The Fiancé by Stefanie London
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Ava
“THANKSFORLETTING me stay.” I lug the last box into the garage and stack it against the wall where everything else I own—sans clothing and toiletries, which are in the house—will sit in boxes until I move again.
My mother leans against the brick wall, watching me. She wears an apron over jeans and a T-shirt, with a pair of dirty old runners on her feet. Gardening attire.
I look at the boxes, each neatly labelled with what they contain. My heart feels heavier than a cruise liner, but I’m trying not to seem affected.
Trying...and failing.
“I don’t know why you didn’t tell me about the issue with your apartment earlier, Ava.” My mother frowns. “You always have a place here. This is your home as much as it is mine.”
Guilt twists like a furious dragon in my belly. I know my mother and I have a relationship complicated by our different ideals, but we’re family. We love one another underneath it all and sometimes I don’t give her enough credit.
“To be completely honest, I was worried that us living together might...” I sigh.
“Cause irreparable damage?” she offers and I laugh, surprised her mind went there, too.
“Yeah.”
She looks so different from the day that Daniel came to visit—gone is the styled hair, which now sits like a poufy brown cloud around her ears. Gone is the lipstick and the gold earrings and the neatly pressed blouse. She’s got a smear of dirt on one cheek and a little hole in the neckline of her T-shirt and a pair of shears poking out of the pocket of her apron.
I love seeing her like this, because the garden is my mother’s happy place. She could spend hours out there, tending to her flowers and her hanging plants and the herbs she grows along the fence. It’s like when her hands are in the dirt, every bad memory in her brain gets paused.
“I know we don’t always see eye to eye.” She comes closer and pulls me into a hug. It smells like my childhood—fresh earth and petunias and lemon and black coffee. “Matthews women are stubborn and strong, and that’s why we survive. But it doesn’t always make for an easy living situation.”
I swallow and there’s a big lump in the back of my throat. “Are we too stubborn?”
“No, darling. Because stubborn means we want something, and where would we be if we didn’t want for a better life?” She brushes the hair back from my face the way she used to when I was a little kid.
“I thought you would be mad at me for walking away.” I haven’t told my mother the relationship was for show. I haven’t told Emery or my other girlfriends, either.
Because as much as Daniel and I made an arrangement in the beginning, it doesn’t feel that way to me now. And I don’t think it matters how it started, only what I felt in the end. I don’t know how to label it, exactly... But Daniel means something to me, and this breakup is real and painful.
“You know I want to see you married and secure, but I also want to see you happy.” She pulls away and motions for me to follow her into the house. The entryway is cluttered with my suitcase, overnight bag and two extra boxes of clothes and books and makeup. “I know you think I was wrong to suggest that Anthony might make a good match, but I really did believe you could be happy together. You used to be friends when you were kids.”
“Do you really think I’d be happy with a man who’s so attached to his mother?” I say, shaking my head. That whole situation is still a prickle under my skin.
“What’s so wrong about a mother having a child who adores her? Some mothers crave that.”
And then I understand it. My fierce need for independence, which was fostered by being raised by two strong, self-reliant women, is the very thing that has driven me to make my own life away from her expectations. It’s what drove me away from her when we had fundamental disagreements about relationships and life.
It’s why I sent Daniel’s cheques back and refused to take an apartment in the Cielo, despite that being the entire point of our arrangement. The only thing I did take up was the connection for a job interview, because he could open the door but only I could get them to hire me.
Calling my mum to ask if I could move in while I got settled in my new job had almost broken me. Asking for help always made me feel like a failure.
Maybe that’s why Daniel’s refusal to admit his feelings cut so deep—because it was like being pitied. I allowed myself to be vulnerable and he didn’t value me enough to do the same. One-way emotion always made me uncomfortable like that, so leaving was necessary.
Even if I miss him more with each passing day.
“You were always a girl with your own mind, Ava. It’s something I admire about you as much as it drives me crazy. I always felt like you did the opposite of what I told you, even if you actually wanted the thing I was offering.” My mother laughs and shakes her head. “I know you want to get married and have a family and sometimes I worry that you shy away from it because it’s what I’ve pushed you toward.”
“You’re right, I do want those things... But on my terms. I don’t want a marriage for security, I want it for love. I don’t want to be with someone as a means to an end, I want to be with someone because they truly believe they can’t live without me. And I want to feel that same way about them.”
“And Daniel wasn’t that person?” She looks sad and I feel like the worst daughter in the world for selling her a lie.
“He was,” I say, blinking back the tears prickling my eyes. “He just couldn’t see it.”
“Sometimes these things take time.”
