Pieces (26 page)

“It was not
that simple
,” she snapped.

He unfolded his arms and lifted his hands in defense. “Okay, okay, it wasn’t that simple. A lot of crap happened. I understand that, but what do you want to happen now? The way I see it, there are only a few options. I can’t change who I am as a person, so that’s out, and I can’t go back to the US or I’ll risk getting caught and thrown into prison again. If that happens, I can guarantee you we will never be together, so what’s the point?”

“Aren’t you missing another option?” she asked, squeezing her purse.

“The other option,” he said, leaning forward, “is you learn to accept me the way I am and what I have chosen for us. This can be a beautiful life for us if you’ll relax and trust me. Let some time pass and we can get back into our own place and go wherever we want. I don’t have to do what I’m doing forever. It’s a transition, that’s all.”

For a moment, she almost believed him. She looked into his gorgeous green eyes and saw her life with him stretching out like a magical fairy tale. Then she tore her attention from him and looked around the room at several couples eating their meals. Some of them leaned across their tables, their fingers touching as they laughed and smiled. Some of them talked seriously, like her and Jesse, but she doubted their conversations involved talk of kidnapping and other crimes. One couple in particular, an older man and woman, simply looked at each other as they ate. Their expressions were content and calm, soft smiles playing on their lips, as if their relationship together was a blanket they had wrapped themselves in and nothing could touch them. The woman had a calico scarf wrapped loosely around her neck. The man was clean-shaven and had a sparkle in his eye that reminded her of her father. It was then that she remembered her parents and how much they loved each other. Their careers hadn’t driven them away from each other. They accepted the best and worst of each other, just as Jesse wanted her to do with him. Every couple in the restaurant had problems, she realized. Only, they worked through it all. They dealt with crap and moved on.

With Jesse, however, it didn’t feel like there would be a period of ‘moving on’. With him, everything felt wrong. He would always be the dragon burning her world to pieces and then trying to put it back together again.

“I can’t do this,” she said, looking at him once more. Tears filled her eyes and she fought them as hard as she could before several escaped down her cheeks. “I will never trust you like you want me to, and you will never measure up to the kind of man I need. I know that sounds terrible, but it’s how I feel. It’s what I know. I can’t live in this life, just like I was starting to see I couldn’t stay at Harvard in the life I was trying to live for my mother. I need something else. I don’t know what it is, but I’ll figure it out—alone.”

Just then, the waiter arrived with their meals. He placed two identical dishes of pasta on the table. Naomi looked down at her plate, her breath catching in her throat as she recognized Evelyn’s mushroom pasta dish.

“You didn’t—” she said, looking up at Jesse.

“I know how much you love it,” he said with a nervous smile. “I thought it might make you feel better, so I explained to the waiter what we wanted. He said the chef should be able to do it. I doubt it’s as good as yours.”

Naomi picked up her fork and stabbed a campanelle noodle and a mushroom. The noodle was shaped like a little bellflower and was covered in the thick, creamy sauce. When Naomi put the food into her mouth, she closed her eyes. It tasted just like Evelyn’s. Everything rushed at her in a whirlwind. The house. The bedroom. Eric’s arms around her.

You’ll stay?
His voice echoed in her mind, over and over.

No!
she hissed inside her head.
I won’t.

“It’s just like Evelyn’s,” she whispered, almost choking on the food as she pushed Eric out of her head. “Why can some random chef in Rome get it right and I can’t?”

Jesse hadn’t touched his food yet. He watched Naomi and smiled, but his apprehension was a dark cloud surrounding him. “So, you still want to do everything alone? Were you trying to say you want to leave?”

Swallowing, Naomi set down her fork. “Yes.” She steeled herself against more tears and drama and stood from her chair. She gripped her purse handle, knowing she had to leave now or she would never be able to do it. There was no time to get her luggage at the palace, so she would have to leave it there. She would walk away from Jesse right now. She would—

He was looking up at her, surprise and disbelief spreading across his face. “Naomi, what are you doing?”

