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He turned then, and Molly caught her breath. Because his face was a mask of anguish. Sheer torment. His eyes blazed with it, and she hated that, too.
“Constantine. I don’t understand—”
“And how dare she love me so easily?” Constantine gritted out, as if she hadn’t spoken. “When my mother’s life was a spiral of despair. When my own mother had never been any good at loving anyone or anything because she was so focused on my father—anything to get his attention, good or bad. How dare a stepmother come along and try to do what she had never managed?”
That hit Molly like a blow. Hard into her belly.
She whispered his name. And he laughed again, that awful sound.
“Your mother waskind, Molly. Understanding.Warm.And oh, how I loathed her for it.” He moved toward her then, and it felt like fate. Like doom. Then he stopped at the end of the bed and it felt a whole lot more like heartache. “But then you came.”
“You don’t have to do this,” she managed to get out.
Maybe she meant,Please don’t do this.
“But I do.” He raked a hand through his hair as if he would rather have put it on her. She wished he would. And her heart was beating so hard against her ribs that she was surprised she wasn’t rattling with the impact of each hit. “You were so soft. So astoundingly innocent.”
“I think you mean stupid.”
Constantine shook his head. “It was obvious to anyone who laid eyes on you that you could be easily chewed up and spit out and more, would never have the slightest idea what had happened to you.”
It was a searing sort of pain, she found, to imagine her former self like that. Particularly as she knew it was true. And more, could see too well the gap between the girl she’d been then and the woman she’d become.
“Again, I think the word you’re looking for isstupid,” she managed to say. “All I knew of the world was the village I came from. Our neighbors might not have liked my mum much. They might have watched me a little too closely, forever on the hunt for evidence that I was either like Isabel or looked a bit too much like one of their sons, since Isabel never named my father. But at least I knew my place there.”
“You had no business turning up in our world, Molly. You weren’t made for it. You made the terrible mistake of imagining that people, at heart, were basically good. No doubt another gift from your mother.”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “You treated me like a friend and I believed you meant it. I’ve had a long time to beat myself up for that, Constantine. A lot of years to regret it, but do you know what? I don’t. I would rather see the world as more good than bad. Or what would be the point of living in it?”
“How can you possibly continue to be this naive?” he asked, his voice filled with sadness and something like wonder at once. “The fashion industry should have succeeded where I failed and beaten this out of you years ago.”
Her smile was rueful then. “Oh, it did. So did you, Constantine. But cynicism is a choice. And I decided I would not choose it, despite all provocation.”
It hadn’t always been easy, because there was a certain ragged pride to be taken in weathering the storms of a volatile industry. Not to mention fame, fortune, and the joys and horrors inherent in both.
But she had decided, with great deliberation, that she would rather be happy.
Wasn’t that why she’d sought Constantine out? Oh, she’d told herself it was to face down the architect of her mother’s financial ruin. She’d assured herself it had less to do with her own demons and far more to do with protecting Isabel.
Yet she knew better. Deep down, she had known that she was never going to be happy until she either exorcised the devil...or embraced him.
He was staring at her as if she’d sprouted new heads. “The Skalas family has ever been a pit of snakes. I would rather have gone off to war than sit down to a family dinner when I was a child. You were woefully unprepared. Outgunned and outmaneuvered before your plane landed on Skiathos. I had every intention of snapping you like a twig. I wouldn’t have thought about it twice. If anything, your total destruction would have amused me.”
She cleared her throat. “My recollection is that you did precisely that. And happily.”
Constantine let out a small, harsh sound. She could not call it a laugh.
“No, Molly. Not quite. Because you lit up when you talked about your mother.”
Molly’s voice hardly seemed to work any longer. “Is that a bad thing?”
His smile was merciless. “You knew her flaws, but you loved her. It was obvious. It made your whole face change even as you shared your frustrations with me. And the stories you told me, your little village secrets, did something I thought was impossible.” That smile carved a deeper groove on his beautiful face and she understood, then, that his lack of mercy was aimed at himself for once. Not her. “You made me feel sympathy for Isabel, Molly. And I couldn’t forgive it.”
“Constantine...” she whispered.
“I never sold your stories to the tabloids, Molly. I was so determined to punish you for the things you made me feel that I gave them all away. For free.”
Molly sucked in a breath at that. Her head was spinning. She had so many questions she wanted to ask him, but he was still glaring down at her in that stern, uncompromising way that should have made her faint.
