Despite my long absence, I have not forgotten these two, or any of you who enjoyed their tale of forbidden love. Here, at last, is chapter four.
Molti baci.
***
Gabriel paced like a caged tiger around the rustic kitchen as she spoke, shaking his head in denial repeatedly. His countenance was furious.
Laura seemed very small and fragile as she sat in the hard wooden chair beside the table. Her hands were clutched together in her lap, her eyes were red-rimmed and shining as she regarded him.
"Please -- just hear me out." She pleaded softly. Her stillness and the gentle way she was talking was a stark contrast to the raging emotions she felt inside.
They'd been talking most of the day and into the night, going around and around about the visit from his mentor.
"No. Stop this. I won't leave you. They cannot make me." His voice was raw and he dragged a slightly trembling hand through his tawny hair.
"I'm not telling you to--" she began, but he unintentionally cut her off, as if he had not heard her.
"I have a choice; don't you see? It is one of our greatest gifts: free will. I exercise that will to follow my heart. How can that be wrong?"
"It's not about wrong. I don't care about right and wrong. Those things are just abstractions -- they don't mean anything. What I care about is you -- who you are. I want you to be true to yourself. Don't allow me to alter who you are. I could never live with that." It actually physically hurt her to say these words. She unconsciously rubbed her throat with one tired hand.
He moved closer to her and leaned in: "Listen, my love. Please. I'm telling you that I'm being true to who I am right now. I'm finally really present, right here, right now." He pointed down at the floor where he stood for emphasis.
"It's like I'm finally awake. My old life, my old plans -- they were for a man with a different destiny." He paused, looking at the floor as he wrestled with his next thought. Laura waited patiently for him to land on what he was trying to say. In her head, she just kept thinking 'how much I adore this man -- how I wish I could take this agony from him.'
"I studied immunology at University because I wanted to make a difference. None of that changes by removing the collar."
Laura's head popped up at this new information. "You studied medicine?" She asked, her eyebrows raised softly.
Gabriel smiled at her, realizing that they hadn't really told each other much about themselves. Shaking his head slightly, he said: "Bioscience, my love. Well -- as an undergraduate it was Bioscience and Divinity -- a double concentration. My intention was to focus on infectious diseases. During my work toward an MSc at Oxford, I did field work as part of my research. That is what sent me to Central America.
"But I loved being in Guatemala, treating those villagers, because it was real. It wasn't theoretical. It wasn't philosophical. It was secular. I didn't love being there because I thought it pleased God. It was the most human thing I'd ever done. I realize now that I want to be part of this world -- and I'm happy to let the next take care of itself. I don't want to hide anymore."
She was deceptively calm when she replied: "I agree - don't hide. Not from the world, not from them, not from me, and especially not from yourself." He began pacing again, running his hands through his already disheveled hair. She feared his reaction, but felt bound to venture one last point.
"All I'm saying is that you should consider returning to Guatemala, Gabriel. You made this promise long before you met me. It's not about the Church. It's about the work you do -- it's about the children—"
Wheeling around, he cut her off: "Why are you doing this?!"
Laura had trouble swallowing, her throat felt ragged, like it was on fire. She forced herself to not look away from his beautiful, haunted eyes, even though it felt like a stabbing pain in her breast.
"Because I don't want you to regret me. To regret us. Ever. And I worry that if you walk away from everything that used to be important to you, a day will come when you will."
Gabriel stopped moving and closed his eyes. His jaw clenched and he fisted his hands at his sides. "Or do you mean you fear that you will?" He asked quietly.
This pulled Laura from her chair with a muffled sob. She threw herself at him, standing on tiptoes, wrapping her arms around his neck as she pressed her lips to his. Gabriel exhaled noisily and caught her against him, fairly crushing her in his embrace as he kissed her back with desperation.
"Nothing. NOTHING could ever make me regret you. I love you." She spoke these words against his neck, curled against him, her body shaking.
"So that's done then, yeah? We love each other and are meant to be together. I don't need to test my feelings for you. I already know, my sweet girl. Finally, I know what I want -- what I'm supposed to be."
Laura looked up at him, her eyes swimming with tears. He brushed her hair away from her face before continuing: "I'm supposed to be the man by your side."
