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Nothing good can come of this, she told herself bleakly, staring at him, her tears making his dark coffee eyes seem to shimmer and glow. Nothing ever has.
“Tell me what you want,” he said gruffly, as if it hurt him too. “Tell me and it is yours.”
She wanted so many things. She always had. But she was too beaten, too bruised by all of their epic and painful failures. She had given up too much and she was so afraid that she had no more left to give. She could not do it anymore. In that moment she wanted some semblance of peace more than she wanted anything else—even him.
“I want a divorce,” she whispered, and saw his eyes go cold, his mouth tauten, his face pale.
But it was better to break what was left of her heart right now than to hand it to him and watch him smash it into dust again and again until nothing was left, not even that thread of hope that had kept her going all these long years.
She told herself it had to be.
CHAPTER TWELVE
LEO found himself standing in her bedchamber, the ancient room seeming to whirl around him. His heart was too loud in his ears and his chest, and he could not seem to force a full breath.
He could not believe the finality he had heard in Bethany’s voice, had seen stamped on her face. He could not believe that after all of this—all they had been through, all they clearly still felt for each other—she still wanted to divorce him. He could not accept that she wanted to leave him. Everything in him rebelled at the thought!
He had told her he loved her, and it had not moved her at all, when the same words had once transported her entirely—made her smile and laugh and shine from within. He did not know where to put that sad reality, how to keep it from tearing at him.
If you loved me, you would not spend so much time trying to manipulate me, she had said. Her words still echoed in his head, sounding like an uncomfortable truth. Look what we’ve become.
He felt his hands clench into fists at his sides.
She did not want a lake, and he did not want to be a man like his father who would build such a monument to something he had never felt. He did not want her trapped and miserable, unhappy and dutiful. He did not want this woman who had wrecked him and exalted him, sometimes with the same small smile, to end up like his own mother. He did not want her to transform herself into the kind of woman he’d been supposed to marry. He did not want any part of the life he’d been lucky to be banished from as a small boy. Was that what he wanted for his own children?
He knew he did not.
And he also knew, though he wished he did not, that it was his pride that wanted to force her to stay, his pride that wanted to keep her no matter what it was she said she wanted. He might not believe that she was as finished with him as she claimed to be, but it was only his pride that would force her to confront that, wasn’t it?
He had lived his life in service of his pride for far too long, he thought then. Because once he set it aside, all he could see was the expression on Bethany’s pretty face, pale and streaked with tears. Did he love her so little that he could keep her here, his prisoner, when she wanted to leave? Did he want her close to him more than he wanted her happy?
He detested himself for how long it took to answer that question, for how agonizing it was to come to the only possible conclusion.
That was the kind of man he was, he thought bitterly. The kind of man she accused him of being. That was exactly who he was to her, and had always been: autocratic, conniving, manipulative. Just as she’d thrown at him, time and again—but he had excused it all away because he had told himself it was all about duty and obligation, when, in truth, he had simply wanted her.
Here. Now. For ever.
He had seen her and he had never looked at another woman again. He had never wanted anyone else. Only Bethany. He simply wanted her with him in whatever way he could have her, because without her he feared he would disappear forever beneath the crushing weight of his own vast history, his family’s legacy.
He let out a breath and let it roll through him, the truth he had fought so hard, so long, to suppress, even from himself.
She was the only one who had ever seen him simply as a man. But she could not be happy if she was with him. This was finally clear to him. It was killing her—and he could not stand by and let something hurt her so badly, even if what was hurting her was him.
He had to let her go. He did not know how he would do it when every single instinct he possessed screamed that he must prevent this very thing at all costs—he only knew he had no other choice.
Bethany did not realize that she had sunk to the floor until she looked up to see Leo standing before her, a strange and unreadable expression on his face. She stared at him, aware then that she was on her knees. She had no idea how that had happened. She had told him she wanted a divorce, he had walked away from her and it had been over.
