Page 140 of Freed
“If she were still here,” I say, my voice turning sharper, “she’d say the same thing to you, and you know it.”
His face changes. It’s not anger now, but raw pain.
“But she isn’t,” he says, each word clipped, “because your fucking boyfriend killed her.”
“Fiancé,” I correct, just to barb him. “And Dante had nothing to do with her death.”
That earns me a scoff—cold, disbelieving, vicious.
“Of course,” he says. “The sainted Dante again.”
“Yes,” I snap. “Because unlike you, I don’t rewrite the truth every time it hurts my feelings.”
His mouth hardens. “The truth? You want to talk to me about truth?”
“Yes.”
He takes one step toward me. “Fine. Then tell me when exactly you planned to mention you were already pregnant when we met.”
The kitchen goes silent and my heartbeat stumbles. There it is again—the accusation, sharpened and polished until it sounds like fact.
“I was going to tell you, but?—.”
“When?” he bites out. “After you married him? After you let me make a complete fool of myself? After I’d already bled enough over you to make the whole city laugh?”
I flinch.
“Do not stand there,” he says, quieter now, which is somehow worse, “and make it sound like I’m irrational for being furious.”
“I’m not saying you don’t get to be furious.” My own voice shakes, but I keep going. “I’m saying you don’t get to decide what the lie means before you even hear it.”
His eyes narrow. “Then explain it.”
I look at him. At the man who touched me like something sacred last night. At the man who nearly said love and then recoiled from it like he’d burned himself. At the man who now stands in front of me so determined to be betrayed that he would rather rip us both apart than admit there might be another answer. And suddenly I’m too angry to protect him from the truth any longer.
“You want the timeline?” I ask softly.
“Yes.”
“Fine.”
I step closer.
Not enough to touch him. Just enough that he can’t mistake this for fear.
“When I met Dante, I was desperate. Scared. Alone. I reached for the first safe thing I saw.” My chin lifts. “And when I met him, I was already pregnant.”
I keep going.
“I never even met him until I woke up in Italy. Despite what you think, I wasn’t sneaking around. I wasn’t betraying you with some secret affair while you played the wounded idiot.” My throat tightens. “The reason the timing doesn’t make sense is because it has never been about Dante.”
He stares at me for a long moment. Then, very quietly, he asks, “What are you saying?”
I laugh once. “I’m saying you’re so desperate to hate me cleanly that you can’t even see what’s right in front of you.”
His face drains of all expression, and the keys go still in his hand.
“Elizabeth.”
