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He’d had moments of it. When he’d been trying to change this story for the both of them. He’d had moments where he’d found gentleness in himself he hadn’t known was there.
But that wasn’t real. It had been an act.
It had to have been.
Nothing good in him could survive, or thrive or last.
The next morning, she was adamant that they leave.
She was like ice as she looked at him.
“I just want to go back to the villa. Where there is...space.”
Unspoken he thought that was also...where he had not touched her.
“You’re through with Paris?”
“I have a feeling I will be through with Paris for the rest of my life. I don’t know that I should ever like to return here.”
“That is a shame. Paris has quite a lot to recommend it.”
“Paris can go to hell.”
He had never seen her bitter.
After their... Their breakup, he supposed, all those months ago, he had not seen her again. She had been sad then, but he had not been on the receiving end of her anger.
But now he was. And it was quite stunning in its force.
“We will marry next week,” he said.
“How nice for us,” she said.
Their plane ride back to Italy was astonishingly different than the ride over. She did not look around the plane and delight. She did not flirt with him.
She sat, ashen, and she held Soriya the entire time. Like a tiny shield.
And he had not realized... He had not realized all the warmth that she injected into his life. Until she had taken it from him.
She had only been awake for a couple of weeks, but even while she had been in a coma, he had been able to imagine what they might build.
You bought into your own lies. More fool you.
It didn’t matter. He was accomplishing his end. She wouldn’t leave now. Wouldn’t leave Soriya. She would marry him.
And someday... If there was one thing he knew it was that the desire between them would overcome this anger.
She would not withhold her body from him forever.
That made him feel better.
He knew that she wouldn’t, because it was inevitable.
Because they were inevitable.
Whatever she might think.
“Why are you like this?” she asked, with only twenty minutes before they began their descent.
