Chapter 19
Layla
I paced a lap across the sprawling room, from the oversized bed to the towering armoir. Back again. The bathroom behind me was silent, like Aldo didn’t dare move. Maybe he feared my wrath.
Good. He should. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
And scorned I surely was.
No. I’d been scored eight years ago when he’d left me for another woman. This … This was so far past scorn, I’d need to invent a new category. He’d left me for another woman—and he wasn’t even with the other woman!
I don’t know why, but that somehow made it all hurt worse. Because he hadn’t left me for her, hadn’t been swept up in her Italian beauty, in the sultry sensuality I couldn’t offer.
Maybe that would have been forgivable, understandable, even. We were twenty-six. Young. Naive. Rash. I could have forgiven another bout of rashness. But what he’d actually done?
He’d left me for … me.
I paced another lap down the bedroom. Lucky this room was so giant—ample room for pacing when you weren’t sure where else to do, what else to do. When your thoughts were swept up in the petty, yet heartbreaking, truths of the past.
Aldo had left me because he truly felt we weren’t right. Weren’t compatible. Whatever excuses he tried to manufacture, whatever lies he spun like silken spider’s webs around my life, I knew the truth.
And frankly, in the end … none of it mattered.
What mattered was that he’d hurt me.
He’d wounded me irrevocably. Scarred me, left marks on my heart that would never heal. He’d broken me.
There was no explanation for abandonment and betrayal. No forgiveness, no redemption.
Aurora had never been more than an excuse. And I knew that now. I knew that, and I could only thank my past self for not letting our stint in the bed earlier tonight progress any further.
Imagine if I’d—but I couldn’t think about that.
I couldn’t stay in this bedroom.
Not when I knew who it truly belonged to. Not when I knew who lurked just behind the bathroom door. Maybe listening, maybe waiting, maybe laying out the letters of a pretty apology.
I wouldn’t give him the chance to speak it. Couldn’t.
I needed to leave. Now. Before he emerged from the bathroom, sad and bedraggled and sorry.
I paced from the room, letting the door slam closed behind me. Eli’s room was only a few doors down, so that’s where I headed. Because where else could I go? What else did I have in my world?
Eli was my anchor, my rock in the stormy sea.
My everything. My whole damn world.
I let myself into the room, quiet. His sleeping form was a tiny lump in the sprawling bed, barely a blip in that vastness. So small, so fragile, against the enormity of the world into which we’d been so unceremoniously thrust.
So easy to lose.
I stood over the bed, savoring the sight of him. Counting his breaths. Thanking all the gods and deities the world had ever worshipped that I had him, my son. My family. Because my family was all that I had.
Eli’s lashes fluttered, and before I could step back out of sight, his sky-blue eyes opened. “Mommy?”
“Hey, Eli,” I murmured. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
He rolled onto his back to stare up at me. “Do you want to stay with me? There’s room.”
In demonstration, he slid to the far side of the bed, leaving a wide space for me. Such a willing invitation, so selflessly given. I couldn’t help but smile as warmth crawled through my chest.
He hadn’t gotten too old for his Mommy yet.
“Of course.” I slipped beneath the covers on the vacated side of the bed. “I will never stop wanting to hold my son.”
He snuggled up against me, and I wrapped my arms around him. How long had it been since we’d laid like this? Like mother and child? Like two pieces of the same puzzle.
His contented sigh told me he felt the same—warm and safe and soft.
“Tomorrow is my day off,” I murmured against his hair. “Maybe we could spend it together?”
“Yes,” he agreed. “I’d like that.”
The next morning, we made our way into the garden after breakfast.
It was a soft summer day, the sun eking into the tiny enclosure over the roof of the house in long, golden rays. Warm, but not yet hot.
The perfect day.
The stone walls of the house towered up over us, setting an Austonian scene—bucolic, almost antiquated. A soft patch of green grass formed the center, while manicured gardens painted a rainbow of wildflowers and roses along the perimeter.
And white lilies, I noted.
White lilies laced the very edges of the garden. The same kind I’d woven into my hair on my wedding day. The same as the ones in the bouquet my Vasco had picked for me because he knew they were my favorite.
But I refused to think of that. Refused to remember.
Not when Eli sank down into the grass and opened his sketchpad.
I folded down beside him, content to watch my son craft art from blank paper and pencil. Like magic.
He really was talented. He had an eye for detail, for noticing the way light climbed over the garden, edging the flowers in stark lines and shading the grass in softness. It was strangely calming, soothing, to watch him work.
Without warning, his pencil paused, and he turned his face up towards me. “I think you should find your own happiness.”
“What?” My gaze climbed over the planes of his face, bathed in soft morning sunlight.
“Because you’ve been so sad lately, since we came here.” His blue eyes flicked up towards the sky in thought. “Since before we came here.”
My heart felt like it had climbed into my throat, the way my pulse held my voice hostage. How was he so observant—or maybe it was just so obvious. Aldo’s shadow still loomed over me, and I couldn’t escape him.
Not here.
Not when he was so close, when he kept inflicting himself on my life. When every time I turned around, he was there. Looming. Present.
Could I really move on from the past, start a new relationship, when I was here?
I didn’t know. I really didn’t.
My gaze strayed from Eli’s face to the wide, opened windows of the house overlooking the courtyard. With a shock, I realized one was occupied—by none other than the very man I was trying to forget.
Aldo Marcello stood in the window to his office, watching me and Eli.
No. Not me. He wasn’t watching me, I realized with a start.
He was watching Eli.
Every muscle in my body tensed as his gaze swiveled to me, like he’d caught sight of me observing him. The nerve of that man, I swear.
Without hesitation, I climbed to my feet and marched across the distance between Eli and Aldo’s window.
He didn’t move away as I approached. Stomping away like an angry bull. “Why the hell are you watching us?”
His gaze strayed past me to my son, still seated in the grass. And when he spoke, his voice was soft, pensive. “Eli’s mine, isn’t he?”
