TOBIAS
There are people in this world who refuse to walk the easy path. They see it in front of them. Many times they are even set upon it, given directions and simply told to walk. Yet they refuse. They prefer to struggle. They prefer to fight. They prefer to scream out in frustration and nearly die, going a much more painful route. Outsiders call them masochists. However, those people didn’t realize what people like me realized…there is nothing at the end of the easy path. Why? Because those who created that path stripped it of all it was worth on their way. Where the glory and wealth and power came from, that only came from the path of no return.
I chose that path long ago.
To be this person, to get this close…
It meant pain, but it was worth it. She was worth it.
“You said the pool house was the place things go to die,” I said, watching as she drank her red wine, her gaze never breaking from the pool in front of her. Small ripples spread through the surface of the water as she gently kicked her foot back and forth.
“You think I’ll kill myself?” she asked, drinking again.
“You love yourself far too much to die,” I replied, walking up the side of the pool toward her.
“True.” She nodded…finishing off her glass and picking up the bottle next to her and refilling her glass.
“Don’t you think that’s enough?”
“Would you ask my brother that question?”
“No.” I knew what she was trying to imply. “But only because I’m not in love with your brother. He can drink himself to death if he wants.”
She sighed, finally looking over at me. “What do you want, Toby?”
God, she fucking drove me up the wall sometimes. Standing beside her, I handed the cell phone over to her, which she took and read the message on it before dropping it in the water in front of her.
“I thought you’d be happy he’s leaving the keys to the kingdom to you.”
She scoffed. “Why would having my brother’s errand boy sending me a message from my own brother make me happy? In fact, if I had the strength I’d be furious. He can’t find me himself anymore.”
Do not let her pull you in. She wanted to fight. She was just itching to belittle someone to make her feel better. If I reacted I allowed her to choose me.
“He’s on his honeymoon with his wife. He hasn’t come out of their room all day.” Which was shocking in and of itself.
“Honeymoon.” She laughed bitterly. “The man who avoids love like the plague sure is adjusting well.”
“He’s never not loved you.”
“I’m family.”
“So is she.”
“Are you trying to make me feel better or piss me off?”
“Neither, just trying to make you see reason.”
She rose up to her feet, and though she was shorter, the way she looked at me you’d never realize it. “You think I’m being a brat.”
I didn’t reply.
She nodded to herself, finished her wine, and threw the glass to the ground, shattering it on impact before she dove into the pool. Turning, I watched as she didn’t even bother to swim, just sank to the bottom, closing her eyes.
The minute she hit the water, without even trying I already started timing her. She could last nine minutes and forty seconds on her best day…and today she was not at her best. When I saw the bubbles and she’d bothered to move, I still waited, hoping she’d snap out of it, but fucking shit, man!
Taking off my coat, I dove into the water, reaching down and pulling her up with me. She gasped for air as we broke through the surface and pushed my arm away.
“I did not ask for you to save me!” She snapped, lifting herself out of the pool.
“No, you prefer to torture yourself!”
“I was thinking!”
“Thinking and drowning!” I hollered at her as I got out too. Soaked and pissed I’d bothered AGAIN, I found myself cursing her in Italian. “I swear to God, Donatella, if I didn’t love you I’d throw you back into the water and hold your head down!”
“I’d like to see you try!” she hollered back in Italian as well. “You keep trying to save me! I am beyond your help, so go! Like everyone else, GO!”
Moving to the towel rack, I grabbed one before marching back over to her, placing the damn thing on her head.
“I’m not going to marry you. I’m not going to be with you. I told you, you aren’t what I want.” Was it wrong her words didn’t even sting anymore? I was that used to them.
“You are going to marry me. You are going to be with me. I am what you need,” I replied, drying her hair and face. “Ethan is married…finally. That means you only have me.”
“You’re forgetting a brother.”
“The one who ran away.” I snickered. “I didn’t forget. He just doesn’t count.”
“You are far too smug.” She pushed me and the towel away, walking to get her own. “And waiting for my brothers to be out of the picture to try to take me is weak. I don’t do weak.”
Is that what she thinks?
“Dona.” I laughed, using that same towel to dry myself off. “I would have confronted Ethan at any time. Ethan isn’t my problem. You are.”
“And how so?”
“What are you doing?” I hated seeing her like this. She was the one being weak, not me. “You always knew Ethan was going to get married. That Wyatt would get married someday too. You always knew this day would come. So why are you acting like—”
“Because he didn’t tell me!” she screamed. “He, like Father, like Mother, like every other goddamn person, dictated to me what the plan was and expected me to just go with it. The pool house isn’t where things go to die, it’s where I go to die! I was seven when my mother picked me out of bed and threw me into the pool and told me to swim! For hours I swam until I felt like my arms were on fire. Why? Because she thought I was weak. So I pushed myself every day for hours. And one night I was swimming and Ethan came to tell me Mother was dead. And Father told me not to get soft. I pushed myself hard and then one day while I was swimming Father came and told me I was going to a boarding school for the next four years. They threw my life into chaos with no warning, with no respect, and then called me a brat for being upset!”
Her chest rose and fell over and over again as she tried to calm herself down, running her fingers through her wet hair. “Ethan wants to get an ex-convict, that’s his choice. But he didn’t trust me enough to let me know…until the day before he got married? I have plans too. I have shit I need to do too and when I don’t know what is going on I look like a fucking idiot.”
“Dona—”
“I come here.” She pointed around her at the pool house. “To drown myself. To kill the Dona of that moment and restart. To re-plan, to rethink, to re-everything. Excuse me if I’m a little brattish as I do so. But I didn’t ask for you to come in here with me. I did not ask for your love—”
“That’s where you are wrong,” I cut her off, too stunned to yell. For a second I almost believed she was hurt that her brother had moved on. No, at the end of the day, she was still scheming for herself. “You did ask me to love you.”
“When did you get that idea?”
“September 8th,” I reminded her, even though from the look in her eyes I did not have to. “The night before you left for Italy. After your brothers, your aunts, uncles, and everyone else begged your father not to send you and failed. You called me. You told me I better not fall in love with anyone because—”
“Shut up.” She glared. “I remember. You don’t have to say it.”
“Because I belonged to Donatella Aviela Callahan.”
She frowned. “I was fifteen and stupid.”
“You are selfish, power hungry, frantic one moment and cold the next. You drink far too much wine and break even more glasses—”
“You’re supposed to add positive traits in there—”
“And you always have to get a word in even when we are legitimately talking about you.” I laughed. “I could write a novel on all the shit you do that annoys me. However, the one thing you will never be is stupid. You weren’t then and you aren’t now. You told me to love no one else and for over a decade I’ve done just that. So if you want me to stop, tell me to stop.”
Her green eyes bunched together as if she didn’t understand me. “You could stop loving me if I simply told you to? When did you become so fickle—”
“Don’t pussy foot it, Dona. You want me to go, then say it. Tell me to go find another woman…someone, as you say, on par with me.”
I could see she was going to call my bluff and so I kissed her, like I’d been dying to since she came back, wrapping my arms around her and hugging her body to mine. And only when she kissed me back did I pull away again.
“Sorry. Now tell me.”
“Fuck you. I don’t take orders.” She snapped, grabbing her bottle of wine and marching out of the pool house.
“Jesus,” I muttered to myself, wishing I’d kissed her longer, my pants getting tighter as my dick hardened.
Eleven years.
That was how long I’d been walking on the path to her.
And I’d keep walking for another eleven. Hell, even twenty-seven years. It didn’t matter as long as in the end she’d be mine, in front of everyone.
I was willing to do anything…be anything for her.