Page 134 of Love What's Left
I swoop back down, both hands delving into her hair. She meets me in a volcanic eruption seven years in the making. The touch of her tongue to mine moves the world, picks it up, and shakes it like a snow globe. My entire body hardens with want. It’s not just lust. It’s my heart. It’s my mind. She’s the woman sworn to never give herself to me. And I’m the man who’d die to be hers.
The door clicks closed, and I lift my head. Some enterprising staff member decided to give us privacy.
I brace myself for her to backtrack. Instead, she looks as dazed as I feel.
“What happens next?” she asks.
“What else? Paperwork.”
44
Gabriel
“You sneaky son of a bitch.” Propping her elbows on her knees where she sits on the coarse sand, Sydney steeples her hands over her nose and mouth. Morning sun turns strands of her dark hair to copper.
“It was a rocky start.”
“You think?” she asks with a weird laugh.
“How much did you remember?”
“I remember everything. The day we met. That stupid contract in exchange for my silence. Convincing myself sex on our wedding night would get you out of my system. Then deciding afterward that it didn’t make sense to stop. Admitting I loved you. Deciding to make it real.”
“Does your head hurt?”
She waves off my concern.
“I shouldn’t have used that contract as leverage. It was wrong,” I say.
“Do you know why I agreed to marry you?”
“To get out of the contract.”
“Not even close,” she says.
I grimace. “So I’d start the charity with you?”
Prenup still resting on her thighs, she stacks her fists on her hips and scowls. “You’d have done that anyway.”
“Yes.”
“You gave me everything I ever asked for. If you thought I was cold, you had your jacket around me in two seconds flat. I know, because I tested it. I shivered on purpose to see what you’d do. You did it every time, even when I had a sweater hanging over the back of my chair. Even when it left you cold.”
“Why would my being nice piss you off?” I demand.
She climbs to her feet, prenup in her fist, and I join her, squaring off.
“Because I thought you fell for me during our engagement when we got more physical. But you didn’t. You loved me when you proposed. You even told me you did. I was just toostupidto see it,” she shouts.
“Yes, I loved you,” I yell back. “Why is that a problem?”
“Because you should have been honest. We wasted so much time.”
She can’t be serious. “If I’d shown a hint of vulnerability, you’d haveevisceratedme.” It’s the first time I’ve said it. I’ve never even thought it in quite that way, but the truth burns like salt water in an open wound. “Youwantedme to be an asshole. I couldn’t bring you a cup of coffee without you reacting as though I’d declared war. I slid into the role you created for me. The only thing I don’t know is whyyou tried so hard to hate me, when we both know you loved me.”
“Because I didn’t believe people could change,” she cries.
“They can learn. They can heal.” I shake my head. “All those years, I thought you needed time to see me. I told myself when you admitted you loved me and realized I turned my life around, you’d be happy. You’d be proud of me. Never once, did it occur to me you wanted me to fail.”
