“None of your business. I told you to butt out.”
“You’re always so surly when you haven’t slept.” Everett moved to help himself to a scotch even though it wasn’t even noon yet. “Are you coming back to work for me, then?”
“No.”
“No?” Everett turned with a knowing smirk. “Why not?”
“Oh, shut up. I had to wait for my passport.” He dropped it into the satchel hanging off his chair, the one that already held his phone, tablet, and wheelchair repair tools. His private jet was fueled and ready when he was. “I thought about having her dragged off the plane, but...”
He had hoped she would change her mind. So he could stay exactly as closed off as he was. So he would know she loved him before he had to confess to it first.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “What happens if I tell her I love her? What changes? Nothing. I’m still me. Still in this chair. Still dragging her around the world to attend board meetings or whatever bloody thing comes up. She wants a baby and so do I, but there’s no guarantee with things like that. Failure is hell. So what do I offer her that isn’t...a promise of pain?”
This was what had kept him awake all night. Despair. A complete lack of hope. He couldn’t give her happily-ever-after. There was no such thing.
“I’ve been told to butt out,” Everett said laconically. “But what do you want from her? Because she’s pretty and all, but she’s just a woman. She’s not offering you any guarantees that she can produce an heir, is she? Or never wind up ill or needing a chair? Find someone else.”
“How obtuse are you?” Giovanni asked with affront. “I don’t want anyone else. She doesn’t have to give me anything. I just want her here, in my life. Then all the pains and disappointments of existence are bearable at least.”
“Again, I don’t want to overstep,” Everett said, scratching his upper lip and serving up his remark with buckets of irony. “But is there any chance she feels the same?”
Giovanni wanted to say something biting, but a ray of sunshine peeked through the thick walls inside him, throwing light into the darkness even as its heat touched on raw places and stung.
It was painful, but it tugged him to take one more chance.
“Make yourself at home. I’m leaving.”
Freja was missing Giovanni even before she got on the plane to New York. She sat down next to a man who snored the whole way and tried to hold back her tears.
She reminded herself he didn’t love her. Leaving was the smart thing to do, before they were too entangled for her to leave this easily again.
That’s what she told Nels when he picked her up at the airport and asked, “What happened?”
He took her back to the apartment she’d bought and told him to use because he was being hounded by the press. They shared a bottle of wine and she fed him the lines about the death threat, keeping Giovanni’s secret, but she apologized to Nels for using him.
“I was using you, too. But... I have to say it. You can have the man you want, Freja. I can’t. So why are you squandering that?”
She didn’t have a good answer. Fear? She had never let that hold her back. Distrust? She understood and accepted why Giovanni had hurt her. The only way to find out if he would do it in the future was to give him another chance.
Her brain went around in circles and, in a desperate bid for distraction, she agreed to do a reading from an advance copy of her book. Her agent found a bookstore willing to throw it together at the last minute. They put up a few posters and she mentioned it on her social media accounts, but it was so low-key, she didn’t even dress up for it. She wore brown plaid pants with ankle boots and a sage-green pullover with sleeves that fell to her knuckles.
She begged Nels to come with her, certain no one would show up, swearing, “I’m fine with talking to an empty room. This is a test drive for the other appearances I have lined up, but I’d like some feedback.”
The shop was in one of Greenwich Village’s character buildings, the kind that had been through a thousand iterations and would go through a thousand more in service to the changing demographics of the foot traffic that passed it. Presently it catered to the pseudo-intellectuals who appreciated the reclaimed floorboards and fair-trade coffee and the reading area in the loft that offered free Wi-Fi.
The overstuffed furniture in that loft had been pushed to the rail and a dozen chairs brought in. They were already full when Freja arrived and the harried staff were frantically stealing stools from the coffee bar and carrying chairs from someone’s office. A queue had started on the stairs that ran all the way out the door.
“Those people aren’t all here for me,” Freja said to Nels, pointing out, “They’re all holding my father’s books.”
“Still a nice show of support.”
“It is.” She forced a smile, thinking her publishing team would love that it was turning into a standing-room-only event. She knew this should feel like a triumph of some kind, but even though Nels stayed nearby, she felt very...lonely.
They moved her a little closer to the rail so the people on the stairs could see her, and they introduced her.
Freja smiled at the crowd and began to read her own words:
“‘Some people view life as a battle or an adventure, one where you fight to overcome adversity in hopes of a thrilling victory. Some see it as a garden, where you weed out what doesn’t work and nurture what does. They tell you to stop to smell the roses.’”
There was a small ripple of laughter, thank goodness.
“‘My father saw life as a journey. Traveling was his life and thus it was mine, but I always saw myself as a passenger. I didn’t get to decide where we were going, but I didn’t mind. When you’re with someone you love, it doesn’t matter where you’re going or how long it takes to get there.’”
She faltered slightly, having forgotten she had written that. She cleared her throat and continued.
“‘Pappa was my constant, even though the rest of the relationships in my life were transitory. When he died so unexpectedly, I was devastated, but there was a piece of me that accepted the loss as normal. No one is permanent. Eventually, you have to say goodbye to everyone.’”
Did she, though? It was striking her that she had done this. She had pushed Giovanni away. That’s why she had gone to Dubrovnik that day, to say goodbye. She hadn’t believed there was such a thing as building a life together. Yes, there had been things between them that had to be overcome, but it wasn’t all on him to convince her they had a future. She could make that choice and pursue it herself.
“‘So I knew...’” Her voice was wavering in and out as emotion overwhelmed her. “‘I knew in my heart of hearts...’”