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“How can you expect me to believe you? You can’t believe your parents can see something in you to love and when y-you told me that you n-never loved me, you made me think there wasnothingin me to love either.”
He started to speak, but she shook her head at him. “You told me that every day when we were apart, you died. Well, I died, too. But the difference was I couldn’t let anyone see it. I was so sick with depression and I couldn’t let anyone know about it. I had to hide it from my parents when I started getting treatments in a clinic. I couldn’t ask anyone for help because I was too ashamed.” Tears choked her voice as she made the agonizing admission. “I was so ashamed about being the smug idiot who thought I could make someone like you love me—-”
“But I do,” he grated out, his heart squeezing tightly in his chest at the fears Bobby exposed about herself. He closed his eyes for a moment, his mind crowded with images of Bobby being literally sick with the pain of his abandonment.If he had known, he thought with agony.God, if he had only known!
“I’m so damn sorry, Bobby. I thought that I was only punishing myself when I stayed away from you all this time. I thought you would need the time away from me to heal.” He took her face in his hands, wiping the tears away with his thumbs.
“That’s the last time I’d ever be stupid enough to unknowingly hurt you, Bobby,” he said fiercely. “I swear to you, from this day on, I’ll hurt myself first, I’ll expose myself first before I ever risk hurting you. Because now I know...”
There was something in those words that made Bobby catch her breath, something that made her so terrified of what he knew – of what he found out – that made her struggle against his hold.
But he was too strong, and his voice, once he started to speak, encompassed her whole world until there was no escape.
“Now I know, Bobby. Whatever you said or did, now I know the truth.”
“No,” she whispered. “No, you don’t—-”
The pain he had unintentionally subjected Bobby to last year should have made her despise him with all her heart. But she hadn’t. She couldn’t.
“You love me, Bobby. For better or for worse, you love me the way I love you, and there’s no stopping it.”
Chapter Ten
Bobby made a dash forit.
She didn’t care about where she was going or how she would leave his place when she didn’t even have a car or money to pay a cab. All she knew was that she had to leave and escape Leandro before – before –
She had to leave before he completely owned her again.
Bobby kicked him, hard enough to take him by surprise, and Leandro released her with a muttered Greek expletive. It almost felt like déjà vu but she didn’t waste a moment, scrambling past him so she could run towards his front door.
“Not so fast, mégaira.” Leandro caught her just before she could cross the living room and spun her around with a jerk of his arm.
“Let go of me,” Bobby shrieked, and then she shrieked again when she realized that he was quickly unbuttoning her blouse. “What are you doing?” She forgot all about trying to escape as she tried swatting away his deftly moving fingers.
Leandro didn’t bother answering, his concentration fully focused on the all-important task of getting Bobby naked as soon as possible. They were done talking and raking over old coals. The truth was out now, and it was time to do something they had always had no problem seeing eye to eye on.
