Her aqua-blue eyes were filled with feelings he could not identify. “I’m not arguing. I’m scared, Sandor. I don’t want to be hurt.”
“I will not hurt you.”
“But you will. You can’t help it.” Her eyes drooped as exhaustion overtook her, but the words kept coming as if the thought behind them was so ingrained she did not need to be fully alert to express it. “You don’t love me. That is going to cause me pain. I have to decide if it’s going to be worse than the pain of letting you go.”
He could not believe what he was hearing. “Damn it, I will not hurt you.”
“You won’t be able to help it.” She sounded so sad.
And it made him furious. There was no need. “You tell me what you need and I will make sure you have it.” To him, it was that simple. Why could she not see it?
“You can’t.”
“I can do anything.”
Her lips curled in a small, melancholy smile. “I know you believe that, but it’s not true. You can’t give me the most important thing of all.”
“What is so important?”
“Your love.”
He felt like he’d been kicked in the chest, but didn’t know why. “I can give you everything you need.” He knew it was true. “If you want affection, I will give it to you. If you want gifts, I will buy them for you. If you want companionship, it will be yours. There is nothing I will withhold from you.”
Her eyes closed, but moisture leaked from the corners and it made him feel helpless, not a sensation he was used to. And certainly not one he liked.
“Except the emotion I’ve spent my whole life living without.” She turned on her side, away from him. “All the things you offer should come from love, but you will give them to meif I ask . There’s a difference, even if you can’t see it. I know that difference intimately.”
He put his hand on her shoulder, needing to comfort the raw pain he heard in her voice. “Explain.”
Her shoulder rose and fell beneath his hand. “My father feels responsibility for me, but he doesn’t love me. I figured that out when I was little. He’s never loved me. Everything he has ever done for me has been out of duty. Now, you are telling me you want to do the same…you will give me what I say I need out of duty as my husband.” She turned back to face him and the deeply embedded pain he heard in her voice was in her moisture filled eyes. “There’s never been anyone like that for me. No one to love me. No other family after my grandparents died. No long-term friendships to fall back on. Life without love is so lonely, Sandor. I don’t want that kind of loneliness in my marriage.”
He did not know what to say. He’d always had his mother’s love and before his grandfather had died, the old man had loved him, too. In his way. Even so, Sandor had never valued love because he considered it responsible for too much pain.
Ellie was saying the lack of it was just as painful, but she was wrong that it had to be lonely.
“Do you feel lonely now, Ellie?”
She didn’t answer, but something in her eyes said she was lonely…deep inside. Even after they had made love so beautifully. He did not understand it. He felt more connected to her than he had to any other person. How could she not feel the connection?
“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life waiting for the people I love to love me back,” she said into the silence between them.
“Are you saying you love me, Ellie?”
The moisture in her eyes overflowed, tracking down her cheeks in a stream of tears and she whispered, “Yes.”
Had he considered it two days ago, he would have said that her falling in love with him would help him convince her to marry him, but now he knew it was far more likely to cause her to turn her back on what they could have. She was genuinely afraid of being hurt by him. Because he did not love her.
Something squeezed inside him, making it hard to breathe. He knew what it was to hurt. As impossible as it should be, he was hurting right now. For her. But also for himself.
Her uncertainty was tearing at old wounds. Memories best forgotten, but that haunted him all the same. He had spent his childhood rejected for what he was. The illegitimate son of a Greek woman and her American lover. The best in sports and academics, his schoolmates and even his teachers had still looked at him as if he did not measure up because he did not share his father’s last name.
No amount of effort on his part could force their full acceptance, or his grandfather’s unconditional approval. And he could not force Ellie to accept him, either. He did not want to even try. She deserved to come to terms with their relationship on her own, but he also needed to know that the choice had been completely hers.