glare at him. “Then what are you saying?”

The edges of his wall are staring to crumble, and his eyes betray his fear. “I don’t know. I’m guess I’m saying, maybe you need help.”

“I need help? Me?”

He throws his hands in the air. “I don’t know what you want from me, Hilary!”

“I want you to look at me the way you did before you knew. I want us to be how we were! I want you to tell me what you’re feeling so we can deal with it!”

He’s working so hard to keep the wall in place, but his breathing is erratic, and his eyes are wild. “This is how I deal with it.”

“By keeping everything inside. I know! Why won’t you talk to me?”

“This isn’t about me!” I see the panic hiding just beneath the surface, and that’s when I know. It is about him. As long as he thinks I’m broken, he’s going to keep trying to “fix” me. And he’ll never trust me to help him.

My heart contracts into a hard ball as everything I thought we had crashes and burns all around me. I fist my hands in my hair, trying to hold myself together. I wanted this too much. I let myself believe I could have it. My chest is so tight I can hardly get enough air to say, “Get out.”

He goes pale and his hand shakes as he lays it on my thigh. “Don’t push me away, Hilary. Let me help you.”

I slap his hand away. “You are such a hypocrite! I’m not the one who needs help!”

“It’s okay to drop your defenses and be vulnerable.” He rakes the hand I slapped through his hair. “I know how hard you try to be strong, but inside, you’re still that scared girl. It’s okay to ask for help. You don’t have to keep up this act.”

Oh, God. I can’t stop the frustrated tear that courses down my cheek, and I don’t move to wipe it away. “So, you do think I’m weak. Huh. That’s funny, because all along I’ve been thinking that you were the pathetic one . . . worshiping Lorenzo, wishing you could be half the man he was. I really hope Lorenzo is Henri’s father. At least that way, he’ll grow up to have a backbone.”

In this instant, all I care about is hurting him, and I know I have when I watch my words hit the mark. His shoulders sag, his face crumples, and a rush of air leaves his lungs, as if he’s been sucker punched. The determined set to his jaw dissolves into a pained grimace as he stands and backs toward the door. “I’ll go.”

“Good,” I say, setting my resolve and closing off my heart. “And take your stuff. I don’t want to see you again.”

He fists a hand into his hair and hangs his head, and a low groan works its way up from his core. When he lifts his head and looks at me, there’s still part of me that hopes he’ll have figured it out and I’ll see the Alessandro I was falling in love with. But mingling with the anguish in his eyes is pity, and that’s all I need to see to know I made the right decision. This never could have worked. He’s got too many demons, and I’m one of them.

He reaches for the doorknob. “I’m truly sorry, Hilary. For everything. The last thing I ever intended to do was to hurt you again.”

And then he’s gone.

The snap of the door latch, echoing through the silent room as he closes it behind him, sounds so final. The fleeting urge to run after him is washed away by the tidal wave of relief. Because the truth is, I always knew he’d leave me again.

Everyone does.

IT’S AN HOUR later that I lift my swollen face out of my pillow and notice I have a voice mail. The totally irrational hope that it’s Alessandro flits through my mind as I wipe my eyes and look at the screen, but I don’t recognize the number.

I hit the button and listen to the message. “Hi, Hilary. This is Terry Vern. I’m an agent at Pinnacle Creative Management. Hailey Dunning passed your information along to me and said I should give you a call. If you could e-mail your headshot, resume, and links to any audition tape you have, that would be enough to get us started. And if you have any questions, feel free to call me back.”

As she reels off her e-mail address, I can’t move. I can’t breathe. I just sit here with my phone glued to my ear as my voice mail menu repeats over and over.

Alessandro is gone. The hole in my heart hurts as much now as it did eight years ago. But maybe this is a sign. Henri will be safe. Mallory won’t look at me like I’m her worst enemy. And, with any luck, this agent thing will work out and I’ll be on my way. It’s like the powers that be just hit the reboot button and my life is a blank slate. From here, I can make it anything I want it to be. If there was ever a new leaf, this is it.

Life is going to be good.

I didn’t just make a huge mistake by letting Alessandro walk away.