“She trusted you enough to … stir?” She teased, biting into the sandwich.
“Martine was very proprietorial. But she took pity on me.”
“Why? Why should an old woman pity you?”
“She’d known heartbreak. She recognised it.”
Heartbreak! Ava’s own heart tore in her chest. What could she say?
He eyed her carefully, trying to see what effect – if any – his words had on her. “I went there a week after you’d come to Rio. I’d been putting it off. The vineyard was too small for my interest, really. But after you came to see me, and I had turned you away, I feared I was going mad. That if I didn’t find something to do immediately I would … I don’t know. I don’t know what I thought I would do.” He shook his head. “So I went to France and I met Martine.”
Ava’s throat was clogged with tears but she refused to give into them. “You should have come here,” she intoned flatly.
“To see you happily married?” He chided softly. He handed a sandwich to her and she shook her head.
“Mince pie, please.”
He smothered his smile as he made the substitution.
“What did Martine teach you?”
“Many things,” he said with a nostalgic expression on his handsome face.
Ava bit into the mince pie and felt happiness burst in her chest. “Amazing,” she said once she’d swallowed the first mouth full.
Cristiano studied her, his eyes drinking in every single detail of her face, before reaching over and stroking her upper lip. “Crumbs,” he said by way of explanation. But he didn’t remove his hand. He ran it gently over her lip and then sighed, pulling away from her with obvious effort.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” The question burst from Ava fully formed; she hadn’t even realised she was going to ask it.
His response was measured. “As opposed to?”
She drew in a shallow breath. “As opposed to what you said in the car. That day you found out about Milly.”
A muscle ticked in his cheek. “What did I say to you, Ava?”
“You hated me.”
“Did I say that?” He wondered, staring at her face in profile.
“I can’t remember.” Her laugh was an uncomfortable sound of desperation.
“I had been blindsided. I had just found out I had a two year old daughter.”
“I know,” she squeezed her eyes shut. “When I see you with her, I can’t believe I ever kept it from you. I can’t believe the decision I made.” Her words rung with sincerity. “I am so sorry for what I did. You deserved so much better.”
“Hey,” he reached over and put a hand on her leg. “Stop talking like that. We both made mistakes. We’re here now, together, and we’ve got Milly.”
“Yes.” She nodded, but the future was an enormous void of confusion. What were she and Cristiano to one another? Two people who’d fallen in love, broken up bitterly, and now faced the prospect of a lifetime in one another’s lives because of the child they shared? What if he wanted to leave? What if he met someone else? What if he fell in love with another woman? What if he had more children with someone else? The thought turned Ava’s heart to stone in a way that nothing else could.
“I think we need to make a plan for how to handle all this.”
“Do you now?” His words were droll, his manner amused.
She nodded. “Yes. We need some ground rules so that we don’t get hurt again. We can’t put Milly through it. And it would be easy for us to get confused and think we wanted something else from each other … maybe even to believe that we’re in love with each other.” She glossed over the way that idea sledged ice into her blood. “But this is just about Milly, isn’t it?”
“You tell me.”
She turned to face him, but looked away again just as quickly. “If there was no Milly, and Tom Berry hadn’t got married and asked you to be his best man, you wouldn’t be here now. Even if there had been the wedding, you would have come and gone.”
He expelled an angry breath. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. We’ll never know what might have happened in an alternative universe. We only know what we have now. How we feel now.”
“And how do we feel? How do you feel?” She forced herself to be brave and ask the question that was burning inside of her.
“I feel like … I see you with Milly and I think you are the best mother in the world. I see you with her and I feel so proud of her, and what we created together. I look at Milly and I think I want ten more of her. I want to make babies with you until we are covered in yoghurt and laughter. I want to be with you this time. To see your stomach get round and to see life grow inside of you.”
Ava’s breathing was hard and laboured. She couldn’t get any air into her lungs. She was shaking her head, and she begun to whisper, “No. No. No,” over and over again, until Cristiano stopped speaking. Then it was just a desperate incantation of negatives filling the room.
“I’m sorry,” he said, when she’d finally stopped speaking and had her head pressed back against the bed. “I cannot lie to you. Why would I? We have a perfect daughter. Why stop there?”
“God, Cristiano, please just shut up!”
He stared at her and felt just as much pain as he had the first time they’d argued. Ava Henderson could inflict hurt on him unlike anyone else.
“I’m not having any more children.” She opened her eyes and turned her face to stare at him. Her expression was the bleakest, most messed up thing he’d ever seen. “Not with you. Not with anyone. Milly’s it for me.”
9
The silence was a third person in the room. It hovered between them, enormous and impossible to ignore. It was heavy with question and doubt. Finally, Cristiano pushed it aside. “Was it so terrible for you?”
She shook her head, her brow furrowed. “No.” It hadn’t been. For the most part, pregnancy had been a dream.
He frowned, obviously not comprehending her reticence.
“Milly isn’t enough of a reason for what you’re suggesting. I mean, Milly is our daughter, and we both love her. We’re both committed to raising her. But having one child together doesn’t mean we should launch into having more. It doesn’t make us a family.”
