Episode 14
Author: Pamela.
Marco stared at her for a moment….he should be glad that the woman he
loves,loves him too but he felt dead inside and so guilty.
He knew he had partially made her fall in love with him.
A heavy feeling like a rock made his chest feel tight.He had to make her fall out of love with him.He had to hurt her and he felt so terrible doing so.
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,now leave my bedroom”He ordered.
Her heart sank.”I know you’re scared of commitment, you probably think you would cheat on me, right?Marco, I believe you can change….”
“I told you before that I won’t change for anyone and I also told you not to love me,why are you so stupid?What?You expect me to marry you now that you’re carrying my child?”He sneered.”I’m not scared of commitment,I just don’t see my future with you,I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with you” Her eyes watered.He was so mean.
“I just thought…. I just wanted…”She burst into tears and Marco looked
away from her, painfully.
“I don’t need your love, you should know where you stand in my life so get rid of those useless feelings.”He said, disdainfully.
Aurora’s nerves were in shreds, even if a part of her knew he didn’t love her but she didn’t expect this harsh rejection from him.
“I’m sorry for loving you”She choked out.
“You should be”He replied, coldly.
No longer able to stand his cool regard,her skin was clammy and her tummy was on a nauseous roll,she stumbled blindly back to the hall and headed like a homing pigeon for the stairs again to take cover in the privacy of her bedroom.
Marco slumped on the bed in a sitting position.
“Lo siento,mi amor(I’m sorry,my love)”He murmured, ruefully.
When he got back from work that day,he headed straight to the kitchen. “Ximena,did you serve Aurora dinner in her room just like I asked?” “Yes sir”
“Did she eat?”
“She eat half of it,I persuaded her to like you told me”Ximena replied.
Marco nodded, slightly relieved.
He headed up the stairs and came by her bedroom, what was she doing now?Was she asleep?
Selfishly,he wanted to see her beautiful face.
He bent the doorknob and walked into the darkened room.
He saw Aurora’s sleeping form on the bare bed.
He moved closer to the bed and cursed softly when he saw unmistakable signs that she’d been crying…dried tear tracks like delicate silver trails down her cheeks.
A hard knot twisted tight in his chest and he felt momentarily winded.
He grabbed the duvet and covered her body with it.
Marco inner voice told him to leave,he had hurt her enough but he just wanted to lay by her side and he knew that was a selfish desire too.
He lay flat on the bed.
Lying on his side,he gently removed some strands of her hair from her face and smiled sadly.
She stirred and her eyes opened.
Marco saw the way her cheeks leached of colour when she saw him.
A knot twisted in his gut.
“What are you doing here?”She asked, huskily.
“I just..er…I was about leaving anyway”As he made to sit up,she held his
arm.
“Do you know that you’re so mean?”
Marco slowly turned to face her.
“How am I supposed to stop loving you when I’m carrying a child that would always remind me of you?”
“I’m sorry”He muttered, remorsefully.
“You’re sorry?But then why…why is it so difficult for you to love me?You said you always found me beautiful in everything I wear, you said I’m different from your other women,you said you love being with me,then why…why can’t you love me then?”She asked, tearfully.
His eyes watered just seeing her tears.
He shakily placed his hands on her cheeks, using his thumbs to wipe away her tears but they won’t stop crying.
“Please don’t cry… please stop crying”He begged.
She removed his hands from her face lividly.
“Stop acting as if you truly care about me!”
“I’m not worth your tears,Aurora….you would make a beautiful
bride….you deserve someone who would never leave your side…who would never
do anything to hurt you but I…”
“Why can’t you be that person?”She asked, staring into his eyes.
‘I wish I can be that person’He thought.
“I just can’t,I don’t deserve you”
“But I want you Marco,I need you”
He stood up from the bed.”I’m sorry”With that he left the room.
After closing the door,he leaned against it and could hear her sobs…. just
hearing it was breaking his heart.
Diego stared at his glass of wine intently… Marco had just told him that Aurora is pregnant and he sounded so sad that he won’t be there for her.
Diego angrily smashed his glass of wine against the wall.