She burst into tears, pressing her face into his chest. How? She wondered. How was it possible for two people to be so much in love in such a short time? How did she deserve this kind of gift? What price would they both have to pay for it?
He held her, rocking her gently, as the storm of her emotions blew itself out and subsided. As Laura became calm in the circle of his arms, she had a foreboding that this discussion was not yet over. The pull of his prior life would not be so easy to ignore. A man like Gabriel could not go from living for the good of others, to only living for himself, quite so easily.
But she pushed away those fears and sighed contentedly in the feeling of his warmth, the scent of his skin, and the sound of his beating heart beneath her cheek. She couldn't bear to see any more pain in those deep green eyes. Not tonight. For now, he was hers, and she was his. She'd take that for long as it was possible and just be grateful.
"Come to bed, my love." Gabriel spoke into her hair. She let him tip her face back up to his and smiled up into his beautiful eyes.
"I'll go anywhere and do anything you ask, my love." She leaned up to meet his smoldering kiss.
***
Their lovemaking that night had been poignant, full of desperation and the need to reassure one another. So as a result, it was achingly tender and intimate. Gabriel drifted off to sleep finally, feeling his heart swell with the certainty that this union between them was sacred. The woman at his side was the personification of beauty - a living angel. He was convinced in himself that he was exactly where he was supposed to be.
Laura was moved to tears by their passion for each other. While the emotional side of her fully submerged into his body, his touch, his profound sensuality, the cerebral side of her nervously fretted, waiting for the sword of Damocles.
Her life up to this point had been punctuated by disappointment, and she was -- admitting this fact to herself -- badly damaged by her failed marriage. She had not had much luck in love -- the romantic kind or any other. Her parents died, one after the other, when she was still in high school. Her mother from breast cancer, her father from the grief and alcoholic oblivion he plunged himself into thereafter. There were no brothers or sisters. She had to move far from her childhood friends then to live with her maternal grandmother, where she stayed until leaving for college. Already in her eighties, her grandmother was a quiet, tired, sweet soul -- but was not the same after the death of her only daughter. Laura used to think it was like living with a ghost. And when that fragile, dignified lady finally left her just after graduating from University, Laura's sense of estrangement became like a bell jar that enclosed her. Self-imposed isolation became a rather unhealthy habit.
Just before her 25th birthday, she met a charming young man at the magazine where she worked. Named Colin, he was a midlevel manager in the publishing side, managing a part of advertising sales. She was but a junior writer and fact-checker, flattered by the interest shown by this suave, older man.
He lavished her with attention and actively courted her, and for the first time in almost a decade, Laura felt connected to someone. She felt wanted. Desired. Loved. Her work friends smiled nervously when she told them of the romance, and Laura missed the exchanges of worried looks they shared. Too inexperienced to see the signs, she believed Colin wholeheartedly when he declared that she was the only woman in the world for him. Laura never questioned his insistence that she add him to the large bank accounts afforded by the trust fund she'd inherited upon her parents' and grandmother's deaths. Her vague sense of anticlimax after the wedding was unsettling, but she put it down to nerves and inexperience. She pretended she didn't notice his change in behavior.
Laura never saw it coming -- the betrayal, the lies, or the physical brutality when she asked too many questions. Once Colin had found a wealthier replacement for Laura, an older widow this time, he hastily divorced her, having already run through more than half of her inheritance.
This trip to Italy was meant to be an escape -- a respite from the shameful loneliness she felt in New York. At least here, in a sprawling, ancient city where she knew no one, she had a legitimate reason for being alone. She'd half-heartedly tried dating in the two years since the divorce, but never really let anyone come close to her. Not until now. And just her luck, she thought, that the man who was able to finally touch her heart was a man with whom she had no business -- no right -- to fall in love. But fall in love she did. It made her realize that she'd had no concept of the feeling before now.
She worshiped Gabriel for the faith he placed in what they had. She loved his goodness and his fierce protectiveness. He was everything a man should be: keenly intelligent, principled, kind, sexy and strong. He was also pure and unblemished. She felt unworthy, but adored him, body and soul, nonetheless.