“Leaving,” she said, lifting her chin. It took every ounce of her willpower to keep looking at him. “Evelyn once told me it takes a long time to understand love. I thought when I fell in love with you that it had finally happened for me, that I understood it all ... but I was lying to myself. I have no idea what love is. All I know is my heart hurts when I look at you, and when I think about leaving you, it feels like I’m dying inside.”

Jesse’s surprised expression melted into a controlled sort of panic. “Then don’t leave,” he said. A few people were looking over at their table now. He motioned for her to sit down.

Standing her ground, she wiped away a few tears. “I don’t know what else to do. I can’t live the way you want me to live. I can’t live inside a cage, always waiting for you, never knowing where you are or what you’re doing. I can’t—”

“I told you,” Jesse interrupted in a stern voice low enough not to draw attention, “it doesn’t have to be that way. This is a transition. Give it a little while and you can go to a university here in Rome. There are two American ones you can think about. Or art schools—whatever you want, we’ll find it. We don’t have to be apart.”

She fisted a hand at her side. “Stop making this so hard. Please.”

“It’s hard because you’re making a mistake.” He half-stood from his chair and reached out to grab her arm. Gently, he pressed her back down into her chair. She hated that she hadn’t walked away right then and there. She stared at the food in front of her and pressed her purse back into her lap. Jesse’s eyes were burning a hole into her head, but she didn’t dare look up.

“I think it’s best for me to go,” she said. “If I had known—”

“Life is full of the unknown,” he interrupted. “I want you to stay with me, Naomi. This can work if you’ll trust me to make it work.”

She looked up as she wiped her damp hands on her skirt. She remembered a few months ago thinking she would know if she landed in another abusive relationship. Her counselors had made sure she knew the cycle and understood why her kidnappers were abusive and controlling and not loving and kind. The problem was she understood all the mechanics, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t stupid enough to get sucked back into it all over again. She wondered now if that was what had happened. Her warning bells were going off so loudly she thought she might go deaf any moment. A voice in her head kept screaming,
You’re in control!

Gathering her courage, she stood up once again and hung her purse on her shoulder. “I know you’ve meant well,” she said in a sagging voice, “but I don’t think any of this is going to fix me or make it all better. You feel guilty for everything you’ve done to me, but keeping me around isn’t going to make it go away. If I leave—if I’m strong and take control on my own—then you can move on. We can both move on.”

Jesse didn’t look like he was going to try to stop her this time. He looked up with a hurt expression that sliced Naomi’s sense of resolve to ribbons. “I love you,” he whispered, “but I guess it’s not enough.”

She shook her head and took a few steps away from the table. Each movement was like slogging through mud. “Not this time,” she whispered, and before she could second-guess her decision, she turned and walked out of the restaurant.

I
T WAS
cold outside. Naomi wrapped her arms around herself, realizing she had forgotten to pick up her coat on the rack in the front of the restaurant. Determined not to go back in case she changed her mind, she kept walking. Jesse wouldn’t dare follow her. She had made it clear she wanted to leave. It wasn’t that she thought he was abusive like Brad—not by a long shot—but he was controlling in a way she could see now was the biggest problem of all. His intentions were good, but his actions weren’t.

Tears slipped down her face as she realized she had done the same thing in her own life. She wanted to please her parents and live up to their expectations, but she was going about it in all the wrong ways. Now she had to return to them yet again and watch their expressions melt into disappointment. The thought almost made her turn around, but she held on to her courage and kept walking. Christmas lights twinkled in the darkness, blurring in her teary vision. She gasped when a pair of hands grabbed her from behind and spun her around.

Jesse. Of course.

She tried to rip away. “Let me go, Jesse. It’s over. It has to be over.”

He held on to her, but she noticed he didn’t look angry or upset. “You forgot your coat,” he said, meeting her eyes.