What the hell was wrong with that woman?She had not only stolen Marco’s heart but also trying to ruin his plans…. Yes! Trying…. because he won’t let her.
Marco was always there like her saviour each time he tried to kill her.
The only way he could kill her now is if they get separated.
Aurora needs to leave this house….so that Marco wouldn’t be anywhere near
her and wouldn’t be able to protect her but how could he possibly make her leave this house?
Aurora stared at her cellphone,her mother was calling for the umpteenth
time.
She knew her mother had sensed something was off with her and no lie could cover it up now.
She had to come clean with her mother.
She had to leave this house.
She couldn’t stare at Marco each day and not feel any ache in her chest.
Hopefully,in her parents house,the ache might diminish.
Getting up from bed,she hurried off to find Marco.He has to let go of her.
Marco was outside on the rooftop terrace, striding towards the sliding doors that were wide open at the far end of the room.His black hair was blowing back from his lean, darkly handsome face,he was clad in jeans and a black T-shirt that enhance the sculpted lines of his lean, muscular body.
“You look so tired,Marco”Diego commented, walking in. “I am. I couldn’t sleep last night”He replied, desolately. “Is it because of her?”
He nodded.”I didn’t want to feel miserable or pathetic during my last months on earth but right now,I feel so devastated. I really didn’t want to love her and I didn’t want her to love me too but it has happened and just thinking about how she would feel when I die hurts a lot”
“Then you should make her ready for it,you should tell her about your
illness”
“I’m not prepared to”
On seeing Aurora approaching, Diego said loudly.
“You have to tell her that you have brain tumor”
“I….”
“What?”
Marco frozed hearing her voice.
He turned to the direction where her voice had come from.
“Aurora….”He murmured,his rich accented drawl a shock in tone and
delivery, brilliant dark eyes shrewd and distinctly wary.
“I’m sorry I was too loud, Marco,I didn’t know she was coming”Diego apologized.
Marco suppressed his lips in a bitter line.
“It’s okay”He said to Diego who walked away.
“What’s he talking about?brain tumor?You?”Aurora prompted, jerkily. Marco surveyed her levelling,he couldn’t deny it when she clearly heard it
from Diego so he had to tell her the truth.
“A while ago,I was hospitalized and had a series of medical tests and with the diagnosis,life as I knew it came to a sudden end”Marco revealed in a driven overtone,his strong facial bones taut beneath his bronzed skin.
“I had been suffering from severe headaches.A scan revealed that I had a brain tumor”
Totally unprepared for the startling turn of events.Aurora simply stared at him and parroted weakly.”A brain tumor?”
“Although,I learned that surgery could leave me seriously disabled and a higher probability of dying in the process so that is a risk I’m not prepared to take.I decided that I valued the quality of the life I had left more than the quantity so I refused further treatment”He said, quietly.
Shock had drained the blood from Aurora’s face and made her tummy flip a somersault.
She was struggling to absorb what he had told her and it was so far removed from what she had expected that she was utterly stunned.
“You’re telling me that you knew you were dying when you blackmailed me”Aurora almost whispered as she finally put that scenario together for her own benefit and reeled from the ramifications of it.
“When you asked me to have a baby with you,you must have known that you wouldn’t be here for that child while he or she was growing up.How could you deceive me like that?”
Beneath her hail of accusing words.Marco had lost colour.”I only appreciated how selfish I was being when you told me that you had conceived….”
“Selfish and irresponsible!”Aurora slammed back, loudly at him, outraged and bitterly hurt that he could have kept her in ignorance of such a crucial fact.
“I knew you weren’t planning on getting married to me but I did believe that you would be available to act as father to our child….you allowed me to believe that!”
“All I could think of then was having a child!..I needed an heir…. without a
child, everything I had worked for all my life would seem so shallow and pointless”
And with a shrug of a broad shoulder to cry on that grudging admission,Marco half turned away from her.He spread expressive lean brown hands in a gesture of frustration that appealed to her understanding.
“I thought I was seeing clearly,but my rationale was warped and short-sighted.I believe I was doing something good, something worthwhile….”
