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Now, the reserve was completely gone, and in front of him was a quietly confident woman dressed expensively in Chanel from head to toe.
“Hello, Kyr.”
He wasn’t able to answer right away. He was too stunned, but it wasn’t because she was here. In the back of his mind, he had always expected this would happen, and now that it had, he couldn’t understand why he felt so damn...blank.
“What are you doing here?” he asked finally.
The coldness in his tone made her flinch, but Kyr told himself he didn’t give a damn. He couldn’t believe she had the nerve to come here, especially now, on his wedding anniversary.
“I just want to talk...”
He hardened himself against the way her voice had unusually faltered, telling himself it was just nostalgia making him react to it.
“You’ve been ignoring my letters, my calls—-”
He flushed at the hurt he heard in her voice. “What do you expect?” But instead of sounding curt, he sounded...defensive. It had pleased him to have her calling and writing letters to him first, and it had pleased him even more to ignore all of it.
“I would never have come if you had just taken one of my calls,” Ana whispered.
“What did you expect?” he snapped. “I’m married—-”
A flash of her old fire in her eyes as she cried out, “And what? She’s forbidden you to talk to me?”
He looked at her coldly. “She doesn’t even know you exist.”
Ana’s jaw dropped. “But she’s my parents’ godchild!”
“Your parents are decent enough not to talk unnecessarily about the past to my wife,” he said curtly. While it didn’t surprise him at all that Ana knew who Polly was, a part of him did wonder how she had learned about it.
“And the others on the island?” Ana’s bitterness was evident in her voice. “I suppose they didn’t tell her either, out of loyalty?”
He didn’t bother to say anything, knowing that as someone born on Teleios as well, Ana knew just how deep everyone’s loyalty was to him.
He started to tell her it was time to leave, but when he turned to face her again, she was suddenly in front of him, and he sucked in his breath in surprise. This close, everything in the past came hurtling back, and he stiffened as all the feelings came back.
Hatred, despair, and love—-
He squeezed his eyes shut.
But he couldn’t get her out of his mind.
Ana, his Ana, the first girl, the only girl he had ever loved, and she was back.
Ana.
All his dreams from boyhood—-
Could they be his again?
Could he make them come true?
And it was as if she had heard his every thought, with Ana curling her arms around his neck, pressing her body close to his as she whispered achingly, “I’m so sorry for leaving you, Kyr. Please take me back. I’m begging you. Please, and we can have everything back again.”
Ana was begging him to take her back, just like he had always dreamed of.
It was his chance to destroy her the way she had destroyed him.
But the words were locked in his throat.
Ana.
The girl he had loved for over a decade, since he was fifteen, or maybe he had loved her even before that, since they had grown up together.
Ana.
The girl who had known him inside and out, who had been his equal in every way—-
Ana.
Her lips touched him.
At the same time, Kyr heard his wife’s voice behind him.
Chapter Ten
Pollyanna had never thought to question her knowledge of pain.
It was that feeling she had when failing a quiz after studying so hard. It was that feeling when she had fallen so hard for Kyrillos Gazis the first time, only to see him in her godparents’ home, his face telling her without words that he was going to leave her.
Later on, life had redefined pain for Pollyanna. Pain was the way she had suffered while giving birth to the twins. It had hurt, but it was the kind of hurt she would gladly undergo again, as long as it meant she would have her children with her.
Pain was fighting with her husband but knowing at the end of the day they would make up, and everything would be better again.
That was what she knew of pain.
And now, she realized sickly what she knew hadn’t been enough.
This was pain.
The sight of her husband breaking away jerkily from another woman—-
The knowledge that her husband had kissed that other woman—-
Pain was when the penny finally dropped, and she realized dazedly that she had just caught her husband in an act of infidelity.
No matter how long he lived, Kyr knew he would never forget that moment.
The way his wife had paled at seeing him with Ana—-
The way his wife had started to sway, as if the mere sight of him with another woman was like being stabbed—-
And most of all, he knew he would never forget and never forgive himself for the way Pollyanna let out a nearly inaudible sound of loss, like a small animal nailed helplessly to the ground—-
