Page 59 of A Diamond Deal
‘We need to talk about Isaak.’
‘He’s gone, Poppy.’ He gritted his teeth to stem the burn in his throat. ‘There’s nothing to discuss.’
She flinched.
He closed his eyes. Shut out the image of her waiting for him to expose his feelings. As if his hurts could fix hers. They couldn’t. They hadn’t helped his mother. Once, he’d felt. Once, he’d loved. Once, he’d offered his small arms to his mother. Tried to wrap them around her. Hold her. But it hadn’t helped her. His feelings had drowned her.
‘You said you needed closure with your dad,’ she reminded him, ‘but you didn’t get it.’
His eyes snapped open. ‘We are not,’ he said and paced a step closer to the sofa, ‘talking about my father.’
‘I don’t want to talk about him,’ she admitted. ‘I want to talk about our son. But I want you to understand why I’m asking to talk about Isaak now. I wanted closure too, with my dad,’ she ploughed on. ‘I thought when he died, when my mum died,’ she continued, ‘I would. But I didn’t. Because I never talked about the things I needed to. I kept them all inside me. I never told my mum about my dad’s affair. She died never knowing my father was a liar. That he spent days living another life, with another family.’
His gaze narrowed.
Her bottom lip trembled. ‘Hisotherfamily.’
‘His other family?’
She nodded stiffly. ‘I have brothers and a…a sister. She’s the same age as me.’
‘How did I not know you have brothers?A sister?’
‘Because it’s shameful.’
‘Your dad was the cheat, not you.’
‘But I knew. I knew where he was going, what he was doing, and I never told her.’
‘You were protecting her,’ Konstantinos supplied for her.
‘No. I was protecting myself,’ she confessed. ‘My mum died never knowing I was a liar, too.’ She shrugged a heavy shoulder. ‘I lied,’ she summarised heavily. ‘All my life, my father lied. He used his love as a weapon. My father turned me into a liar by omission, because I wanted him to loveme. So I kept his secrets from Mum to not shatter the family I wanted to have. My dad, at home, withme. So yes, I lied for him. For myself. AndIhate what I did. I hate what I let myself become. I’ll never be able to beg for my mother’s forgiveness. I will never have closure.’
She was being painfully honest.Too honest.Never had they gone deeper than concise facts about their lives before they’d met. But never did Poppy lie. Unless under duress, he conceded.
Her dad had put her under pressure.
He himself had asked her to return to the spotlight, and she’d told him she wouldn’t lie. Not even for him. Her husband. And he’d pushed her—made her agree.
He’dmade her a liar, too.
Guilt snapped inside him like a tightly strung elastic band.
‘It was your father,’ he said, ‘not you.’
‘No.’ Her blonde hair teased at her shoulders with the shake of her head. ‘It was me,’ she corrected, colour heightening her cheeks, hinting at the shame within her.
A shame he recognised. He’d tried to blame his father at first. Blame him for his mother’s death. But he knew, too, it was him.
He didn’t speak.Couldn’t.Because how did he empathise without exposing his own wounds? His own weaknesses? He didn’t want to be weak. Not in the eyes of the public. Not in hers.
‘My relationship with my father, it was the reason I left without asking you for the truth aboutthatphoto. But the fact you didn’t tell me about your father, by protecting me, you lied, too, Konstantinos. You didn’t tell me where you were, or where you were going. You weren’t open—honest.And that’s why I left.’
‘That’s why you hated…me,’ he finished for her, clarity forming in his mind.
He felt like a brute.A bully. So heavy-handed had he been with her. So hot had his rage run because of her abandonment. So high had the flames risen inside him when he’d found her and she’d spat her hate into his face.
He hadn’t considered the reasons behind it. He’d only reacted. Let the anger guide him. And he had done it not to protect her, but to protect himself fromthis. Her pain. A childhood pain, he recognised, that spread its nastiness into adulthood, and shaped the people they’d become.
