Once Upon a Rose(98)

He stared down at the hand he had fisted around something and then at her. “I can’t believe you would give this up. I—God damn it, I thought it meant something to you.”

He shoved hard at the nearest pew and turned and strode down the aisle.



God, Matt hated churches. They dotted this country so ubiquitously, and everything bad in the world happened in them. His parents’ funeral. His grandmother’s. Raoul’s mother’s.

A sulky, brooding child, being dragged there by his grandmother every Sunday, being made to go to Confession as he got older, when he wanted to punch the screen between him and the priest. You stole my parents! he’d wanted to shout. All I did was sneak out of the house at midnight to build a bonfire with my cousins. So Tristan melted the bottom of his shoe! Why am I the one apologizing to You?

He reached the back of the church. All those backs of churches. All those funerals and, yes, weddings and baptisms, at which he and the men in his family had stood, biceps pressed against each other as they squeezed in, leaving the pews to the women because they couldn’t all fit. That mass of heat and strength that they made when they stood together.

He stopped. The echo of his strides died away.

He reached out and rested his hand against the stone, pressing Niccolò’s seal against the same wall where his and his cousins’ backs always pressed when they were here for weddings. Or funerals. Always, a restless peace would settle over them as they prepared themselves to be patient and respectful and stand still for an hour of prayers and singing and, half the time, Latin. They’d done it so many, many times, to keep their grandmother happy, or to do their duty by the family and honor someone’s wedding or the new life being born into the family, or, yes, to grieve together, to press their shoulders together to bear up an unbearable weight. He could half hear the echoes of those Latin chants now, as if the stone held so many of them they sifted down over anyone present like dust motes dancing in soft light.

In this old church, the quiet sifted off the stone, centuries of pleading and gratitude, of grief and joy, of guilt and promises, all of that absorbed and cleansed from the air, released back out in this long, soft hush.

A hush that said: Even when hurt to the deepest part of his heart, a man could still be strong.

He looked back at Layla.

Her face had crumpled. She was hugging her middle as if he had hit her in it, and trying not to cry.

Oh, hell.

“I’m sorry,” he said uneasily.

Her face crumpled more as she stared at him, and then she did start to cry, covering her face with her hands.

Hell. He came back to her, pulling her into his arms. “I’m sorry, Bouclettes. I’m sorry.”

But you just…you want to throw me away? Give me back? You don’t want to keep me?

I’d do about anything to keep you.

His special present of himself. That she didn’t need. That didn’t matter. That wasn’t the heart of things. She was going to take it back to the store and exchange it for something more practical.

“I was trying to say something,” she cried. “I think I must not have said it right.”

Oh, hell, he was such a bastard. Such a grumpy, stupid, touchy bastard. “Come here,” he said, drawing her out of the church and away from the statue of Mary looking down at him with a maternal forgiveness that made him feel as if he’d just killed a damn kitten.

He drew her to the great rock that interrupted the wall of the terrace looking out over the valley. An old cypress shaded it, so old that Niccolò must have sought its shade once, too.

He leaned back against the rock and drew her weight against him. “I’m sorry,” he said yet again. “Tell me what you were trying to say.”

“I don’t want to anymore.” She tried to push a glare through her tears, but it got all blurred, and her mouth trembled over her attempt to scowl. “I don’t trust you with it!”

Ouch. That really hurt. “Okay, I’m sorry. Shh.” He rubbed her back, tightening her into him. “Shh. I’m so crazy about you, Bouclettes. I just…I thought you loved this valley, too.”

She slapped her hand hard against his chest. “I love you. That’s all I was trying to say. I do love your valley, but not as much as you. You jerk.” And she burst into tears again.

Shit.

And…oh, wow, really?

Really?

“Shh, shh, shh,” he murmured, easing her into him, soul lighting up with this strange, scared wonder. Did she mean that? And had he just broken it?

“I wanted you to be happy,” she told his chest accusingly. “I wanted you to feel whole. I wanted you to feel safe with me. I thought for sure that I was safe with you.”