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“He shouldn’t be. This was our decision, yours and mine.”
“Yes, but I was very selfish to get involved with you, Portia.”
She stared at him, clearly lost for words.
“I could see that you were vulnerable. I didn’t know why, but I could tell there was a weakness in you. I exploited that because I wanted you.”
“You did not,” she responded angrily. “I was there that morning, Marco. We both wanted the same thing.”
“I should have known better.”
“Why? Why should you have known more than me?”
“Because you are entirely different to me,” he responded. “I do this sort of thing all the time, you don’t. That much was obvious all along.”
She opened her mouth, closed it, gaping, flailing to know what to say. “All the time?” she murmured, eventually.
“Not this, exactly, but yes.”
“Marco, tell me something.”
He was quiet.
“Do you usually take the women you’re screwing to your place in Italy?”
He’d never done that before, but the second he admitted as much to Portia, he knew she’d read too much into it, and so he had only one option: to lie. To lie to protect her, because even though he’d taken Portia somewhere that was special and sacred to him, it didn’tmeananything. At least, it didn’t mean what she might take it to. “Yes, when it suits.”
Her eyes fluttered shut, and he felt the betrayal of that, because as soon as he said it, he wanted to eat the words back up. The thought of being there with another woman, of sharing those things with someone else, was anathema to him.
But he’d already started down this path, and now he had to finish.
“We said from the beginning that this would just be sex. It became more than that, for both of us,” he admitted. “I see that. But there’s no future here, Portia.” He lifted a hand to her cheek, cupping it gently. “I promised you I wouldn’t hurt you and if I let this keep going, I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep that promise.”
She swallowed, her throat shifting visibly. “How do you know?”
His smile lacked humour. “Because I know myself.”
Her eyes swept shut.
“I was your rebound guy, not someone you want anything more from, remember?”
Her lips twisted, eyes remained shut. Marco’s gut hurt.
“We have to end this.”
“I—,” she shook her head, blinking across at him now, clearly wanting to fight him on this point. “Marco, no.”
“Yes. It’s the only thing that makes sense. I should have done it sooner. Ilikespending time with you. I really do, but that’s not enough of a reason to keep seeing you. Not now that I know you, and understand you. You can’t separate sex from love. Not forever.”
She blinked away from him, then picked up her wine, drank half of it. “You’re right.”
His heart crashed to his feet. He hadn’t expected her acquiescence, though he was glad for it. Wasn’t he?
“For the last few weeks, at least, I’ve been feeling something, something I’ve been fighting, talking myself out of, willfully ignoring, because I know it’s not what we agreed to, because it complicates everything, and because it’s the very last thing I want after Jack. This was meant to be straightforward and easy. This was meant to be light-hearted and casual but Marco, listen to me. Don’t you ever feel as though, when we’re together, you’ve found the one other person you were put here on earth to find? Don’t you ever feel as though whatever is missing inside of you exists completely and wholly in me?”
Her words were like signal jammers in his brain. He heard them but couldn’t let them penetrate his mind because it was all too problematic. He’d never been in a long term relationship before and the thought of practicing on Portia was God-awful. He knew he’d end up hurting her because he’d get bored of her and walk away, like he always did. He had no attention span for people.
So he lied again.
