“It was horrible,” he agreed, unable to look at me. “Only Mama and Cosima knew. Sebastian was away on location and Elena didn’t want any of her friends to know about the pregnancy until the second trimester.”
Sinclair sighed and raked a hand through his hair. “The thing is, she had an ectopic pregnancy. It ruptured her fallopian tube.”
“She can’t have kids,” I concluded in horror. “She always made adoption sound like a choice, not the only option.”
Sinclair nodded jerkily.
Fuck.
I couldn’t understand why Sinclair would have brought me here to tell me this. I’d already rejected him, why did he need me to feel the true weight of this guilt? Was it to alleviate some of his own or merely so that I knew all the facts? For one brief moment, my passion for him flared into hatred so pure I felt electric with it. How could he have done all of this to my sister?
I glared at him with my teeth clenched so hard my head started to pound. He looked back at me, his expression perfectly neutral, his mouth slightly open as if he was willing to breathe in my toxic breath, to house all of my self-hatred and shame within himself so that I wouldn’t have to.
He reached across the table to place his hand parallel to mine. I couldn’t have withstood his touch in that moment, but his gesture of togetherness was just as comforting.
“I hesitated to tell you because it is really Elena’s secret to share and she is very guarded about it. She feels defective even though that is far from the truth. The ordeal brought us closer and I felt compelled to stay with her, to protect her and care for her because I had done that to her. I took away her dream and the worst part is, I was secretly happy about losing the baby.”
“I told you we aren’t good people,” I said softly. “But not wanting the baby didn’t make the miscarriage happen. You aren’t to blame either, Sin.”
“I know that now. I know a lot of things now.” Finally, for the first time since I had sat down across from him, he looked into my eyes and let his pretty, composed mask fall away.
I wanted to reach out and touch that sharp angled face. Instead, I touched the edge of my pinky finger to his where it lay on the table.
“I know that staying with Elena because I feel that I owe her my love after what happened isn’t fair to either of us. I know that it will take a long time to completely separate my life from hers and I know that she will likely never forgive me. It hurts me to know that, Elle. To know that a woman I have spent the last four years of my life loving will always hate me. I think that pain will stay with me forever and it’s going to ruin me at the most inconvenient times. I may not have been madly in love with her but she was my best friend, my partner and confidant.
But I also know that I have never loved anyone the way I love you and I honestly know that I never will. I understand that this is hard on you, that it’s unfair of me to ask you to choose me over your family but I’m still asking you to make that decision.”
I opened my mouth to say something then didn’t.
The waiter arrived with our dishes. When he placed a beautiful plate of seared Dorado in front of me, I blinked up at Sinclair. I felt so vulnerable, I was afraid a slight breeze would dissolve me, scatter me across the air.
“I’m asking you to make the decision but I don’t want you to make it right now and I don’t want you to make it lightly. I want you to know what I know. I have never been so serious or sincere in my life when I say that I want to be with you. I meant what I said in my office, I want to live with you, Elle, and one day I want to claim you as my wife. Some day, soon after that if you don’t mind, I want to have children with you.”
“Sin,” I said as I tore into the fish with the prongs of my fork but didn’t eat. “You can’t expect me to think you’ve done a complete about face on marriage and babies.”
“You’re right. That is why I invited you here today. I wanted to give you fair warning that I am going to woo you, Gisel
le Moore. I am going to show you who I am and how much I love you every day and I am not going to stop until I’ve convinced you that I am the only family you need.”
“You’re killing me.”
He nodded curtly and competently cut into his steak, utterly polished and confident once more. “It’s part of the process. This is going to kill you, this has been killing you all along, but I’m going to pull you out of this hellish situation and I’m going to love you more than anyone ever has every day after to prove to you how much that pain was worth it. We are going to resurrect each other.”
I stared at him numbly. Sinclair’s self-assurance may have drawn me to him originally and his aloofness had tempted me to linger but it was evidence of this, his boundless passion, which lay waste to my resolve. I tried valiantly to digest everything that he said but it felt as if I lacked the education, the fundamental principles needed to answer this mathematically, reasonably. Maybe because there was no way to respond reasonably to such a tangled conundrum.
Sinclair finished his steak in silence. A detached part of my mind wondered how difficult it was for him to restrain himself from ordering me to eat. My food grew cold and congealed, ravaged by my nerves but untouched. Still, I stared, my mind so full of thoughts that it shorted out and left me blank.
Finally, after paying for the bill, Sinclair offered me a small, genuine smile.
“I know this is a lot to take in, which is why I am more than willing to give you time to make the decision. The only thing I am not going to do is give you space.”
He reached into the breast pocket of his blazer, concealing something shiny in his palm. My skin sizzled uncomfortably under the heat from his touch as he gently took my wrist in his and secured something to it. He raised my hand to his lips, brushing his mouth against my fingertips, before releasing me.
I was too caught in his gaze to look at the heavy piece secured to my forearm.
“I own you as you own me and I’m not going to hide it anymore. When you are ready to stand beside me and tell the world, I promise I will protect you from its censure. And I promise to work hard every day to repair our relationship with your family. I don’t want you isolated from them.”
We looked at each other and I felt like his puppet brought to life, a creature with its own will but still tied fundamentally, irrevocably to him.