her friends had them yet. She was an only child, and she had never done babysitting or anything like that when she was growing up.
She couldn’t offer him any help. The house was full of staff. He would figure something out.
She ignored the crushing weight that thought brought. She didn’t know how she was supposed to sort through this. She didn’t know how she was supposed to forgive this.
But she had shared herself with him. As much as she had loved him before he’d touched her, she had only fallen deeper since they’d started sleeping together. Since she’d started to hope again.
The door to her bedroom opened and she sat up, clutching her blanket to her chest, in spite of the fact that she was fully clothed. “What do you want, Leon?” she asked, not bothering to moderate her tone as Leon walked into her room, slamming the door behind him.
“Are you going to stay angry with me?”
“Probably,” she said.
“There is nothing that I can do about this. There is nothing I can do to turn back time.”
“And there’s nothing I can do to erase how horrible this feels. I just don’t understand. I don’t understand how you could do something like this.”
He exploded then. Every bit of the rage she imagined had been simmering inside of him since his accident, since his memories had been ripped from him, pouring from him. “I don’t know why I would do something like this, either, Rose. I have no memory of any of it. No memory of what reasoning there could have possibly been. Why was I not in your bed? Why did I turn my own child away? I don’t know the answer to these questions. Everything is gone. It’s a black hole inside me. I can never reach the bottom of it. I can’t seem to see anything around me. These are the consequences of my actions, and I understand that. I understand that I’m not innocent because I don’t have answers. But it doesn’t make this any easier.”
She gritted her teeth. Fighting against sympathy. Fighting against any kind of understanding. She held on to her anger like it was a lifeline, and she refused to release her hold. “It doesn’t make it easier for me, too. It simply means that I can’t even rail against you the way I want to. All it means is that I can’t get an answer out of you. No matter how hard I try. Though I doubt you would give me one even if you could remember. That’s just how you are. You have been kind to me in the past. But I’ve been clinging to those memories like they have anything to do with the man you became.”
“And who is that?”
“A bored, cynical playboy with a drinking problem. A man who has been given everything, and seems to feel nothing.” She took a deep, shaking breath. “You’re a brilliant businessman, but you’re a terrible husband. You don’t love anyone but yourself, Leon. And it has been like that for a very long time.”
He seemed stunned by her outburst. Stunned by her words. Well, that made two of them. But it was true. It was everything that she had buried down deep inside herself. Even deeper than the love she felt for him. When she had talked herself into divorcing him, she hadn’t used anger to make the decision.
She had latched on to a kind of world-weary practicality. Forcing herself to face that if after two years they didn’t have a real marriage they never would. She hadn’t allowed herself to feel anything like the sadness that bloomed deep inside her now. Nothing like the rage that burned hot beneath it.
She was allowing herself to feel it now.
“I was wrong. There is no excuse. The reasons don’t matter. I was wrong, and I’m very sorry that I hurt you. I’m sorry that I hurt April. That I had any part in hurting Isabella. I am sorry.” His words were raw, genuine. But she couldn’t find it in herself to care.
“It changes nothing. What good does sorry do? Can you give me back the last two years of my life? Can you give me back my heart? I am so tired of you holding my heart. I am a fool. I am the fool who has loved you for the last fifteen years, and you never deserved that.”
“I feel you’re probably right. That I never have deserved for you to have any feelings for me at all.”
“I am right,” she said, conviction burning in her words. “You didn’t deserve my father’s affection, either. The world has been kind to you. I imagine the first time anything tragic ever happened to you was when that other car crossed the centerline in Italy.”
He closed the space between them, reaching down to where she was on the bed, wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her up against him. His dark eyes blazed down into hers. “I deserve all of that,” he said, his voice low, soft. “All of that and more. Give me your anger, agape. Let it out.”
“I hate you,” she hissed. “As much as I ever thought I loved you. How dare you do this to me? I did nothing but live my life trying to please people. I was the daughter that my father required. I took care of him after my mother died. I never let him see how I used to cry. I never let him know how badly I missed having a woman in my life. I never let him know how lost I was all through junior high and high school. How lonely I was. Because I didn’t want him to worry. I agreed to marry you for his peace of mind, even though I knew you didn’t love me.” She took a gasping breath. “And I never let you know how much it killed me when you went out with other women. I simply accepted what you handed to me. I licked the crumbs that you threw me off the floor, because I am such a sad, pathetic creature. But I am not your creature anymore.”
He reached up, sifting his fingers through her hair, holding her head steady, staring down at her. “You cannot possibly hate me more than I hate myself.”
“Of course I can,” she spat. “I wish you could feel this.” She pressed her hand to her chest. “I wish you could feel exactly what you did to me.”
Tears burned her eyes, her heart pounding, her entire body trembling. She felt desperate. Desperate to make him understand exactly what she felt inside. Her heart was like shattered glass, the shards working their way into her skin, burning, aching.
She wanted him to feel this. She wanted him to understand. This man who had always seemed so charmed to her. So together. Who seemed to get everything he wanted from life, who seemed to be denied nothing.
Who made her want with every deep, desperate part of herself. Who made her want him even now as she burned incandescent with rage over his actions.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, tilting her face upward as she rose up onto her tiptoes and claimed his mouth with hers. She kissed him with all the anger inside her. She poured all the hatred, all the rage that she had just professed straight into him. Hoping it would burn all the way down. Hoping it would destroy him slowly the way that it was destroying her.
She sobbed helplessly even as she parted her lips, thrusting her tongue deep into his mouth. She hated herself. Almost as much as she hated him. For wanting him even now. For needing to be comforted by him even though he was the one who had caused her all of this pain.
But if it was so easy to turn it off, she would have done it a long time ago. If she could simply decide that she didn’t want him, decide that she didn’t love him, things would be so much easier.
If she could transfer it all to him, exorcise it from her body, everything would be simpler. She would be free. Finally. Instead of feeling like there were chains wrapping around her wrists, around her neck, pulling ever tighter. Binding her to a man who could never give her what she needed. To a love that could
