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“I love you,” she said angrily. “Staying here isn’t going to change that, it’s just going to make me love you more, to make leaving harder, to make my life without you impossible to get pleasure from. Don’t you get it? I just need to get back to London, to get back to training, to be in my own routine, far away from you and all this,” she waved a hand wildly around the garden, towards the golden house.
“You are denying yourself something you want.”
She couldn’t disagree with him on that score. “I’m a realist, Leonidas. There is no winning here, only escaping.”
“I think you are mistaking your feelings,” he said, after a beat. “You are inexperienced with men. You’re mistaking lust for something more, seeing friendship as love.”
“You have relationships like this all the time?” She pushed, lifting a finger and pressing it to his chest.
“Not exactly like this,” he said after a short pause.
“What’s different?”
He put both hands on his hips. “You’re trying to trick me into saying that you’re different? That perhaps I am in love with you?”
“I’m not trying to do anything except leave,” she demurred.
“Then leave,” he snapped. “If that’s truly what you want, I’ll take you to the mainland tonight.”
He’d called her bluff. What choice did she have? “Thank you. I’ll go and pack.”
At the sightof her retreating back, so ramrod straight, the bottom fell completely out of his world. He wasn’t sure what the hell had just happened, only he knew that he’d bungled everything. Everything. From the moment he’d acted on his feelings for Mila, he’d been managing a situation that was out of his control, betraying his best friend, pushing the boundaries with Mila, defying his own rules for relationships. And now, it had all exploded in his face.
“Mila, wait,” he groaned, breaking into a jog when she didn’t stop walking. His fingers caught her wrist, wrapping around it, tugging at her so she spun to face him, eyes sheened with an angry mist of tears. At least, he hoped they were tears of anger. He didn’t want to be the reason she cried; not from sadness.
“What?” She lifted her hands and pushed at his chest, but he caught both wrists then, easily, holding her hands between them, his body strong and dominant, her sweet fragrance driving his senses into overdrive. Having her there, so close, made him ache for her.
“I just want you to stay,” he said simply, even when there was nothing simple about that request. Nothing simple about what they were doing. “It feels wrong for you to leave.”
“You think I don’t know that?” She demanded ferociously; her frustration palpable. “I am in goddamned loved with you. I don’t want to leave. I want to stay with you, but not for a night, not for two nights, for all the nights of the rest of my life. How the hell does that work?” She demanded. “How do I stay knowing you don’t love me back? That you don’t want anything more from me than this very temporary, very transient affair? How do I stay knowing that means walking away from a career I have dedicated my life to? Something that I have wanted to achieve for so long I literally don’t remember a point in my life where this wasn’t the goal I would live and die by?”
“I’m not asking you to give anything up…”
“You’re asking me to give everything up,” she interrupted, pushing at his chest again. He stayed where he was, a wall of muscles. “The future we could have, the happiness, the love, the family.” Her voice cracked. “You don’t want that, at least not with me—,”
“Not with anyone,” he interrupted. “I never have. It’s just how I am. I tried to explain—,”
“You did explain. But my heart didn’t listen, Leo.” She dropped her head forward suddenly, so her brow connected with his chest. “I wish I had. I wish I didn’t feel this way.”
“I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“I know. You wanted to protect me.”
“Yes. And instead—,”
“You saved me,” she whispered.
“But at what cost?” He asked, the words dragged from deep inside of his chest, his eyes locking to hers, haunted and aching, and then, with a growl ripped from the center of his being, he kissed her, seeking her lips as if by touching her, by possessing her, he could put an end to all of this. There was such perfection in the way their bodies sparked off one another, it was a perfectionism he sought, a small piece of satisfaction in the midst of a sea of uncertainty.
“Don’t go yet,” he ground against her mouth, as their bodies pulled together and lowered to the grass beneath them, his on top of hers, pressing her downwards, feeling her curves, so familiar, so utterly a part of him that he hadn’t even realized. “I’m not ready to say goodbye.”
She sobbed; he tasted it in his mouth and knew he should stop, that this would only complicate things, but there was something more at work, something predetermined, destined, and his movements became more urgent, her cries urging him onwards, begging him, imploring him, so he thrust into her as though this would answer all their problems, as though this moment would provide clarity.
“I love you,” she cried out, and the world shifted, pain split him in two. For the briefest moment, he imagined what it would be like to say those words back, to offer himself to her completely, to share in the vision she held for their future, their family. But the very idea of that, of how much pain came from loss when you loved, had him pushing her words away angrily, possessing her with a fierce determination to blot out her love, rather than accept it.
“You want me,” he corrected. “Your body wants mine. That’s what this is.”
This time, when she sobbed, he saw the anguish on her face, because he was poised above her, and as painful as it was to register that expression, he was glad; he needed to remember that he’d done this to the most kind-hearted woman he’d ever known. He needed to remember how capable he was of breaking a person. He could never forget. And he could never again ask her to stay—the cost was too high. He’d already asked her to pay a price he hadn’t intended; that had to be the end of it. He had to let her go.
