He really couldn’t read the expressions skittering over her face. Was she relieved, hurt, pleased? A mixture?
He pressed on. ‘What you said yesterday, about me wallowing in my infertility...’ The word stuck in his throat.
‘Sorry, that wasn’t very fair of me.’
‘It wasn’t kind and it hurt,’ he said, acknowledging that she’d made him feel bad. ‘But it was true. I have been wallowing. I’ve been so caught up in thinking about what a failure I was as a husband, how I wasn’t enough for Stephanie—but you’ve been through something worse and you picked yourself up and made yourself carry on, whereas I just retreated into my work and kept myself too busy to feel anything.’
‘That,’ she said, ‘sounds painfully honest.’
‘Facing the truth hurts,’ he admitted. ‘But it’s the only way forward. And you were right. I needed to think about it. To think about what I want from life. What’s important to me.’
She went very still. ‘And do you have any answers?’
‘Yes.’ He looked levelly at her. ‘I’m a corporate lawyer. Facts I can do. But I find talking about emotions difficult. I don’t know if it’s because Mamma’s so dramatic that I kind of went to the opposite extreme, or if it’s a bloke thing, or... It’s just...’ He shook his head. ‘And I’m not usually this inarticulate.’ He gave her a wry smile. ‘It’s important I get this right, but I’m making a mess of it.’
She reached across the table and took his hand. ‘You don’t have to start at the beginning or even make sense. The important thing is to start—and it can go on from there. Find its own way of coming out.’
Her voice was so kind, so gentle. Letting him know that she wasn’t going to judge him. Or at least not judge him as harshly as he judged himself. As harshly as Stephanie had judged him.
If he told her what was in his head and she backed away, it couldn’t make things any worse than they’d been last night, when she’d walked out on him. They’d still be apart. But if she didn’t back away now...
Hope began to flicker inside him.
‘I’m good at my job,’ he said. ‘I sort out mergers, I sort out buy-outs, and I make sure all the staff are treated fairly.’ He blew out a breath. ‘I love my family. I’m there when they need me. But I was a total failure as a husband. I made a mess of my marriage. I wasn’t enough for Stephanie—and the idea of putting myself through that again, taking the risk and getting it wrong and being rejected and abandoned... That scares the hell out of me.’
‘Taking a risk is hard,’ she said. ‘You were the first man I let close to me since Eric. There was just something about you. The way you made me feel. That you valued me, valued my knowledge, and made me feel that I was worth something.’
‘You are worth something. A lot. More than I can give you,’ he said. ‘I know you’re not Stephanie. That you can see there’s more than one way to make a family. But it scares me that I’ll let you down, too. That maybe we can’t make a family, and I won’t be enough for you.’
‘The way I see it, we have two options,’ she said. ‘We can both stay scared—you scared that you won’t be enough for me and I’ll reject you, and me scared that I’ve picked Mr Wrong again and you’ll make me feel worthless.’ She paused. ‘Or we can both be brave and take a risk together.’
‘Trust our own judgement?’
‘Or maybe trust each other’s judgement,’ she said. ‘What do you really want, Angelo?’
‘You,’ he said. ‘I want you. I want what my parents had. Someone who loves me for who I am, someone who brings light and colour into my life. Someone whose dreams I can support, someone who’s my equal, someone who’ll share the tough times as well as the good.’ He took a deep breath. ‘And a family. Even though that’s not going to be easy, thanks to the mumps—and whatever we do, whether we foster or adopt or try IVF, it’s going to take time.’
She looked at him. ‘I come with complications, too. Eric and the injunction. Will that stand in the way of us being able to adopt or foster?’