her head. And he hadn’t. She’d hurt herself. “I was just … thinking.” There was no point in hiding the tears. Her voice was wobbly, watery. Too late to bother with the fiction that she was fine.
“About what?”
She bit her lip. Then opted for some form of honesty. “I’ve been pretending.”
“What do you mean?”
“My whole life. I thought if I pretended to be happy, if I made the best of what I had, that I would be okay not having it all. That if I smiled enough I would get past my mother being gone. That my father’s most recent slap to my face hadn’t hurt me deeper than I wanted to admit. I had to, because someone had to show my brothers and sisters that you made a choice about how you handled life. We only had what we had, and I didn’t want them … I didn’t want them to be sad, or to see me sad. So I protected them from what I could. I made sure they didn’t know how hard it was. How bad it was. I’ve been carrying around the burden of everyone’s happiness and just trying to make what I had work. But I’m not happy.” It burst from her, truer than any words she’d ever spoken. “I don’t want to smile about my childhood. It was horrible. My father was horrible. And I had to care for my siblings and it was so hard.” She wiped at a tear on her cheek, tried to stop her hands from shaking. But she couldn’t.
She couldn’t stop shaking.
“I love them, so much, so I hate to even admit this but … I was willing to give everything for them. And no one … no one has ever given even the smallest thing for me. And I’m sorry if that makes me a bad person but I want someone to care. I want someone to care about me.”
“Alessia …”
“I’m sorry,” she said, wiping at more tears. “This is … probably hormones talking.”
“Is it?”
She nodded, biting her lip to keep a sob from escaping. “I’m feeling sorry for myself a little too late.”
“Tell me what you want, Alessia.”
It was a command, and since he was the first person to ever ask, she felt compelled to answer.
“I wish someone loved me.”
“Your brothers and sisters do.”
She nodded. “I know they do.”
Matteo watched Alessia, her body bent in despair, her expression desolate, and felt like someone was stabbing him.
Her admission was so stark, so painful. He realized then that he had put her in a position, as his angel, his light, and he had never once sought out whether or not she needed something.
He was taking from her instead. Draining her light. Using it to illuminate the dark and void places in himself. Using her to warm his soul, and he was costing her. Just another person intent on taking from her for his own selfish needs.
“It’s not the same as what you mean, though, is it?” he asked slowly.
“It’s just … I can’t really be myself around them,” she said. “I can’t show them my pain. I can’t … I can’t let my guard drop for a moment because then they might know, and they’ll feel like they’re a burden, and I just … don’t want them to carry that. It’s not fair.”
“But what about you?”
“What about me?”
Matteo felt like someone had placed a rock in his stomach. Only hours ago, he had been content to hold Alessia tight against him. Content to keep her because she had accepted who he was, hadn’t she?
But he saw now. He saw that Alessia accepted far less than she should. That she gave at the expense of herself. That she would keep doing it until the light in her had been used up. And he would be the worst offender. Because he was too closed off, too dark, to offer anything in return.
Sex wouldn’t substitute, no matter how much he wanted to pretend it might. That as long as he could keep her sleepy, and naked and satisfied, he was giving.
But they were having a baby, a child. She was his wife. And life, the need for support, for touch, for caring, went well outside the bedroom. He knew that, as keenly as he knew he couldn’t give it.
“I have to go,” he said, his words leaden.
“What?”
“I have to go down to my offices for a few hours.”
“It’s four in the morning.”
“I know, but this cannot wait.”
“Okay,” she said.
Damn her for accepting