Page 96 of A Winter Wedding Adventure
Her eyes slammed shut and she swayed on her feet. The touch was her kryptonite – no, her drug. She needed it with a physical longing that scared her. How mortifying to be brought low by the human instinct for closeness. She couldn’t pretend any more that she didn’t need it.
She’d been icy towards others for the past twelve years – for longer, if she were honest – too scared they wouldn’t accept her. But Mattia was the spring sunshine and he’d started a thaw she didn’t know how to reverse.
‘I need to tell you something,’ he began, drawing in a few heaving breaths. ‘You don’t have to say anything in reply. I know this is hard and I know you don’t want to hurt me.’
The mushy snow in her chest puddled into liquid. She was hard and blunt and pushed people away, but he was right. Hurting him would kill her.
‘You didn’t want me to say anything in Austria and I respected that, but you don’t know what I wanted to say that morning. You can’t know, so I have to tell you.’
She’d known she couldn’t bear to hear him brush her off. The fact that he’d come all the way to Weymouth suggested this was not a brushing off, but Kira’s rational brain seemed to be suffering from hypoxia, given the amount of air she needed just to keep her heart beating.
‘I’ll start with the little things and you can just say “okay” or “no” if I’m wrong. I’m prepared for any answer – mostly.’ His grimace was eloquent as he rubbed his forehead, drawing Kira’s attention to the light scar there.
‘Okay,’ she said, and his eyes snapped to hers in surprise. ‘You told me to say “okay”.’
‘Giusto, I did. Good. Good?’
She nodded, her own nerves settling a little as she noticed his. It was just Mattia – sincere, funny, self-deprecating Mattia. She could do this.
He cleared his throat. ‘I don’t want to never see you again,’ he blurted out, glancing up with a pained look.
‘Okay,’ she replied immediately.
His face brightened, but he kept his gaze on his feet, concentrating hard. ‘I do want to take your class. I don’t think I’ll ever be good enough to climb with you on a route you’d enjoy too. But I want to know why you love it. I came here today to see you and also to try to understand you.’
‘Okay,’ she said again, a little wobbly this time as his earnestness touched her.
‘Because I know our lives don’t overlap much. I only bring you complications.’
She shook her head. ‘No.’ He’d brought her so much more than that and even the problems had proven to be solutions she hadn’t known she’d needed.
When she opened her mouth to say more, he held up his hand again. ‘I’ll listen to anything you want to say to me soon, but I need you to listen first.’ He paused, gathering himself. ‘I thought I was learning how to be… intimate with someone without getting my feelings involved. We hadn’t known each other long and I’d never been with anyone like you before.’
That was starting to sound like the words she didn’t want to hear. He must have noticed her trying not to flinch, because he reached for her hand – her rough, callused hand with bitten nails, held in his smooth, manicured one. But she’d felt that hand all over her body and he’d reached for her now. It might not make sense, but it had all been real.
‘But the truth is, my feelings were already involved. What I told you that day in the minivan is still true: I can’t do casual. If I’d truly only felt friendship for you…’ He flinched at the thought. ‘I don’t think I can get close to someone without those feelings – if it’s not right.’
His words struck Kira square in the chest and she couldn’t hide any more. Their relationship had never been just physical. She’d stumbled into something she hadn’t been prepared for and now she feared she was stuck – open, vulnerable.
‘I know we agreed to keep things casual between us and I’ll never blame you if you can separate the two. It’s my fault for not realising I wasn’t keeping my side of the bargain, but you meant something to me from the moment you turned off the fridge, despite everything you thought of me at the time.’
The words were coming more easily now, visible in the way his shoulders rose and fell. The hand that wasn’t holding hers came up to gesture for emphasis and here was onstage Mattia, pouring out his emotions.
‘Those few days together completely changed my perspective, made me realise how much I’d been holding myself back. I was stuck with a single vision of myself. Then you were there, throwing the truth in my face, but making it all okay. No matter what problems I fixated on, you pushed me to manage them. You believed I could.’
‘Of course you can,’ Kira said fiercely, tears threatening in earnest now.
He smiled then. Raising his spare hand to her face, he splayed his fingers over her cheek and into her hair with more of that magic. ‘You have no idea how beautiful you are when you growl like that.’
‘I’m not beautiful,’ she contradicted automatically. ‘And I’m not growling.’ There was less conviction in her voice for the second sentence.
‘I felt some amazing things in Austria – all of them while I was looking at your face.’
‘You don’t have to say I’m beautiful just because we had great sex,’ she muttered.
He straightened. ‘You’re only supposed to say “okay” and “no”, remember? I’m not finished yet.’
‘I can’t imagine how much more you’d have to?—’