She looked down to see it in the crook of his arm. “So what? Give it to me and I’ll leave.”

His eyes narrowed. “How do you plan on getting anywhere? You don’t have enough money to—”

Squirming in his arms, she tried to point to her purse. “I took the rest of the cash. It’s mine, anyway. Now let me go. I’ll be fine.”

“Naomi, you don’t speak a word of Italian. You don’t have a cell phone or any of your things. You’re not thinking this through.”

“I
have
thought it through, and I’m leaving. I don’t need any of that crap.” His restricting hold was starting to make her panic. That was what had happened, she realized—with every passing day she was with him, her sense of panic had risen. This was the culmination, the inevitable point she had to reach in order to leave. Or submit. But she wouldn’t submit. Not this time.

“Naomi, please calm down,” Jesse said into her ear. “I’m not kidnapping you. I’m not the bad guy. I’m not going to make you stay with me. Let me help you. I’ll get you sent off, okay? Safely.”

His words flowed over her like silk and she relaxed in his arms as her heavy breaths made white clouds in the air.

“You’re right about everything,” he said, rubbing her back. “I do feel guilty for what I’ve done to you, and that’s a big reason why I want you with me. Knowing you love me eases that ache. It almost makes me feel like it was worth it, but now I realize it wasn’t. I’m sorry I’ve made decisions you don’t agree with, and I’m sorry for digging you even deeper than you were before. I’m sorry.” Pulling away a little so he could look into her face, he brushed away the tears on her cheeks. “Let me help you this one last time. Please?”

She clenched her jaw for a moment and then relaxed. “Fine.”

He hailed a cab, and as they rode back to the palace, Naomi hugged her purse and tried to suppress the desire to snuggle into Jesse’s arms and ignore how wrong she knew it was and how bad things would get with him. She couldn’t ignore any of it anymore. Her panic would never ease. She would always remember why she was with him, why she fell in love, and why he felt so obligated to take care of her. She looked out the window at the beautiful city. She had thought coming to Italy was the answer, but it wasn’t going to fix her problems. Nothing was going to fix her problems.

“Going home will be hell,” she said, still looking out the window.

Jesse grunted. “Yeah, I can imagine. Will you visit my dad if you can? Tell him I’m sorry.”

“I’ll try, but it might take a while.”

“That’s alright. You’re not going to tell the feds where I am, are you? You wouldn’t—”

She turned to look him in the eyes. “If you think I’d tell them where you are, you don’t know me at all.”

He looked away and rested his arm near the window. “I didn’t think you would. I’m sorry, Naomi. I’m sorry for everything.”

“I’m sorry too,” she answered. “Not everything has been your fault.”

He blinked as understanding crossed his face. “Whatever you choose to believe, Naomi, I hope you don’t make the same mistakes I’ve made. I tried to keep my old life and my new life separate, and that landed me right back where I always was. I don’t think there’s a way out for me now.”

Naomi looked down at her hands. “Don’t ever give up.”

Jesse reached for her hand and then pulled away. Naomi forced herself to look out the window. She wanted to find beauty in the ancient city sliding past, but all she saw was a broken dream.

XXIV

T
HAT NIGHT, JESSE SLEPT ON THE COUCH
while Naomi slept fitfully in the king-sized bed. Jesse had booked her ticket and then told her he would be leaving also.

“Not for the US?” she had asked.

“No, and don’t ask me where I’m going, please. The less you know the better.”

“But why do you have to leave?”

“Because it needs to look like we’re leaving together. If the network finds out I’m letting you go, they’ll want to make sure you don’t give the authorities information about this safe house. They’ve set this place up so that any investigations won’t lead back to them, but they don’t appreciate guests who can’t keep their mouths shut. The reason we were allowed here in the first place is because of who I know. I can’t screw that up, so I’m trusting you won’t breathe a word. You already told me you won’t, and I believe you.”