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That was a preview.The voice inside her was certain.And whatever made you think that because you’ve had so much good sex that you’ll somehow be able to suffer through bad?
And more, why had she imagined that she would be okay with that suffering? She didn’t think Julian would hurt her. Meaning, she didn’t think he would strike her. Yet it was suddenly occurring to her, much too late, that there was a vast gap between something that hurt—like a blow—and anything that was even remotely tolerable.
Sex had been a revelation. Having sex with Crete had altered everything. How she felt about her own body. What she did with it. How she viewed herself. She tried to imagine the same scene that had just occurred here on the floor of the conservatory, but with Julian rather than Crete—
Her mind balked.
Timoney hadn’t been expecting revelations.
But she should have paid more attention to the cost of putting up with revulsion.
“Please,” Crete said, still standing where she’d left him. Still seething. “Please do not lecture me on honesty. I am not certain that you have a handle on the meaning of the term as you prepare to walk into a wedding with another man, possibly pregnant with my child.”
And this was not the time to think about what it might be like if she truly was—
It is not the time, she told herself sternly.
“Do you love me?” she asked him, her voice stark.
The way she had asked him once before.
Fatefully.
First she had said those words he didn’t want to hear, and then, when he had coldly explained to her the usual consequences for that, she’d asked him straight out.
Because she hadn’t believed what was happening. And more, she already knew the answer. Or she thought she did. And she’d been so sure that if she simply asked it, he wouldn’t lie. That he couldn’t lie to her face.
Not like that. Not to her.
But he had.
Crete had looked straight at her, straight through her, as if she was a stranger. And with no hesitation, he had said no.
Just that. Just the one word.No.
Timoney would have preferred it if he’d slammed his fingers into her chest, actually torn out her poor heart, and crushed it beneath his foot. That he’d done it metaphorically had left her gasping for air. Why not do it in fact and let the pain of it kill her?
Then again, it had. She just hadn’t had the pleasure of dying.
Now she was too alive for her own good and her wedding was at ten o’clock the next morning.
And she hadn’t run off to nail herself back into her coffin the way she should have when she’d had the chance.
Nor did she make a break for it now. She couldn’t read the expression on his face any longer. It wasn’t that cold, cruel mask from before. But there was nothing soft or loving about it, either.
Once again, she wished she hadn’t asked.
“Do you love me?” he asked, and there was a dangerous edge to his voice then. “Does anything that you have done tonight feel like love to you, Timoney? Because I will tell you, it feels a great deal like love to me. That is not a recommendation.”
After the story she’d gotten him to tell tonight, he could not have delivered a more devastating slap.
Somehow, she didn’t let it knock her flat.
“You were right all along,” she said quietly, when she could. “We are better off apart.”
Then, finally, she turned to walk away from him the way she should have done in the garden, but her fingers no longer seemed to work. She fumbled desperately at the latch.
And when the world seemed to spin out from her, tumbling around and around, she thought for a moment that she’d fallen.