“Well, now he has all the time in the world.” I pull my shoulders back. I refuse to dwell, even if my heart aches with every beat. I have to keep moving forward. I have to prove to myself that my dreams are worth being stubborn for. That folding and settling is only going to make me unhappy in the long run. “I can’t swim in place simply because he can’t see past his own baggage to what we could be.”
“What would you tell one of your students if their friend was being difficult but they cared about the relationship?”
My mother’s question strikes me, not only because it’s insightful but also because she knows my passion for teaching goes far beyond ABCs and 123s. I care deeply about the emotional development of my students, about helping them become well-rounded little humans who can march off into the world with confidence and positivity and...empathy.
“I would tell them to give people a chance,” I admit. “That everyone has their own way of dealing with things.”
“We’re all striving to be better, Ava. It just takes some people more time to figure out what that looks like.” She bobs her head as if agreeing with herself. “Hell, it’s taken me almost my whole adult life to realise that I was alone because I made myself that way.”
My eyes grow wide but I don’t dare say a word. My mother has never admitted anything so vulnerable before.
“When you got engaged and I didn’t even know about the man you were seeing, it...hurt. But I did some thinking and I understand why you might feel like I’m too opinionated about your life. I don’t want to push you away, Ava. You’re my only daughter and I love you. I want you to be happy.”
I rush forward and squeeze my mum so tight it makes my arms hurt. I know that despite battling against one another for my entire life, our love is stronger than our opinions. Our love is worth a few arguments here and there.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper against her hair.
“I’m sorry, too, baby.” She hugs me back and we stay there like that for a long moment.
Eventually I hear the shuffle of small feet and see my grandmother coming out of the lounge room, her cane making even little thunks against the tiled floor. “I don’t know why we’re all hugging, but I feel left out.”
Laughing through my misty eyes, I reach my arm out and pull her into the fray. Three generations of imperfect, opinionated and stubborn women all entangled in one giant hug. I haven’t been the best daughter I could be, but I’m going to make that change now—not by carrying my mother’s baggage, but by trying to understand her point of view. Trying to be more empathetic and accepting and kind.
And all the while I’ll keep striving for a better life. For all of us.
Later that day, I press my back to the wall of my temporary bedroom and slide down to the floor. Even knowing that I have the job I’ve always wanted, that I have a roof over my head and that I’m about to be in a better financial position than I’ve been in in years, I can’t feel totally happy. Because the one thing I’ve always known, deep down to my very core, is that stability and happiness are not the same thing.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I’m repairing things with my mother. And sure, stability is a privilege. Knowing I’m not going to get booted out of my living situation again is a weight off. But it doesn’t change the big, gaping Daniel-shaped hole in my heart.
Across the room, I catch my reflection in the mirrored wardrobe doors. It’s a sorry sight. Hollows under my eyes, limp hair pulled into a scruffy bun. I’ve done nothing but go to work and pack my things for the last few weeks, and every day I collapse into fitful, subpar sleep.
I miss him.
The thought is a repetitive echo, day in day out. It never seems to fade.
It seemed too crazy to think I might be in love with a man who’s only been in my life a short time—but when I think about him, my heart aches. And it feels so utterly broken I have no idea how to put it back together.
“You gave him a chance to confess how he felt,” I mutter to myself. “And you got your answer.”
But without Daniel my bed feels cold and empty, my palms reaching for him every morning. And it isn’t just sex—although I definitely miss that, too. It’s the way we learned things about one another, no matter how big or small. Like how he geeked out over historical architecture and could talk for hours about the influences of a particular architect.
The closer I looked, the more beauty I saw. The more goodness. Daniel has the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever known, and yet he keeps himself chained up. Inaccessible.
The sound of a car door slamming outside startles me out of my reverie and I need to finish unpacking before dinner. But when I push up from the floor, I catch a glimpse of bright red outside. Bright red like the custom paint job on a very fancy sports car.
“Shit.” My breath catches in my throat as I see Daniel get out of his Maserati.
Like a manifestation of my wildest dreams, he stalks up to the house. But he looks different—he’s unshaven and his mouth is set in a grim line. He looks worn down, emotionally ruined.
Exactly how I feel.
I have to get to the front door before my mother or grandmother can make it. I scoot out of the bedroom, my sock-covered feet skidding on the tiles as I catch my mother dragging my grandmother into the living room and sliding the frosted glass door shut. She winks at me before disappearing. A second later, the TV is turned on and the sound of a game show gives me a veil of privacy.
Thanks, Mum.
Daniel knocks and I give myself a moment, steeling my heart against seeing him again, before I open the door. Up close, I see even more details of how he’s changed—the darkness under his eyes, the crease between his brows. He’s wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt in inky black that hangs perfectly so I can admire the muscles in his shoulders and arms and across his chest.
