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“I was sure that you would be halfway to New York by now,” she said.
There was a roaring thing in him, but he ignored it. “I intended to be.”
“And yet here you are.”
“Here I am,” he agreed.
And it felt...portentous. Huge. The roaring in him and that white gown in the breeze and the stars all around them, as if they knew.
Her gaze searched his. Balthazar wished that he could understand what he saw there. And he wished even more that he could find the words to tell her what had happened to him.Inhim. What she’d done to him.
But it all seemed inadequate when there was Kendra, staring up at him with that same openness as if he had not hurt her. Again and again.
“You should run from me, little one,” he said then. “Screaming, and in the opposite direction.”
“What would be the point of that?” she asked. Her lips curved. “This is a very small island. And I have no interest in drowning myself.”
He frowned at that, and that hint of levity when he wished to take responsibility, at last, for who and what he had become—
Kendra swayed closer to him, placing her hands on his chest.
And Balthazar...was unarmed.
He stared down at her hands, one of them bedecked in the rings he’d put there this morning. As he did, he became vaguely aware that he’d thrown on trousers and a haphazardly buttoned shirt, so that both of them were in white.
As if that made up for anything.
But it was her touch that astonished him. That would have broken him, he thought, had there been anything in him left to break.
“I told you that I’m your enemy,” he said then, his voice severe. “Since the moment I knew who you were, I have thought of nothing but crushing you, Kendra. You must know this.”
“I know it.” And though her lips were still curved, there was a certain steel in those golden eyes of hers. “But you are also my husband. And the father of my child. And I do not choose to be crushed, Balthazar.”
“Is it your choice?” he asked, though even as he did, he found himself moving to trap her hands there against his chest. To hold her, despite himself.
When he knew he should not tempt himself. That he did not deserve it. Or her.
“I want to be outraged, but I’m not,” she told him, almost solemnly. “I want to defend my father’s behavior, but I can’t. I tried to come up with excuses, but I don’t have any. The truth of the matter is that I’m not surprised to hear what he did to your mother. To you. Disappointed, maybe. But not, I’m afraid, surprised.”
“Do not forgive me, Kendra,” Balthazar gritted out. “Not so easily. You have no idea the kind of darkness that lives in me.”
“But I do know it,” she replied, to his astonishment. And that gaze of hers was steady on him, the sun to the earth. “I know your darkness, Balthazar. I know your fury, your retaliation. I know your absence and I know your touch. And I can tell you, with every part of my soul, that there is nothing you can do that would make me abandon you. Or I would already be swimming for the mainland.”
All the broken parts of him seemed to vibrate with the same ferocity, then. And still all he could see was her gaze, as if the sun had not yet set. As if she lit up the world.
She did it effortlessly.
“I don’t know how to do anything but plot revenge,” he threw at her. “I could stand here and tell you all the things I think I feel, but how would I know? Feelings were my first enemy and I vanquished them long ago. You deserve more than a broken man.”
“I deserve you,” she countered. Then she leaned in, to underscore the intensity on her face. “Because you have haunted me, Balthazar, since the moment I looked up and found you in that gazebo. My brother and my father might have had their own reasons for sending me to see you in New York, but I didn’t have to go. I wanted to. I wanted to see you. And let’s be very clear. I wanted to strip for you. I wanted your touch. I wanted everything that’s happened between us, because if I hadn’t, I could have walked away at any time.”
He wanted to believe that. Which was why he couldn’t. “I kidnapped you, Kendra. You can’t handwave that away.”
“I’m not the hapless maiden sent off to sacrifice herself to the village dragon, despite appearances,” Kendra said, with laughter in her voice. Actual laughter. “I could have ducked away from you when we went to your doctor in Athens. Failing that, Panagiota might have restricted access to the internet here but if I’d really, truly wanted to get online I could have found a way. I didn’t want to.”
“Kendra...” He managed to breathe. Barely. “Kendra, I can’t...”
The stars were upon them and around them, the sea whispered their names, and Balthazar felt caught somewhere between that light from up above and all the sunlight in her gaze. As if all that brightness could make of him a better man.