“How could it possibly have been worthwhile?”Aurora couldn’t think straight.Her heart thudding fast behind her br**stbone,she studied him in growing disbelief as he unwound the tangle of falsehoods he had spread to lay the truth bare for her.
“I saw a child as a worthwhile investment for the future I didn’t have.”Marco extended, heavily.”But I was kidding myself…I was really only thinking about what I wanted and not about what truly mattered.And I wanted you from the first moment I saw you”
In concert with what he was telling her,she felt as though her own life was shattering and falling down around her in broken irreparable pieces.Nothing was as she had thought… nothing was as it had seemed.
Marco had cruelly deceived her from the start.He wasn’t going to be there for her…or as a father for their child.She registered sickly.He wasn’t going to be there for her at all.
“You should have told me the truth sooner”She began in condemnation.
“I know”Marco returned with a sardonic edge of his voice.”I’m not trying to minimize the effect of what I did to you…it was wrong”
Aurora settled embittered eyes on him.
“But it’s too late for regret now. I’m pregnant”
Marco stared at her with deep,dark bronzed eyes and it was as if she was seeing him clearly for the first time.He was so handsome and so s£xy,but he was also unfathomable, with depths that she had not even come close to plumbing.She acknowledged unhappily, feeling her ignorance bite to the very foot of her soul.
“We could go our separate ways if you like, it’s not a problem”Marco informed her, quietly.”I’m prepared for that”
Aurora flinched as if he had jabbed a red-hot branding iron near her bare skin.She wanted to shout and scream at him.He was offering her,her freedom.He was showing her the door.He was politely letting her know that, although he had lied to her and kept her in the dark,it didn’t ultimately matter because he didn’t care enough even to try to hang onto her.
“The baby”She mumbled, sickly.
“I’m sorry, I’m very sorry that I got you involved in this”Marco muttered, roughly.”I know that’s not good enough but money is all I’ve got to give you”
Aurora lifted what shreds of dignity remained to her and dealt him a scornful smile of dismissal.
“I don’t need your money!”
“I’ll be signing my empire to you very soon and I hope you would manage it or put someone in charge till my child is old enough to take over”
Aurora was trembling, appalled by the way he was concentrating on financial arrangements for their separation when her heart was breaking up inside her and her sense of loss was dragging her down so deep and so fast she felt as if she was drowning.
“I don’t….”
“Please just accept everything, it’ll be a relief to me that in some way I could compensate you for the way in which I’ve screwed up your life”
There was a note of finality to that assurance.His dark golden eyes were cool,his stubborn sensual mouth composed in a firm line.For the first time since her arrival she knew what he was thinking….he had said all he had to say to her and
now he was ready for her to leave.For several seconds,she withstood the steady onslaught of his gaze because a crushing sense of rejection was holding her in a near state of paralysis, and then she moved away on feet that felt as if they didn’t belong to the rest of her body.
Marco was making a phone call in his own language but both voice and actions seemed to be happening far away at the end of a long tunnel.
Aurora felt detached from her surroundings and horribly lightheaded. Marco stared at her.God!He had hurt this woman enough….she has had
enough.She should leave him…he knew she would probably be safer in her parents house.
It was part of his selfish desire to keep staring at her face each day,that was why he didn’t suggest they part ways when she told him the news of her pregnancy.
“You’ll be driven home….no, don’t argue with me”Marco urged as her lips
parted.”You’re pregnant.I don’t want you struggling to find a seat on a parked train during the rush hour.”
With enormous effort, Aurora focused on him.She dimly recognized that she was in a state of shock so profound that she could barely think,but there was one question that she could not suppress.
“You said your condition had gotten worse,how long do you have to live?”And her voice ran out of steam altogether and just vanished in the awfulness of what she was saying.
“Less than two months”He proffered with unnatural calmness.
Aurora felt as if someone had their hands squeezing round her throat.It was hard to breathe and there was a pain building in her chest.
Ximena and two other maids arranged her things.
Some guards led her in silence to the parking lot and tucked her into a limousine.
At that moment,her phone rang…it was her mother.
Feeling so weak,she picked up.
“Mother”She cried and let that flood of pent-up grief and despair flow freely….there was no use stopping it.
Tbc.
AURORA
(Mi Corazon)