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She had to be strong now. Strong enough to withstand his justifiable anger, his raw hurt and whatever he threw at her. Strong enough to show him that she wasn’t running this time. Not ever again.
“You never gave me a chance to apologize for it. I’m sorry I never showed up. I... I went to a party I shouldn’t have gone to. I got...drunk and other things happened. By the time I came to the next afternoon, Leo told me you’d broken our engagement. You’d left that very morning without even saying goodbye.”
“I was there at the pool house where Kairos threw you the party.”
“No... You couldn’t have been. How?”
“Kairos drove me there. After I waited for an hour, he came by the greenhouse. He told me he had something to show me, something related to you. You’d been acting so strange that whole summer, I’d have followed the devil if he said he’d bring me to you.”
Aristos’s nostrils flared. “And?”
Mira grabbed his hands with hers. “I know that what I thought I saw was not true. What I thought you said is not the truth. I knew it even before tonight. Please, Aristos. You have to believe me. I didn’t need proof. I knew the truth.”
“What did you see, Mira?”
“You were sitting between two girls, shirtless, your...trousers undone. One of them was kissing your neck and the other had her hand on your...stomach. Your head was thrown back and...”
“Kairos spiked my drink. I was more than half out of it.”
“It wasn’t just that. He and that friend of his, they kept pushing you and finally you said,‘Yes. Fine. Leo bought her for me—a prize of good breeding. Yes, she’s boring and intellectual and not at all the sort of fun, party girl a Carides heir requires, but she brings his seal of approval. Marrying her means getting closer to the real power.’When they joked about you giving up your freedom just for power, you said,‘She’s the type you marry and have sons with.’And that it didn’t mean you’d stop partying with other women.”
Every exact word fell from her lips from memory, the words that had tormented her so much. “I ran from the room then and the most awful part was that he drove me back to the villa. He acted like he was my friend.”
Aristos rubbed his hand over his face, slow anger building in his eyes. It was a stillness that never took hold of him unless he was in the grip of a raging emotion. Dark stormy eyes met hers, that sinful mouth twisted into a bitter edge. “I wanted them to leave you alone. I wanted Kairos to leave you alone. All evening, all week, he and his gang of thugs had been asking questions about you. Wanting to meet you. Mocking you. Asking if I’d already... I just wanted them to shut up. I wanted them to leave us alone. I wanted them to think I didn’t give a damn about you. Or else they’d have tormented you like they did me for years. Especially since I was traveling so much and I couldn’t be there every minute with you. However much I wanted to.”
“I don’t need an explanation. I know now...”
“Do you,agapi? Are there any more sins that I should know about? You never trusted me, did you? You never thought I could be more than my alley cat morals.”
“That’s not true, Aristos. It was me, all me. I was so...insecure. You’d been gone all summer... You hadn’t even proposed to me. You’d been avoiding me for days before the engagement...”
“Because I was afraid that I’d push you to sleep with me when you might not be ready. Because I was afraid that I’d persuade you to elope with me and not wait the whole year like our grandfathers decided before we married. Because I was afraid that you’d sense my desperation to be near you, to keep you by my side, to own your heart like you owned mine.”
His angry declaration gouged a hole through Mira. Regrets upon regrets piled on her, making it hard to breathe. But she tried. “I... I was so in love with you, Aristos. But I didn’t trust it. I didn’t trust that I deserved it. I didn’t trust that such happiness, such love, such devotion...could be mine. It was like...” She closed her eyes, and drew a deep breath in. “I was waiting for the slightest sign for it to fall apart. And when Kairos showed you to me that night... All my fears came true.”
His hands on her knees, Aristos dipped his head until his forehead lay in her lap. And when he spoke, the words seemed to come from some far-off place. And Mira knew that even as he touched her with that reverence, even as he gave her the words she’d wanted to hear for years, she was losing him.
“He knew how much I loved you. He knew what it would do to me to lose you—the one person who didn’t care where I came from and where I was going. The one person who accepted me for whoever I was right then.”
“I did, Aristos. I loved you then and I love you now. I do. You’re my heart. You’re my everything. You’re my present and future and I...”
Shooting to his feet in an economic movement, he pulled himself away from her.
“A future based on a lie? Without trust?”
“No, a future based on us.”
“You married me thinking I cheated on you. Thinking that I had no morals.Christos, Mira, did you want a child that desperately? Were you going to forgive me with your generous heart?”
She stood up and wiped her hands over her face. “No, listen—”
“What if Kairos hadn’t made such an ass of himself that afternoon?” Aristos said, already making himself remote and inaccessible. “Would you have ever doubted what you saw? Would you have ever told me, asked me for clarification? Or would you have held that against me forever?”
Aristos ran another hand through his hair, making it stand up every which way, his lean frame trembling with anger and something else. And even in the grip of it, he gave her his hand when she tried to get up.
He released her fast enough though, as if even that minimal contact was unbearable for him. As if she’d broken his heart all over again.
And she had, she knew that now. She had broken his heart back then and she was doing it again. This wasn’t a short misunderstanding from fifteen years ago that they could get over with a proper talk. Because he’d loved her with that depth and intensity that only he was capable of and she’d thrown it back in his face. Once fifteen years ago, and now again.
