He towers over me, and the possession firing through his eyes has arousal pooling between my thighs. I didn’t know what he was going to say, but I didn’t expectthat.
“You’ve been mine since that first night. When you kissed me like nothing else mattered. Like I didn’t disgust you. Like I didn’t scare you.”
“You’ve never scared me.”
“You should be scared. What I’ve done, I?—”
“Tell me.”
He shakes his head.
I search his eyes, praying so hard he’ll finally let me in.
He looks away and my stomach sinks.
I turn, walking away.
“Jude? Where are you going?” The panic in his voice makes me pause.
“You got on a flight to come here after three years. I don’t know the lengths and risks you took to get here. But if you aren’t prepared to take a risk by trusting me and telling me the truth, then you need to leave now. And this time, don’t come back.”
The words kill me inside. They shred at every flimsy strand that’s fighting to hold me together.
He came here forme. He couldn’t function withoutme.
But if he can’t be honest with me, we have nothing. I wish he’d stayed gone. I was doing okay. Seeing him again has allowed hope to spark inside me—a small, pathetic fleck in an otherwise dark pit. I need to snuff it out before I spend all night crying over him again.
Swallowing past the lump in my throat, I keep walking, and for the second time this evening, I’m grabbed by the upper arm. Only this time, it’s with a heartbreaking gentleness that makes me fight back tears as my bravado evaporates.
“I’m sorry, Jude.” His voice is thick, as if it’s taking everything in him to speak. “I’ll tell you… because I can’t stand to watch you run from me again. I’d sell my fucking soul for more time with you. Even if you won’t be able to look at me again after.”
“You don’t know that,” I breathe.
“I do. But you still want to know, don’t you?”
I nod.
We’re getting somewhere. Finally.
But it’s never been just about me knowing the truth. It’s been about Slade. He needs to be honest with himself. Because I know—at least, every cell in my bodyhopes—that whatever he’s about to tell me will make him see himself differently once he understands he isn’t the monster he claims to be.
Because I refuse to believe he’s capable of killing someone he loves.
My throat is raw and burning. “Go on,” I coax softly.
“She was having anaffair,” Slade hisses the word like it’s difficult to say out loud. “I caught her arguing with her lover. I was so mad at her.So fucking mad. That she’d do that to my father, to all of us. And I… I lost it. I totally lost it. I…killedher.”
I search his eyes for doubt in what he’s admitting to. There’s remorse there, but nothing else.
“You strangled her?” I whisper.
I thought what he told me that final night on his boat—about holding her around the throat as he watched the light fade from her eyes—was merely a cruel way to stop me asking difficult questions.
Tears sting my eyes.I prayed it wasn’t true.
“I might as well have strangled her… I didn’t save her,” he chokes.
“Wh-what? I don’t understand.”
