She had no idea where the strength had come from, but Saskia seized it with both hands and let it drag her along. Because it was easier to bear than the pain.
‘I’d prefer it if you didn’t complicate things further by proposing marriage when all I am to you is a complication.’
‘We aren’t a couple. We had a one-night stand—uncharacteristic for both of us, but there you have it—and now you’re carrying my child. What else would you call it, zvyozdochka?’
Saskia opened her mouth to reply, but the words didn’t come. Or at least the words that did come sounded distasteful on her tongue, and she couldn’t bring herself to utter them.
Malachi had a point. Their baby wasn’t planned, and the circumstances weren’t enviable, which made it a complication. The difference was that, to her, it was an unexpectedly joyous complication, whilst to Malachi it was apparently on a par with the irritations he experienced in business every day.
His solution was typically practical and logical. But it wasn’t emotional. And that was what she wanted it to be more than anything else.
Without warning, all the air seemed to whoosh out of her. It was all she could do to hold her head up and not deflate right there in front of Malachi.
‘We had passion,’ she whispered.
His face hardened, the angular lines of his jaw suddenly becoming harsher. Almost cutting.
‘That was about sex. Not love.’
‘How do you know it isn’t both?’ She knew she was clutching at hope but she couldn’t stop herself. ‘If you won’t ever give love a chance?’
‘I don’t believe in it. It’s an illusion,’ he refuted fiercely. ‘Passion comes with a price, and it’s always one that’s too high. I won’t do that to you, or our child.’
‘Malachi—’
‘I told you that from the start,’ he cut in, refusing to listen to her.
It was like a howl inside her. Long and low, tugging at her very soul. She’d laid it out there—laid herself out there—and he didn’t want her. He never had.
‘You’re right.’ How her voice managed to sound so calm, so neutral, was a small miracle. ‘You told me from the start that you couldn’t offer me more than your duty. Your responsibility. But I thought there was more to us than that. Or at least I wanted to believe that there was.’
‘Because you’re carrying around some non-existent romantic notion based on what you want to remember about what your parents had. You compare everything to that. And there’s no way anything you find will ever match up. It’s impossible.’
‘This is what you were saying this afternoon,’ she ground out. ‘Telling me that my parents didn’t care enough when I remember how much they loved me.’
‘But not enough for them to stick around.’
‘They were in a car crash. They couldn’t help that.’
‘Zvyozdochka, they were arguing. I looked into it after that night in my apartment, when you refused to see sense and just marry me. They were having another of their infamous fights which blazed almost as brightly as their so-called great love. They were drunk, and fighting, and people had heard them threatening to harm each other. And then your father apparently ran into a tree on a straight, well-lit stretch of road, with no other cars in sight. Your mother, supposedly unable to bear the pain of his death, took an accidental overdose.’
‘Accidental!’ she cried, anguished. ‘You just said it yourself. They were both accidents.’
‘No, zvyozdochka, they were covered up and sold to the grieving public as accidents. But I think we both know the truth.’
‘You’re wrong!’ She shook her head, but the shaking that had started from her toes and was working its way up her body told her differently.
‘I don’t think so,’ he said quietly. She might have thought even sadly. ‘You know exactly what happened and so do I. Yet you’ve put them on a pedestal and sold it to yourself as some grand love affair, when the truth is that you’re using it as some impossible standard you know you can never achieve because it’s a way for you to stay emotionally out of reach.’
‘That’s insane,’ she muttered.
Only she had a feeling it made awful, terrible sense. How had she never realised this before? Or had she, on some level?
‘You say you want what they had, but you don’t, zvyozdochka. You’re not capable of it because you aren’t as selfish as them. You could never do to your child what they did to you. You could never leave our daughter.’
‘That makes no sense...’ whisp
ered Saskia.