AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Atticus took a breath and another, the feeling like a pressure starting to burst. He’d loved his brother and he’d loved his father, and there had been good things in those relationships. It hadn’t all been horror and pain and grief.
She found happiness in the midst of despair. Why can’t you? She showed you the way. All you have to do is follow her.
Every part of him felt as if he were going to burst apart. Was it that simple? Could he just accept the pain, the agony, the horror again?
You already have. And it’s as simple as picking up a little girl in the rubble.
He couldn’t breathe. Could he do this? Could he accept what she wanted, what she demanded? Could he open himself up to what he’d been avoiding all these years?
Except...he’d never avoided it, had he? All that feeling he was trying to deny, all the pain and grief, were locked up tight in his heart. But all the joy and the happiness were locked up there too.
You can’t have one without the other. But it’s easier to have the pain when she’s around to help you bear it.
It came to him, in a bolt from the blue, that he’d spent years detaching himself. Years telling himself he felt nothing, distracting himself from the storm inside him. But he hadn’t distracted himself. He’d started a charity, for God’s sake. And it wasn’t because he felt nothing. It was because he felt everything.
It rushed through him then, the pain and the agony, but also the joy, the happiness. The bright moments that Elena had talked about, and treasured. Her beneath him, her eyes full of desire. Her laughing as he tickled her foot. Her face flushed with pleasure as she held up a fish she’d caught...
He couldn’t have one without the other, and he realised all of a sudden that he didn’t want to. She embraced both parts of love and so could he.
Where she led, he would follow. He had to. He couldn’t do anything else.
He shoved himself off the rocks and ran hard across the beach, across the hot sand to the path to the jetty and then down it.
She lifted her head as he approached then stood up. ‘The helicopter is coming,’ she began.
‘I’m cancelling the helicopter,’ he said.
She blinked then glanced behind her as if she wanted to back away, but there was only the sea behind her. He didn’t stop coming.
‘Atticus,’ she said, but then he was right in front of her and this time it was he who lifted his arms to her, putting them around her and sweeping her up in them, holding her where she was always meant to be. Against his chest, against his heart.
She pushed against him once then stopped, going lax as if she was too tired to struggle any more. A tear slid down her nose, her dark eyes full of pain. ‘What are you doing? I told you I couldn’t—’
‘I know what you told me.’ He looked down at her, seeing how she hurt and knowing it was his fault, but also knowing that he was going to spend the rest of his life healing that hurt. ‘But I was wrong. So I changed my mind. Or rather, you helped me change it. You made me see that love doesn’t have to be destructive. That it’s not only about pain and grief, but also about happiness and joy and I... I want that. I want more of that. I want you to teach me more, show me more. More happiness. More joy. More laughter. I want bright moments and precious memories, and I want to create them with you. I want memories we can treasure for the rest our lives, because...’ His heart thundered in his head and the only thing that was real was her lying in his arms. ‘I love you, Elenitsa. It feels as if I’ve loved you for ever.’
Her mouth had opened in shock, her eyes going wide. She searched his face as if looking for the truth and he made sure she saw it. He let her see all the love in his heart that he’d denied for too many years. He let it out.
‘Oh, Atticus...’ There were more tears in her eyes, but they weren’t of sadness, not this time. ‘I just...want happiness for you more than anything in the whole world.’
‘Then let’s find it,’ he said. ‘Let’s find it together.’
‘Are you sure?’ she whispered. ‘Are you sure this is what you want?’
‘I’m sure.’ And he could feel the certainty settled down inside him, and he already knew that this would be one of those bright moments, a precious memory that he would look at later in life and treasure for ever. ‘You’re not my hope after all, Elena. All this time, you were my love.’
She reached up to him then, and put her arms around him, and her mouth was on his and there was so much warmth and sweetness in her kiss that he wondered how he could ever have walked away from her.
Well, he wasn’t going to any more. He never would again.
He turned with her in his arms, and he carried her back to the house, and together they started making those moments, moments full of happiness, moments full of joy. Moments full of love, that would last them the rest of their lives.
EPILOGUE
ATTICUS THREW THE wreath Elena had made out of wildflowers into the sea, and then pulled her in close to his side. She held their son in her arms, his dark head on her shoulder. Dorian Aristeidis Kalathes was quiet now, but he’d proved himself to be a handful right from the moment of his birth.
Atticus wouldn’t have it any other way.
The wreath was for his father, the first anniversary of Aristeidis’s death, and it had been Elena’s idea to mark the occasion with flowers cast on the sea and then, like counting a rosary, he would remember the good moments, the treasured moments that Atticus had of his father, and of Dorian.