That’s a power move if I ever saw one.
“Can we talk?” he asks.
“You could have called for that.” But I step back and hold the door, fortifying myself against the crackle of electricity shooting through me. But there’s no use—I’m like a woman starved and at the first sight of him, my body demands more. “How did you even know I was here?”
“Gut instinct.”
“How could you possibly think that? The whole point of...what we did was for me to avoid this.”
“You love your mother, Ava. I could see it plain as day when I came for dinner. You have a good family.”
The words pierce and twist. “So... Why do you want to talk? I thought we said everything there was to say.”
We’re standing in the entryway, and I don’t dare take him one step farther into the house.
“I wanted to see how you were doing,” he says.
“You don’t have to act like you care anymore.” There’s no sting in my voice—just a sense of resignation. Trying to act unaffected 24/7 is exhausting and I have nothing left.
My mother has hovered around me all day, which tells me I’m not doing a fantastic job of hiding my emotions. But the well of my heart is so empty, nothing can cover it up.
“I was worried when you refused to look at the Cielo apartment.”
Sending the keys back had been one of the hardest things I’d ever done—because, for the first time, I had to rely on my mother instead of finding my own way. But accepting Daniel’s help was out of the question. Neither the email with the details for the apartment inspection nor the cheques had come with a personal note. He was doing what he always did—throwing money at a problem.
Using money to avoid his feelings.
“It’s not your duty to keep watch over me.”
He looks like he wants to argue further, but he shakes his head instead. “I’m trying to uphold my end of the deal.”
The deal, because that’s all he’ll ever let us be. A business arrangement. It stings, even now, that he can’t admit what he feels.
“What do you want?” I fold my arms across my chest. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve done enough talking. If Daniel wants anything out of me, then he needs to ask for it.
Or maybe beg. I wouldn’t mind seeing that.
We face off like two animals sizing one another up—Matthews women are stubborn, my mother was right about that. This is one area where I can’t compromise. Having Daniel on the fringes wouldn’t be enough. Having a half relationship of living together without love wouldn’t be enough, even if the sex is hot enough to melt the ground beneath my feet.
“I have something to say.” His dark gaze meets mine without hesitation. Without reservation.
I motion with my hand, trying my hardest not to let him see how hurt I am. “Don’t wait for an invitation.”
“I’ve always had trouble opening up about my feelings,” he begins and I shoot him a look that says uh, duh! “Growing up, my house was chaos. My parents’ marriage was tumultuous, and their divorce was even worse. Marc needed someone to keep the stability, so I became a pseudo parent and tried to be the rock in his life.”
I don’t want to feel compassion for him, but it bubbles up immediately. I can easily imagine him as a young boy—proud, protective of his little brother. An adult too soon.
There’s that big heart of his.
“I managed to trace every problem in my life back to a relationship—my father’s affairs, my mother’s love for a man who would never give her what she wanted.” He stares at me with those intense black-brown eyes and this time there are no walls. Daniel is laying himself bare in front of me. “I thought I needed to be the one to put my family first, like nobody else had. I appointed myself as ‘protector’ of our family. I felt responsible to fix things.”
I understand that need right down to my bones. There’d been times when, as a child, I’d tried to set my mother up with my teachers, thinking it might make her happy. Thinking it might stop her from crying at night.
“Only I realised recently, that while I was looking back trying to fix the mistakes of others, I was making a whole lot of mistakes myself. I wanted my family back, and I was pushing away the beautiful woman standing in front of me.” For a moment his expression falters, and his true vulnerability shines through. “I found out yesterday why Marc didn’t believe me. One of my board members was feeding him lies to stage a hostile takeover.”
I blink. Now that I was not expecting. “What the hell?”
“Marc was his pawn, because someone wanted me out of the CEO position. I’m too difficult to manipulate, apparently,” he says with a distinct note of bitterness.
“I would have thought that was a point of pride.”
“I guess it should be, only I feel as though I’ve let my logic and morals deteriorate some other important aspects of my life. Like my ability to trust people. My ability to love.” He comes toward me, reaching for my hand, and I allow him to touch me. “You were right to call me on my bullshit. I was using the arrangement to protect myself from what I was feeling. To protect myself from the thing I’ve been most afraid of. But the truth is...”
His pause seems to stretch on forever—so important that it slows down every cell in my body.
“What we’ve shared is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before, and I don’t mean the sex...amazing as that was. It was everything that came before and after—the things I told you that I’ve never told anyone else.” When he looks down at me, it’s as if I’m turning my face to the sun. No longer is Daniel shielded by icy remoteness, he’s real. Raw. Open and bare right in front of me. “I couldn’t believe how quickly we connected, because I never let anyone in. Not even my own family.”