“What?” He pushed off the bed and stared down at her, his advantage unfair given her immobilised state. “You’re kidding me?”
She stared down at the mince pie on her lap. “Do I look like I’m kidding you?”
He suppressed the curse that had come to his lips. He didn’t understand, but that only meant he needed information. He’d made the mistake of jumping to conclusions with Ava in the past; it had never served him well. “I told you how I feel. What I want. You didn’t. What do you want, Ava?”
She cleared her throat. “I …” She closed her eyes. “I …” What she wanted? She wanted what he did! More children. A future with him by her side. But by choice, not obligation. And how could she expect him to stay when she could never give him more than Milly? “It’s exactly the same as before,” she said darkly, her eyes focussed on the bedspread.
“What is?” He sat at her feet, and put a hand on the normal-sized, uninjured ankle.
“I can’t give you what you want. No more so now than I did then.”
“You were what I wanted then.”
She shook her head. “We’ve talked about this. You wanted me, but only if I’d give up my life here for you. Only if I’d come with you. I didn’t want to travel like you did.”
Bitterness swelled in his chest. “I wanted you enough to give that up.”
“And I loved you too much to expect you to give up anything to be with me.”
His noise was one of complete frustration. “You would have been worth the sacrifice, believe me.”
“I didn’t want to be a sacrifice.”
He spoke as though she hadn’t. “But you were engaged to Edwards. You weren’t willing to give that up. I left you because you told me to. Because you said you wanted to go throu
gh with the bloody wedding.”
“I felt obliged,” she said stiffly. “It was the worst decision of my life.”
“Thank God,” he muttered, his eyes searching hers. “I have wanted to hear you say that for years.”
“I came to tell you all this in Rio, remember.”
“The worst decision of my life,” he retorted with a face that showed remorse. “No, leaving you free to marry Edwards without making a fuss was that. But being too damned proud to see you in Rio … That was fool hardy in the extreme. I was hurt, and I was angry. I had never been in love before. I thought … arrogantly, I suppose … that when I fell in love, it would be easy. That it would be smooth sailing. I imagined you would be … thrilled and that you would give up everything to be with me.”
“It’s not that easy. This place isn’t just a home to me. It’s not just a vineyard. This is the place my mum is. This is … home. I can never leave it.”
“I understand that now,” he squeezed her ankle reassuringly. “And I’m not asking you to leave it. I want to stay here with you. What you and I meant to each other is still there. No amount of time or stupid misunderstandings could change that. I felt it the first moment I saw you. I thought I wouldn’t. I thought we were done. But we’ll never be done, will we?”
She swallowed. “Please, don’t,” she said desperately. “You’re making this too hard for me.”
“What am I making hard for you.” He moved to crouch beside her, kneeling on the floor so that he could grip her hands in his. It was then that he noticed she was crying. “Ava, please, my darling love, please don’t cry. This is happiness. I thought all hope was lost for us, and now we have a child together, and we still love one another. That love? That very same love that threatened to blow my soul apart three years ago is now the very thing I cling to for meaning and existence. I love you, Ava. This is the best feeling I have ever known. Why do you fight this?”
“Because!” She pulled her hands away and fumed at the injustice of not being able to stand up and pace the room, as she truly wished. “I’m still not going to be what you want.”
“I told you; I want you. Milly is the icing on the cake. Any other children, if you were to change your mind, would simply complete my happiness.”
“But without other children? You’re not complete?”
He groaned. “You are deliberately misunderstanding me. If it were just you and me, I would be happy. I wish we could go back in time and undo the last three years of distance. That we have Milly is a miracle.” He lifted her hands to his mouth and kissed them gently. “I want what you want. More children, or not. It doesn’t matter to me.”
She stared at him, as if trying to assess the truth of his words. She nervously weighed up the sentence that she heard over and over again in her mind. “I have to tell you something.” She pulled her hands away and clasped them in her lap. She couldn’t look at his face to see his reaction.
“Please, Ava, tell me. Let us have no more secrets, only truth.”
It reminded her of what he’d said on his first day back in the Valley. She nodded slowly. “I will never have another child.” She heard his intake of breath and before he could say something that would make everything worse, she hurried on. “I can never have another child.”
That silenced him. Perplexed, he watched the emotions dance across her face, and waited for her to continue.
“Everything with Milly was fine. My pregnancy was textbook. Until it wasn’t.”
“You had her early,” he prompted, when she was quiet for longer than suited him.
“Yes, yes. I …” Her face drained of colour at the memory. “I thought I was losing her.” She closed her eyes. “There was so much blood. Liv and Soph drove me to the hospital, and it was the most terrified I’ve ever been.” Her breathing was shallow as she remembered the details. “I had a rare medical condition that caused massive blood loss.” She spoke matter-of-factly now. “There was nothing for it but to operate.”
“You mean she was born via a caesarean?” He prompted, thinking of the fine pale scar he’d noticed on her belly and foolishly not questioned.
