Page 71 of Sparring Partners
He slumped against the side of the little hut and closed his eyes. What was it he’d said to Luca? That this had been his place where he’d come to think, where the most important decisions of his life were taken. And god knew, this was the most important one he would ever make.
“I am so sorry, Luca, I am so damn sorry.” His whispered words faded into the gathering shadows. His hackles had risen and his back had gone up, his smile little more than an ill-disguised snarl when he’d found Jonathan in the cottage.
Jonathan… Christ, but it had never really been about the man. It’d been the idea of him, of what he represented. Without knowing it, Jonathan was everything Adrian feared.
Fear that what had happened once before would happen again.
Fear he’d have to confront and defeat if he were to have any chance of once again being the better man Harry had told him he’d been.
Fear that he could never be a man deserving of Luca’s love.
God knows, I love you Adrian…The most precious words in the world, said by the man who meant more to him than life itself. Yet what had he done? Turned and fled, too full of fear, to recognise them for the gift they were as he’d retreated like the coward he was.
He pushed his fingers through his hair, screwing his eyes shut as his hands bunched into hard, tight fists, hissing as the pain seared over his scalp. He couldn’t live like this. He couldn’t live with this corrosive fear in his heart, eating away at the one good thing in his life. He couldn’t live under the cloud of terror that what had happened before would, inevitably, happen again. He couldn’t do any of it because?—
“I love you, Luca. I love you so fucking much.”
“Then make me believe it.”
His eyes snapped open and he blinked. Luca, just feet from him, incongruous in his tailored suit, snow white, crisp shirt and silk tie. Adrian blinked again, half expecting the image he’d conjured in his fevered brain to disappear into the darkening wood.
“You’re here,” Adrian whispered, pushing himself to his feet.
Luca shrugged. “I went to the farmhouse, but it was deserted. And then I remembered this place.”
“I tried to call you.”
“Once. You tried to call me once. Doesn’t say much, does it?”
Shame crawled over Adrian’s skin. “I was scared you’d say you didn’t want to see me again. That we were over. I couldn’t face that.”
“Maybe we should be over.”
Adrian gasped as his head jerked up, Luca’s words ramming hard into his chest and knocking the air from his lungs.
“Please… you can’t mean that.” But Luca could, and it would all be his own stupid fault, his own fear driving Luca away.
“I don’t want to mean it, but what choice are you giving me? I can’t live my life with you acting like an attack dog all the time.”
Luca wound his arms tight around his middle. He breathed deep, his shoulders rising and falling as he stared down at the leaf covered woodland floor. Adrian ached to touch him, to hold him, but everything about Luca saidDo Not Touch.
“When you came to the cottage, you jumped to conclusions, made connections which simply don’t exist. Have you conveniently forgotten that I went to see him? That I had that excruciating, difficult conversation with him where I made our positions clear? His, mine, yours?”
“No, of course not. But when I saw him there, seeing how he looks at you, I?—”
“For the love of god.” Luca threw his arms in the air. “Just listen to yourself. I chose you.You. Yet all you’ve done is sour everything because you see the world through the prism of your fear and distrust. That’s been the problem all along. You believe those you love will all betray you in the end. You’re waiting for it to happen, bracing yourself against what you’ve made yourself believe is inevitable. You told me you didn’t want to be a hostage to your past. But’s that’s what’s happening. You’re letting everything that happened before define you.”
Luca walked forward, slowly, cautiously, as though approaching a scared dog that was ready to bolt at the slightest provocation. As Luca came closer, Adrian’s heart clenched. The silk tie was askew; mud splatted the fine wool of Luca’s suit; his hair, always so groomed, was messed and dishevelled. But it was nothing to the weary sadness dulling his eyes.
“You’ve let everything cast a shadow overus.Because you discovered you couldn’t trust Sam, you don’t know, deep down, if you can trust me either. You’re scared to death of history repeating itself. Everything you’re carrying around with you, it’s toxic.
“I can’t live like that, Adrian, I can’t and won’t live my life in the shadow all this crap casts over us. I can’t live my life having to double guess you, making me think twice who I should be friends with, who I should allow into my life, all because of the past that’s eating away at you like some grotesque, bloated parasite.”
Adrian began to tremble. Fear gripped at his heart, but not the fear that had bound him to the past, but the fear of losing the only future he wanted.
“I don’t want to be that man. God knows, but I don’t,” Adrian whispered, edging forward, small careful steps, little by little closing the distance between them. “But when I found out what was happening, what had been happening formonths, and under my nose, I felt stupid, duped and vulnerable. Exposed. And that scared me, how easily I’d been taken for a fool. A man I believed I had a future with. Another man I’d welcomed into my home. Somebody who’d become a friend, a good friend, somebody I told myself I could trust when I found it hard to trust anybody.”
He closed his eyes for a second, willing himself to say the name that would burn and scar his throat.