The realisation is in his voice—he finally sees why his efforts to “fix things” are always unsuccessful: because he acts without emotion and expects everyone else to do the same.
“But I want to let you in. I want to be the kind of partner who’s emotionally available and loving and not afraid to reveal himself. I want to give you back what you’ve given me.” He draws me closer and brushes the messy strands of hair from my face. His fingertips trace my hairline and my ear and the ticklish spot on my neck. “I know neither of us had great examples of what love could be like—”
“Understatement of the century,” I say with a shaky laugh.
“But that’s a good thing for us.”
“It is?”
“We’ve seen the mistakes. We’ve learned our lessons the hard way about what not to do, so we know what to avoid. We know how to do better.”
Is this really happening? I want to shake myself to see if I’ve fallen asleep in my bedroom and this is nothing but my brain’s way of trying to resolve my hurt.
“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you,” I admit. “Every day I’ve hoped and dreaded that you’d come to your senses.”
“Why did you dread it?”
“Because I don’t know if I’m strong enough to withstand you changing your mind.” The hollow feeling is so vast and so black and so all-consuming that it terrifies me. “What if it turns out your feelings are false? A mistake?”
“There’s nothing false in how I feel about you,” he says, resting his forehead down on mine. The touch is tender and perfect. “You’ve changed me, Ava. You’ve helped me to see all the ways I was holding myself back, all the ways that I set myself up to fail. I’m a better man because of you.”
“How?” I need to know the details, to know exactly how he’s changed. To know that this change means there is space for me in his life.
“I wouldn’t have given my brother a chance to explain before,” he says. “What he accused me of... It’s the biggest, most painful insult anyone could have hurled at me. In my eyes, it was unforgivable. I only wanted him to know I was not having an affair with Lily because it was important to the company...because I didn’t want people to gossip.”
He draws a long breath, as though it pains him to be so raw. So open.
“But when you called me on my inability to be vulnerable, I realised I was doing the same thing my mother had done all those years ago. By worrying more about what outsiders might think, I was letting bad feelings fester. I wanted Marc to come back to the company, but I never had any intentions of forgiving him for what he said.”
“But you did forgive him?”
“Yes. I understand why he believed the lies and...” His Adam’s apple bobs. “I understand the role I played, unintentional as it was, in why he didn’t trust me. Before you, I would never have had the conversation with him because I have always loathed talking about my feelings. I never saw the point in it, because the discomfort was too great. But it’s worth it. Letting you go because I was too scared to say how I felt would be a crime. The fact is, I don’t know what the future holds, but I do know that we are in charge of it.”
“We are,” I echo.
He lowers his head down to mine, capturing my mouth and kissing me deeply. He backs me up against the wall and I let him in. His lips are firm and his tongue demanding, and he slides his arms around my waist.
“Can you forgive me, Ava? Our business arrangement was done the second you came up those stairs.” He closes his eyes for a moment. “Saying I felt nothing was the biggest lie I’ve ever told.”
“I forgive you.”
“I want us to build something wonderful together.” The raw intensity of his voice makes my body hum with excitement. With anticipation for a bright and beautiful future. “I want us to have a home that is ours and make a family there.”
I smile up at him, letting all the heat coursing through my body bubble to the surface. “We should probably start practicing, then. For making a family, I mean.”
He laughs and kisses me deeply. Out of the corner of my eye I catch the living room sliding door creep open, where my grandmother pokes her head out and gives me the thumbs-up. Laughing and cringing and feeling all things perfect and awkward and wonderful, I grab Daniel’s face between my hands. “But let’s not do that here, okay?”
“We can go anywhere you want, Ava. We’re starting over, right now.”
“Right this very second?” I loop my arms around his neck. “Why, Mr. Moretti, I have to say I’ve heard some terrible, wicked things about you.”
He quirks a brow. “Don’t tell me you read internet gossip.”
“I don’t. But I did hear you’ve got a thing for curvy women with big mouths who like to sneak up when they’re least expected.”
He entwines his hands with mine and looks at me so long and so deep it’s a miracle I don’t melt right at his feet. “You have no idea.”
“I have some idea.” I grin. “So, want to stay for a bite to eat before we escape back to your place so I can have my wicked way with you?”
“Yes. But don’t forget, it’s our place now. You can come up the stairs anytime you want.”
“I plan to, Daniel. Every single night from now until forever.”
If you enjoyed The Fiancé by Stefanie London,look for the rest of the stories inthe Close Quarters miniseries:
Faking It
The Fling
The Rebound
Available now from Harlequin DARE.
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