Page 180 of Reckless Obsession

“Don’t,” he says quietly.

“Don’t what?” I look at him, my heart breaking so violently it feels almost like anger. “Don’t react? Don’t ask why you let me plan a vacation with you while you were deciding to go back to your ex-husband?”

“Maksim—”

“No, seriously. Tell me.” My voice starts to rise despite everything I do to keep it steady. “When were you going to tell me? Before I got on the plane tonight? Or were you going to let me arrive in Italy like some pathetic idiot and figure it out when you never showed up?”

Tristan stands.

The movement is slow and careful, like I’m something volatile he has to approach without making a sudden sound.

It makes me want to scream.

“You don’t understand,” he says with something like frustration in his voice.

“You’re right,” I snap. “I don’t understand.”

And I don’t.

I don’t understand how a man can hold me through the night, call me baby, promise me he is staying, then vanish for days and come back wearing the same suit he wore while the world announced he had chosen someone else.

I don’t understand how I can still want him to say something that makes this hurt less.

But the worst part is that I can already see it.

The goodbye in his eyes.

And I know, before he says another word, that whatever happens next will break us.

I look at him, and the anger I was holding onto begins to collapse under the weight of something worse.

Grief.

It comes quietly at first.

A tightness in my throat. A burning behind my eyes. The horrible realization that I have spent the past three months believing in something Tristan was apparently capable of setting down the moment Jake asked him to.

“You always choose him,” I say.

My voice is too soft.

Tristan’s expression shifts.

“Maksim—”

“No.” I shake my head, backing away from him. “No, don’t do that. Don’t say my name as if you’re about to explain something I’m supposed to forgive.”

“I’m not asking you to forgive me.”

“Then what are you asking?”

He doesn’t answer. Of course, he doesn’t.

“Say something.” I demand, my chest heaving. “Explain it to me, Tristan! Make it make sense. Because all I see is a liar who looked me in the eye at that cabin and told me he had feelings for me.”

Tristan flinches. The muscles in his jaw ripple, corded with pure agony, his hands coming up in a desperate, aborted gesture.

“I meant every word I said at that cabin. I swear to God, Maksim, I meant it—”