“You used every one of those opportunities to tell me this wasn’t real.”
Pain crossed his face.
Good.
I needed him to understand that part.
Marco’s family had seen me humiliated.
Now they watched him absorb it.
“I was trying to protect you,” he said.
“From what?”
“Me.”
I almost hated him for making the answer sound sincere.
“That is not protection.
Protection would have been telling me the truth and letting me make an informed decision.”
He flinched.
No one at the table defended him.
That surprised me most.
Marco Ricci was clearly the gravitational center of this family, but no one rushed to excuse him.
Rosa looked furious with her son.
His sister looked almost satisfied that someone had finally said aloud what they apparently had been telling him for months.
Marco nodded slowly.
“You’re right.”
I had expected an argument.
The absence of one left me angrier.
“Do you love me?” I asked.
His head lifted.
Every face at the table turned toward him.
For once, Marco looked like a man who wanted the room to empty and had no idea how to make it happen.
“Emily.”
“That’s a simple question.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“It became simple when you asked me to pretend.”
His jaw flexed.
Then he looked directly at me.
“Yes.”
No speech.
No grand confession.
Just yes.
It hit harder than anything else could have.
My first instinct was the one I had fought for two years: move toward him.
My second was stronger.
I stepped back.
“You are my boss.”
“I know.”
“You called me close to midnight and asked me for something personal that could affect my job, whether you intended it that way or not.”
“I know.”
“You made me agree to boundaries because you were afraid of your own feelings, not because you were protecting mine.”
His face went still.
After a moment, he said, “I know that now too.”
That answer took some of the heat out of me, but not the hurt.
I picked up my small evening bag.
“I’m going upstairs.”
Marco nodded.
“I’ll have a car ready whenever you want to leave.”
“I can arrange my own car.”
A faint, miserable almost-smile touched his mouth.
“Of course you can.”
I left the dining room without looking back.