“Yes.”
“But Ava, lots of women have babies this way and go on to have other children afterwards.”
She nodded. “I know that. Unfortunately, my bleeding couldn’t be stopped.”
He waited, his patience diminishing and his need for details almost insatiable.
“I would have died if they hadn’t … if they didn’t … I had a hysterectomy. I had to.” She squeezed her eyes shut. Her chest felt hollow. “I can’t have any more children. It’s just not possible. They took… they took … I can’t have another child. Milly’s it. And so if you want a bigger family … if you want more children … you need to know that I can never give you that.”
He let her words sink in. Her sweet, beautiful, selfless words. “Ava…” His whisper carried the burden of his grief.
“No, Cris.” She cut him off angrily. “You don’t understand. You’ve missed so much with Milly. That was my fault. I should have told you. I could have. I took it as a sign when you turned me away, and I was scared, and so I told myself that it was just better this way.” Her breath was shaky. “You’ve missed the baby stuff. You’ll never get that again. Not with Milly. And not with anyone else, if you want to be with me.”
His chest was throbbing. He loved her, but her words dug into his core, as they had been designed to do. “I can’t miss any more,” he said finally, simply.
Ava’s eyes were wet. She blinked them furiously, but still didn’t raise them to his face.
“How can I explain this to you?” He said, reaching over and covering her small hands with one of his. “I don’t feel anything right now except for you. I feel pain at your loss. I feel anger – no, fury – at what has been taken from you. At the injustice of this, when you deserve only good things. I will never forgive myself for having not been there for you. I want to always be here for you now, Ava. I want to meet any challenge in your life by your side. By Milly’s side. We are a family, sim?”
But he still didn’t know everything. The past was slamming back into Ava, making her tremble with its strength. Would he want to be a family when he knew how awful things had been for her? Or would he see her as somehow broken and weak? “I was a mess. At first, I thought it was normal. That I was just in shock at having had the …procedure, and such a tiny, prem baby. But Sophie and Olivia suspected otherwise. I was diagnosed with post natal depression.” She dared a glance at him. “I’m fine now. I was lucky to have two sisters who were so supportive. They gave me time to seek proper treatment. It could have been worse.”
“Good God,” he said, pushing to his feet and stalking to the other side of the room. He stared out of the window at the star lit vista beyond. “All this you suffered through, and without me.” His back was moving as he tried to draw breath. “You honestly worry about what you can give me? When I have given you so little? For the rest of my life, I will never be able to make up for this failing.”
“It’s not your failing,” she snapped. “It’s me. It’s mine. My stupid body.”
“Ava,” he groaned, and moved quickly back to her side. “You’re never to say this again. You are perfect.” He kissed her forehead. “None of this is your fault.” He stroked her hair and she was ridiculously comforted by both his words and the gesture.
“Three years ago, I wanted to marry you. I wanted to throw myself at your feet and beg you to promise that you would never leave me. I knew then that a life without you would be meaningless. And it has been. For three years, I have existed and I have survived, but I have not lived. I have not enjoyed a single moment that I have been parted from you, particularly because I believed us to be parted forever. I have cursed my own stupidity and believe me, I have cursed your stubbornness and misguided loyalty to a man who could never please you. And I have hoped with the kind of hope that only a fool would feel that somehow we would find our way back t
o each other. And we have. Do you truly think I could value more children over a life with you? I will not make the same mistake twice. You pushed me away and I went. I will not go again, Ava. I won’t do it.”
His words danced around her mind. They were music and meaning. But still she tried to be sensible. “You need to think about it.”
“To think about it? About what? About how much I love you? About how I cannot possibly imagine another day without knowing, for certain, that you love me too?”
“What if you change your mind? What if you desperately want more children in a year’s time?”
“What kind of idiot do you take me for? Do you truly believe I would ever leave you and Milly? You alone would always have been enough, Ava. Just you. Milly is, as I said, the perfect silver lining. But you are the meaning to my life, and you have been for years.”
“I just can’t believe it,” she said determinedly. “Is this because you feel sorry for me?”
His groan was mingled with laughter. “I feel sorry for myself, not you. How many times and in how many ways do I need to say that I love you before you believe it?” He felt his heart swell with the truth of his statement. He lowered his voice, hoping his tone would help her see his certainty. “No part of my loving you is a sacrifice. Do you get it?”
He leaned up a little higher. “I want to marry you, more than I’ve ever wanted another thing in my life. I want to marry you as quickly as we can arrange it, and I want to skywrite it all across the world. You are heaven-sent. Please stop worrying that I feel anything for you but desperate, all-consuming adoration.”
She shook her head, but she was smiling. Was it possible to feel such joy after so much heartache? One look at his face convinced her that she was right to trust him. “I must admit, you’re starting to convince even me.”
“I should hope so.” He pressed his lips lightly to hers. “You are the only person I want to convince. Well, maybe Milly. We are a family, but Milly didn’t make us one. We did. We were a family three years ago and we were idiots to run from that. Never again. I’m not letting you go again.”