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He looked up at her bleakly.
“It’ll never be over,” he whispered.
Theo wanted to flee the hospital and run twenty miles, to punch a bag until he collapsed, to start a fight with someone who’d knock him bloody. Anything rather than face the tenderness and pity and love he saw shining from his wife’s face.
His hands clenched at his sides. “The fire was already climbing the walls when I left him. I ran onto the beach and watched the red and orange flames consume the house, crackling and spiraling embers up into the night. As the house burned, I feltglad. I thought we were free. Then I heard my mother behind me.”
Emmie’s lovely face was wan as she listened. He had to tell her the worst. She had to know. His throat was tight.
“Mama was still in her hospital gown and covered with purple bruises, but she’d worried about him, now I was back. She’d come to save him. From me.” He still remembered her agonizing shriek.
“Where is he? Theo, what have you done? You’ve killed him!”
Emmie took a deep breath, her violet eyes luminous with sympathy.
He closed his eyes, not wanting to remember. “She screamed his name and tried to run into the house. When I stopped her, she slapped me in the face, clawing at my eyes, kicking me till I backed away. ‘I love him!’ she kept screaming. She ran into the house. She was barely inside before it collapsed, exploding into fire.”
Theo’s knees felt weak, as if he were still that boy again.
Emmie sucked in her breath. Then, still sitting on the bed with their baby, she reached out her hand.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she whispered. She held out her hand to where he stood alone in the hospital room. “You were fifteen. You did everything you could to protect her. She made her choice.”
He didn’t move. “Because she loved him.”
Dropping her hand, Emmie looked startled. “That’s not love.”
“Love means putting someone else’s needs ahead of your own. Isn’t that what you said?”
“Yes, but—”
“The police ruled the fire an accident. But they’d often come to the house after he’d beaten her. She’d always refused to press charges, so I think they felt bad for us. For Sofia, at least.”
“And you. You were just a child, too.”
“Yeah.” His lips curved sardonically. “Well. A neighbor was willing to adopt Sofia. But no one wanted an angry fifteen-year-old. I couldn’t go back to boarding school. There was no money. I ran away from a state orphanage and lived on the streets of Athens for a while. I thought I was tough, until a bunch of older boys beat me into a bloody pile on the street because they thought I’d stolen their food. Which I hadn’t.” Rubbing the back of his mussed hair, he gave her a wry grin. “Though, I’d wanted to.”
Theo looked across the hospital room at his sweetly sleeping baby boy. “The funny thing was, they did me a favor. A social worker found me at the hospital and told me my uncle from America had been looking for me.”
“See?” Emmie said warmly. “That’s another example of love—”
“My uncle was lonely. His wife had just left him. He wanted a companion who wouldn’t leave. I started learning his business, property development. My uncle was kind, in his way. But weak.”
“Weak, how?”
Theo thought of his Uncle Andrew’s face as he’d taken him to his small, shabby office in Upstate New York.
“I’ll teach you how to pitch. Work is the thing that can save us. That will never leave you. It’s cold and logical. Live to work, and no one can ever hurt you.”
And Theo had learned that well. He’d thrown himself into business like an anchor into a bottomless ocean. Over the last twenty years, he’d turned his uncle’s small business into a global empire.
He sighed. “Even after his ex-wife married another man, Uncle Andrew never got over it. When he was sad, he’d drive by her house. When he was drunk, he’d look her up online. Other than that, he’d work, but he didn’t even do that very well, since he was distracted by his yearning for her, like a missing piece of his body.” His jaw tightened as he looked at Emmie. “That’s what love does to you.”
She looked away. “You’re right. Love is awful. But also,” she said and lifted her gaze, her lovely face filled with emotion, “it’s the only thing that makes life worth living.”
Theo staggered back a step, looking at the light and love shining in her eyes.
“I wish I could love you,” he whispered. He shook his head hollowly. “My life has burned my heart out of me.”
