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She had known, with some kind of primitive instinct that seemed to emanate from deep inside of her, that they had finally snapped that thread of hope. It was finally broken. They had finally ended this thing between them, whatever it was, and she was free. Free to go, free to live—free.
And it felt like dying.
“Did you fall?” he asked in a voice that sounded far away, as if it was a stranger’s.
Or perhaps she had become the stranger, having cut the thread that tied them together. Perhaps that tiny little shred of hope had been the only thing that had bound them, after all. She tried to wet her lips, to speak, but nothing came out.
“Are you unwell?” he asked, his elegant brow furrowing as he moved closer. She had to blink to bring him into focus, and that was when she realized that tears still coursed down her cheeks unchecked.
“I want to walk out of here,” she managed to say in a whisper that seemed to tear at her throat. She felt the hot sting of her tears, the clog of emotion in her chest, the threat of deep sobs from low in her abdomen. “I want to be free …of all of this.”
A stark emptiness washed across his face, hurting her as surely as if he’d struck her, even when she would have thought that she could not hurt any further—that it was not physically possible.
“I told you that I love you and I mean it, Bethany,” he said in a low, quiet, awful voice, his powerful hands in fists at his sides, his dark eyes bleak. “And I will love you enough to let you go, if I must.”
His mouth flattened into that grim line. He looked … defeated, this strong, unbreakable man. It made Bethany feel like shattered glass, all jagged shards and fine dust scattered across the floor. It made her want to rewind, erase, do whatever it took to make him Leo again.
“If that is what you want,” he said.
It rang in the air like a vow, and she believed him. He would let her go. He would do it. Only moments ago, she had known that was precisely what she wanted. She had been deeply hurt, but sure. Certain. Leo was finally acquiescing, and this time she knew that he was not playing one of his games. They had moved far past that.
This time, he meant it. Which meant that all she had to do was stand and walk out of this place, head high, heart battered, perhaps, but free—just as she’d wanted to be for so long.
All she needed to do was rise, climb to her feet and start for the door. Start the rest of her life as she’d believed she wanted to do for so long.
Stand up! she ordered herself, desperate.
But she could not seem to do it.
“I do not know how to let you go,” he said, his voice darker than she had ever heard it, laced with all the pain and sorrow she knew was inside of her, spilling out of her. “But I will do it, Bethany. I promise you.”
It seemed to reverberate deep in her heart. It made her feel weighted to the floor, heavy like a stone, when she kept telling herself she should feel lighter, should fly, should cast aside the shackles she had always believed he’d placed on her and make for the sun.
Was this how it ended for them? Was this how it felt?
But her legs refused to work. Her hands were clasped together before her as if she were praying, and she could not force herself to wrench her gaze away from his. She was not sure she was even breathing. Time seemed to stand still, fold in on itself, and all she knew was that sorrow in her heart and the way it reflected back at her from his bittersweet gaze.
She had cut that last silver line of hope, of the dream of him, and without it, she knew suddenly, with a deep certainty that seemed to echo inside of her and grow louder with every passing second, she was as unknowable to herself as he was without the great long parade of his history.
He was her history. He had made her as surely as she had made herself; they were entwined and entangled, and she did not know how to exist without it. Without him. She could as soon exist without air.
Thinking that, she released the breath she had been holding and inhaled deeply, as if for the first time.
“I cannot seem to leave you,” she whispered then, something like grief washing through her as if it was overflowing from within, as if it was a poison, as if it had to get out. “I have been trying to do it for years, and this time even my legs have given out on me.”
“I will carry you wherever you want to go, if you wish it,” he said gruffly, and she could see that he meant it, this difficult man, however little he wished her to leave.
He would do it because he was honorable, for all she had longed to believe otherwise. He was not his father. He was not a monster. He was, perhaps, as conflicted and confused as she had always been.
Then she could not hold any of it at bay any longer—the sweltering heat and storm of all that sorrow, all that pain, all their years and wars and battles and passions—and she bent over with the force of it, sobbing it out into the plush carpet beneath her.
