Page 85 of In Italy for Love

He gave a single nod. She headed into the station forecourt in a daze, struggling to focus on the departures information. She glanced back to see him still standing there, frowning, his hands limp at his sides. She gave him a wave, which he half-heartedly returned, and then she gave a concerted effort to pull herself together, studying the board until she found her platform.

When she took one last look out of the glass doors, he was gone.

35

Alex forced air into his lungs, watched the lines on the road flit by and carefully observed the oncoming traffic as he puttered back from Udine. Only when he pulled up in his parking space out by the creek did his focus begin to crack.

This is not like Laura…

He tried to reason with himself while part of him screamed that she wasgone, just like Laura, and another part of him was outraged at the comparison. He’d known Jules a matter of weeks, not the years he’d been with his wife.

The most uncomfortable thought was that she wasn’t even gone, not really. She was alive somewhere – else. Perhaps her departure was a lucky escape. She could discover her bright future, while he sat in his car, leaning on the steering wheel and staring at the creek where he’d nearly had a heart attack watching her wade in to rescue his cat.

He’d never be able to cross the Ponte del Diavolo again without thinking of her stopping and staring – or of the first time he’d seen her, when she’d impulsively asked him out to dinner and held her stubborn chin high when she’d thought he would reject her.

Rubbing his swollen eyes with a sigh and resting his forehead on his hands, he was vaguely annoyed to acknowledge that time would make everything better. He’d lived the truth of that. Even when he hadn’t wanted his life to get better, it had.

He’d held on to Laura with everything in him and he’d still accidentally fallen in love with Jules.

Jerking his head up, he blinked out of the windscreen with a shiver of panic. Had that word really just crept into his thoughts? Perhaps just because she’d said it – in her sleep last night, which didn’t really count.

There are no star-crossed lovers here – only stupid ones.

He was even more irritated that Berengario’s words came back to him right then. He was still picturing Jules standing under the arches at the station, telling him she’d stay if he asked. After everything she’d been through with Luca, she’d still been brave enough to stay.

Oh, God, should he have asked her? Should he have let her take the risk? But he hated the idea of her giving up her chances – giving up herhomefor his. Her relationship with Luca hadn’t even been an outlier in the statistics of couples from different countries and he’d known her such a short time to ask so much – he had so little to offer.

He heaved himself out of the car and slammed the door. There were no right answers. He should have accepted that by now, but he was back at the beginning of this new journey to acceptance and… he was a long way off acceptance.

He’d made the wrong decision.

Turning back to the car in agitation, his fingers were on the handle of the door before he stopped himself. As much as he could already feel the words on his lips –I love you. Please stay– he was terrified. What if she ended up resenting her life here? And what did he think he’d do: race the train to Austria andpluck her off the station platform? Call her and ask her to get off? He’d given her no reason to trust him.

With a growl of frustration, he turned back in the direction of the courtyard. At the door to his apartment, he remembered Arco waiting for him with a twinge of regret. In the bleakness after Laura had died, Attila had been both a painful reminder and a source of comfort, but he found little comfort in the thought of sharing his regret with Jules’s dog. He’d been foolish to think Arco would help him come to terms with her departure.

Opening the door with too much force, he was surprised when it took the little curly furball several long seconds to appear at the kitchen door and tear down the hall to him. He crouched to give the dog a thorough rub on his back and tummy, smarting from the feeling that his pack was incomplete.

Then he heard voices and froze. A cackle from Berengario. A soft admonishment from Elena. When he rounded the kitchen door, he even found Maddalena brewing tea by his stove, Stefano the tattoo artist doodling on a piece of paper and Davide sitting off to the side.

They all looked up and immediately fell silent when he walked in. He watched them warily. Nobody appeared to even breathe as they shot glances behind him at the empty doorway.

‘Is this some kind of commiseration committee? I’m not really in the mood.’

Maddalena broke the silence. ‘Sheleft?’

‘Of course she left. I took her to the train station! What did you think would happen? There was no alien abduction.’

‘Gesù, Maria e i santi, have you no respect for your elders, boy?’ Berengario looked ready to hit him over the head.

‘What?’ He stalked to the stove and rattled with the moka pot as loudly as he could. Now was no time for Maddalena’s sage and mauve infusion.

‘Nonno, after everything he’s done for you,’ Davide said, rolling his eyes. Now Davide was defending him? Alex was even more deeply confused.

‘You were supposed to ask her to stay!’ Berengario snapped.

‘No one told me that!’

Between the growl in the back of his throat and the gnashing of his teeth, Berengario was the wild animal in the room, not Arco. ‘You should have worked that out for yourself. Imagine how you would have reacted if we’d told you she was the best part of your future!’

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