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Oh God.
She felt her knees weakening. Felt her heart exploding in her chest.
“Go to your room while I talk to your father. ” His voice was cold. Final. “Nothing lasts forever, Courtney. Not even the wind. ”
She felt the blood leave her face. A horrible sense of unreality closed in on her, darkening the vision at the edge of her eyes, stealing the breath from her chest as she stared back at him in dazed, mind-numbing pain.
“Stupid bastard,” Khalid muttered, shaking his head at Ian’s response.
She turned, forced herself to tear her gaze from Ian’s and to face her father once again.
He was watching her, the fury of moments before replaced with something else. Regret? Realization?
“I love him,” she whispered again, feeling the single tear that escaped her control. “With everything inside me. I can forgive you this. But I won’t forgive anything further. You will leave this room with me. ”
He opened his lips to speak.
“Please, Daddy. For me. ”
They clamped shut as his gaze cut to Ian, brooding, filled with anger.
“Courtney. ” Her mother moved forward slowly, reaching out to her, her expression twisting as Courtney flinched away.
“No. ” She shook her head tightly as she turned to Ian. “I’m sorry. ”
She was sorry her father had arrived. That she had destroyed one of the true friendships he had known. She was sorry she had pushed when she should have stayed clear. So many things she was now sorry for.
Her father was right, in so many ways. Only a child believed in fairy tales. And healing Ian, being with him, being loved by him, was the greatest of all dreams.
He stood still, staring back at her with a dark, forbidding frown.
“I’ll pack. ” She tried to clear her throat of her tears. “I’m truly sorry, Ian. ”
She moved past them all, determined to hold back the tears, to gather the broken fragments of her soul together until she could find the space she needed to repair them.
Her father cursed softly as she passed him, but other than that, not a word was spoken as she slowly left the room.
The door closed behind her, leaving Ian to endure the silence and the condemning stares of those now watching him.
No matter how many times he had taken Courtney, how depraved he and Khalid had gotten the night before, the innocence that was so much a part of her had remained. She had looked at him as she always had, her eyes filled with light, with purity. As though nothing could mar the untamed spirit inside her.
But in one brief second, he had watched it die. The pain from seeing that was more debilitating than the day he had found Melissa, staring back at him in empty accusation.
“Well, I hope the two of you are quite satisfied with yourselves. ” Marguerita’s voice was cold, furious. “You remind me of two little boys on a playground, standing off over a favored toy that belongs to neither of you. ”
Ian watched her silently as he tried to make sense of what he had seen in Courtney and why it was ripping his soul apart.
Why now? Why would that innocence die within her eyes as she stared back at him with such bleak pain? Surely she had known, had understood, that he had lost his ability to love years ago. Hadn’t he?
“She’s my daughter,” Dane snapped. “If I had any clue he would touch her—”
“Oh shut up, Dane,” Marguerita sighed, her voice lacking fury, but filled instead with disgust. “You refuse to admit she’s a woman, not a child. You’ve been hiding your head in the sand for years, unwilling to admit that as she grows older, so do you. And in doing so, one day, she will leave our home for another. I knew exactly why she was coming to Ian, and what she planned to do. Had you been man enough to listen to reason the past hours I’ve been arguing with you, you would have understood that. ”
“He’s too old for her—”
“She’s wanted him since she was a teenager. Be damned glad she waited this long rather sneaking into his bed when she was sixteen, as she once threatened to do,” she snapped, her eyes blazing as she turned back to Ian. “And I do believe you are as pathetic as any man it has ever been my misfortune to meet. Why my daughter should love one so clearly determined to be miserable for the rest of his natural life, I have no idea. ”
He stared back at Marguerita in surprise.
