Page 81 of A Diamond Deal
‘Of course.’ A trembling smile, so small, teased at her lips. ‘I’m crying for all of us,’ she admitted. ‘For Isaak. For myself. I’m crying foryou.’
No one had wept for him. Not his mother. Not his father. He hadn’t wept for himself.Ever.
He didn’t want her pity. He wanted to reject them—give these tears back. This softness. This intimate empathy he didn’t deserve.
‘Do you want to go to bed?’ The question was out of his mouth before he could stop it.
Her face twisted into a repulsed line of rejection. ‘I don’t want to have sex.’
‘Do you want tosleep?’ he corrected, remembering her all too many naps when the sadness had become too much.Too unbearable.
And this…it was unbearable tohim.
‘What willyoudo whileIsleep?’ she asked, her voice still uneven,rough, from too much spent energy.
‘I’ll be quiet,’ he assured her. He didn’t wish for quiet solitude. He feltnothing. Not pain. Not hurt. He didn’t need to be soothed. But he longed to give her something.
Some kind of…peace.
‘I will hold you.’
‘No,’ she rejected it.Instantly.Rejected him. His hold.
It was a kick to his knees. His mother had rejected him. His little arms. His weak arms.
‘I will holdyou,’ she said.
He, of course, knew what it meant to be held. Open arms were offered to children when they cried. It was offered to everyone who demanded reassurance—closeness.Intimacy of a softer nature. It had never been offered to him. He didn’t need that kind of softness. He’d never been offered it as a child and he didn’t need it now he was grown.
He didn’t needthis.
He closed his eyes, but he couldn’t stop his arms. He didn’t want to. He wrapped them around her small frame. He couldn’t control his fingers. He knew they pressed too hard into her hips. But he couldn’t tell himself to be gentler. He pulled her in close.Inhaled her.
‘Poppy,’ he breathed into her hair.
A sound broke the hum of her shallow, quick breathing. A small sound. But it was primitive. Muffled. A sound of anguish.Distress.
Konstantinos recoiled.
The sound had come fromhim.
Poppy heard it.
Almost childlike. It was a tiny moan. A croak.
Her fingers flexed on his back, smoothed over the tension holding him too straight.Too tall.She could feel it in his body. The tension. The rejection of it. The sound that wanted to escape.Be released.
The fire returned to her nose—demanding she cry harder.
And oh, she wanted to.
She wanted to weep the tears Konstantinos could not. Had never allowed himself to weep. She wanted to wail for the little boy who’d lost his mother. She wanted to weep for the little boy who blamed himself for her death. She wanted to weep for the boy whose needs were neglected. She wanted to weep for the boy who no one had held.
Not even his wife.
Until it was too late.
Her fingers dug into his shirt. She scrunched it tightly in her fingers, afraid that if she didn’t she’d crush him now. Hold him too tightly.
