he acknowledged as he looked at his pale reflection in the mirror, he thought of it all the time. Not consciously, but it remained, a canker inside him, destroying everything good. Allegra had asked how her father could leave her, if he’d loved her. Rafael knew the answer to that in his own case times a thousand.
Because he didn’t love me. Because I couldn’t keep him from destroying himself. Because it’s all my fault.
He’d seen how his mother had gone, and his sister too. They’d been swallowed up by their nightmares, their memories, until there had been nothing left but a pale husk of a self, and then nothing at all. He couldn’t let it happen to him. But why the dream, why now?
Slowly he lifted his head and stared at his reflection. The answer was right there in his dazed face, the acidic churn in his belly. Allegra. Their lovemaking had been both sweet and powerful, and it had woken up long-dead parts of him, parts of him that remembered and felt and feared. Parts of him that he’d iced over with thoughts of justice, kept frozen with cold, cold fury. Now everything was waking up, a spring of the soul, and this was the result. Dreams he couldn’t bear to have. Memories he didn’t dare think about. Weakness.
He turned the taps on full blast and washed his face, scrubbed hard as if it would make a difference, and then turned them off again. He stared in the mirror, his eyes opaque, hard, and then he nodded once and left the bathroom.
Allegra was curled up on her side, her back to him, one hand cupping her bump. Thankfully she’d fallen asleep, but even in sleep her face looked sad, her mouth puckered, a frown feathering her brow. Rafael reached out to smooth a red-gold curl away from her cheek and then stopped. No need for that.
Tonight had been intense, and now he needed to get things back the way they had been, comfortable, enjoyable, but not threatening. No danger of scars being reopened, him bleeding again, bleeding right out. Take a step back, make it safe. That was what he needed to do...and preferably without hurting Allegra too much. But hurting Allegra couldn’t be his main concern any more. Keeping those memories locked tight away was.
* * *
Allegra woke slowly the next morning, blinking in the sunlight streaming from the windows, her body aching in delicious places. For a wonderful moment all she remembered was the pleasure, intense and overpowering, of being with Rafael. The way he’d held her, moved inside her...
Then another memory slammed into the first, leaving her breathless. The nightmare he’d had, the way he’d shut her out. She turned and saw that his side of the bed was empty, the duvet pulled tight across, as if he’d never been there. Had he even come back to bed?
Slowly she got out of bed, sorting through possibilities. What should she do now? How should she act? Despite what they’d shared together last night, she didn’t yet know how to handle this moment. Whether to press or pull away. She pulled on the thick terrycloth robe hanging from a hook in the bathroom and then gathered her clothes up, tiptoeing back to her room. Downstairs she could Maria humming in the kitchen, Salvatore’s tuneless whistle. Nothing from Rafael.
Back in her bedroom she showered and dressed; her mind sifting through memories, options. What to do? How to feel? Taking a deep breath, she went in search of the father of her child.
She found him in his study, forehead furrowed as he gazed at his laptop, his headphone set dangling from his neck. Allegra stood in the doorway for a moment, an ache in her heart, in her soul. She wanted to walk easily into the room and plop herself into his lap; she wanted to smooth away the furrows on his forehead and kiss that lovely, hard, mobile mouth. She wanted it to feel natural, right, and yet she simply stood there, wondering and waiting.
‘Did you have a conference call?’ she finally asked, her voice high and nervous as she nodded towards the headset.
Rafael’s gaze flicked towards her and then away, revealing nothing. Giving nothing. ‘Yes.’
‘Are you able to manage most of your business from here?’ He’d only gone into Palermo a few times over the last weeks.
‘I’ll need to start going into Palermo more often.’ He turned back to his laptop in a way that felt like a dismissal. ‘As well as Rome and Milan.’
‘I could come.’ She kept her voice light. ‘I’d like to come.’ Rafael didn’t answer, and Allegra took a deep breath. ‘Rafael...about last night...’
His mouth tightened, his gaze still on the screen. ‘Let’s not do a post-mortem.’
‘Post-mortem?’ Hurt flashed through her. ‘Really, that’s what you’d call it?’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘I’m not sure I do.’
Finally Rafael lifted his gaze from his laptop, but then Allegra wished he hadn’t. His eyes were opaque, fathomless, hard. ‘Last night was pleasurable, Allegra, for both of us. That’s all that matters. Let’s leave it at that.’
‘Rafael...’ She took a deep breath, dared. ‘What about everything we talked about? What about the dream you had?’ As soon as she said the words she wished she hadn’t. An emotion flashed across his face like quicksilver, gone before she could decipher it, but she knew it hadn’t been good.
‘Forget about that,’ Rafael said flatly, and as he turned back to his screen Allegra knew she’d truly been dismissed. Still she wouldn’t give up that easily.
‘I have a doctor’s appointment this afternoon in Palermo,’ she said. ‘An ultrasound. Will you come with me?’
He hesitated, and for that heart-stopping second she thought he wouldn’t. That he was turning away from her and their child completely, for a reason she could not understand. ‘Yes,’ Rafael said at last. ‘Of course I will.’
* * *
Rafael sat tensely by Allegra as the technician squirted cold, clear gel onto her stomach. They’d barely spoken on the drive into Palermo, which should have suited Rafael perfectly but instead made him feel restless and irritable.
He didn’t know what he wanted. The remnants of his old dream still clung to him, ghost fragments he couldn’t shake. They made him want to keep a little distance between him and Allegra, but another part of him howled in protest. Hated hurting her...and hurting himself.
‘Everything looks good,’ the doctor said as he prodded the ultrasound wand on Allegra’s burgeoning bump. ‘Baby is the right size...a growing boy.’
The fuzzy black and white shape on the ultrasound screen looked like a proper baby. Head, body, hands, feet, even fingers and toes. He was sucking his thumb and kicking his legs and the sight of him made a pressure build inside Rafael, a pressure he couldn’t even begin to understand. His hands curled into fists at his sides and he had to fight to keep his breathing even.
What was happening to him?
He felt too much. Happy. Thankful. Afraid. All of it combined inside him, making it hard even to speak. He focused on practicalities instead, helping Allegra up from the table, listening and nodding as the doctor asked them to book another appointment in four weeks’ time.
‘What shall we do now?’ Allegra asked as they left the doctor’s office for one of the city’s sweeping boulevards.
‘Do?’
