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He could still feel the buckling. The cracking. The world falling out from beneath him where he stood, and all of that was better than the pain in his chest. The pain inhim.
“Why don’t you just say that you don’t like the life of an anonymous peasant?” he fired back at her. “That all your adventures in blending in on Oxford Street make you feel normal. Interchangeable. And Amalia Montaigne, once the celebrated Crown Princess of Ile d’Montagne, cannot abide it.”
She shook her head at him, her gaze too bright, now. It almost made him crave the dimness. “You’re making my point for me.”
“If you leave me again, it will be the last time,” he warned her, because that was all he had left. “It will be the end, Amalia. No matter how many times you kneel.”
And maybe it was just the world turning again, that jolting feeling that rocked through him when all she did was gaze back at him.
So he could see the way her chest heaved, as if this was no easier on her.
That did not make him feel any better.
“If you have to threaten me to keep me,” she said, very distinctly, as if she too could hear the noise in his head, “you don’t love me. And I doubt you ever did.”
He wanted to argue that. He wanted to shout down the building they stood in. But there was that starkness on her face and it was in him, too, and all he could do was stand there. Like he was made of stone.
Like he was that lonely fortress he had turned into a hotel, keeping watch on an island for invaders who never came.
And she was offering him a softness he could not abide. He would not. It was a weakness.
Surely how he felt right now proved that.
“Joaquin,” she said, her voice thick now. And he could see that whatever haunted him, haunted her, too. “You don’t love anything. And I fear if I stay, that emptiness will slowly chip away at me until I am as empty as you are.”
And everything in him was a terrible din. An endless, brutal roar.
He wanted more than anything to fall to his knees for a change. To beg her to stay with him. To do whatever it took to keep her—
But that was not who he was. That was not the man who’d climbed his way out of literal gutters on the force of his will alone.
Joaquin Vargas dominated, he did not yield. Ask anyone.
“No one is making you stay here,” he gritted out, though even his tongue felt bitter. “No one is forcing this emptiness upon you. By all means, Amalia. Leave if you want to leave. I will not stop you.”
No matter how much he wanted to.
She let out the soft, rough noise of a small thing. Some kind of sob.
And Joaquin thought it likely ripped out what little heart remained in him.
But he didn’t move. He didn’t reach for her.
He certainly didn’tkneel.
Amalia turned from him, her head high and her carriage sheer perfection, and began to walk away.
She stopped before she left the room and swayed a little herself, catching hold of the doorway with one hand. “Joaquin...”
As if, even now, she thought she could make him crumble. And the horror was, he wanted to.
The noises inside him were not small, but he did not wish to let her hear them. She had already seen far too much of him. If she hadn’t, this would not be so painful. If she hadn’t, he could have avoided all of this.
“Are you leaving me or aren’t you?” he demanded, because that was what he had always done. Offend, not defend.
It had made him a billionaire.
Amalia let out another sound, more ragged this time. It was unbearable.
