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It’s not anyone I know personally. But the man who has perched himself on a stool next to her—or rather, is casually leaning up against it—makes me seethe with a sudden, unexpected jealousy the moment I see him. He’s young, likely close to Bella’s age, and handsome, with an aquiline nose and curly dark hair, skin deeply tanned from time out in the sun. He laughs at something she says in return, white teeth flashing, and when she smiles back—even though it’s faint—my stomach twists again with a sickening feeling.
I can’t really tell if she’s flirting with him or not, but it’s clear that he’s flirting with her. And just the fact that she doesn’t seem to have immediately shut him down is enough to make my chest tighten and my blood heat with jealousy that I don’t deserve to feel.
“Daddy?” Cecelia taps my arm, and I realize that I’ve been staring at Bella and the young man for too long. I turn away, taking the small cups and handing one to each of them, before picking up Bella’s and mine.
She’s still talking to the young man when I go to walk over towards her. That jealousy burns through me again, especially when she seems to jump a little at the click of my footsteps against the tile near her, almost as if she feels guilty of something.
“We should head back.” I don’t dare look at the younger man; if I do, I’ll end up glaring at him in a way that I don’t have any right to. Bella isn’t mine, not in any way that precludes her from talking to him, but the possessive feeling that sweeps through me says otherwise. And I can’t seem to force it back, even though I know I should.
She looks at me, and I can’t entirely read what’s on her face. I can’t tell if she can see my jealousy, how much it burns to see another man talking to her.
Bella nods, taking the cup of gelato from me. She glances at mine. “You got chocolate, too.”
I feel the man looking at us both, as if trying to determine who we are to each other. Before Bella can look back at him, he pushes himself away from the stool, walking away. Next to us, oblivious to the tension, Cecelia and Danny are happily digging into their cups of gelato.
“You’re right.” Bella’s voice is cool. “We should get back, before it’s dark.”
We walk back to the car. Bella nibbles at her gelato as we go, saying nothing, and I can’t shake the tension that seeped through me at the sight of that small flirtation. Even once we’re in the car and back on the road to the estate, I still feel as if every one of my muscles is strung tight, that possessive jealousy flaring to life every time I remember her laughing at something he said.
For as long as there’s been something between Bella and me, I’ve known there would eventually be someone else.
I just hadn’t realized how hard it would be to see it for myself.
11
BELLA
It’s impossible to miss how tense Gabriel is. From the moment he walked up to see that man at the gelato shop—he introduced himself as Antonio—talking to me, being next to him has felt like having a live wire humming next to me. I can feel the tension radiating off of him. I can see how his hands are gripping the steering wheel, his jaw set. He seems to be somewhere far away, not hearing the chatter of Cecelia and Danny behind us, not looking at me.
I don’t say anything. There’s nothing I can say, with the children in the backseat. And there are too many thoughts rattling around in my head for me to be sure of what might come out of my mouth. I don’t want to say the wrong thing until I’m sure of how I feel.
I’m quiet all through dinner. We get back to the house and unload our purchases, Cecelia, Danny, and I taking our bags upstairs while Gabriel brings the groceries in to Agnes. A little while later, we all reconvene around the dinner table, where Agnes has a meal of chicken with bruschetta topping, toasted sourdough, and a salad with vinaigrette waiting for us. There’s wine, too, as usual, but I just sip at my glass, my thoughts still occupied with Gabriel’s reaction to seeing me talk to someone else.
I wasn’t even interested in Antonio. The attention of any man other than Gabriel still makes me feel wary, but I wanted to try. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt safe enough to even have a conversation with a man who’s a stranger—and the whole purpose of what Gabriel and I did together was to make me feel safe enough to do exactly that, and more, eventually. I wanted to see if I could do it, without panicking. Not because I think I’ll ever see Antonio again, but because I wanted to know for myself. I wanted to know how far back Igor’s threats had set me.
To my surprise, I’d been able to have a normal conversation with him. Even laugh a little at a joke he’d made. I don’t even really remember what he said now, but that’s not what matters. It’s that it made me feel a little more normal. A little more like myself.
As soon as dinner is finished, I get up and help Agnes take the plates back to the kitchen—or at least, I try. “You’re off work today, girl,” she says as I go to pick up the platter that held the chicken, waving me off. “Go enjoy your evening. You need it.”
I want to argue, but I know better than to try. She’ll just keep shooing me away until I go, so instead, I veer out of the dining room and head to the library before Gabriel can say anything to me. I still don’t feel ready to talk to him, especially if he’s going to say anything about what happened.
The library is dark and cool, smelling of dusty, old wood and books. It’s not a bad smell, and I breathe in as I flick on the light, looking around the space. It’s in need of as much repair as the rest of the house. Agnes and I pulled the dust covers off of the furniture yesterday. I circle the room, looking at the brown leather sofa along one wall, the upholstered wing chairs near the fireplace, the settee-style chairs in velvet and leather nearer to the bookshelves. All of the walls but the very back one are floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. On the left wall, there’s a nook between the shelves where a large window looks out to the estate beyond, heavy velvet drapes covering it, and the padded bench tucked behind them.
The books are all so dusty it will take an entire day just to dust the spines, more to remove all of them and deep-clean the shelves. It wasn’t a task I was looking forward to, but just now, the solitude and repetitiveness of it don’t sound so bad. I walk to one shelf, running my fingers down the spine of an edition of Les Miserables, the edges of it fraying. Some of the books are in better repair than others.
The click of the door opening makes me jump. I turn to see Gabriel stepping into the room, closing the door behind him, and my heart leaps into my throat. I reach up without thinking, pressing my fingers against the shallow beat of my pulse in the hollow there.
“What is it?” My question comes out sharper than I intended for it to, and Gabriel raises an eyebrow.
“I wanted to check on you,” he says mildly, walking further into the room. “You were so quiet at dinner. And you practically ran off from the table as soon as we were all finished.”
“I wanted to be alone. It’s my day off.” It comes out defensively, and I see Gabriel pause, leaning up against one of the shelves as he looks at me.
“You’re upset about something.” There’s concern in his voice as he says it, but it rubs me the wrong way all the same, in my current mood.
“You were jealous today.” I turn away from him, studying the spines of the books in front of me without really seeing them. “I was just talking to that man, and you?—”
“I wasn’t jealous.”
