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Her hands push gently at my chest, as if asking me to release her.
“You’re going to have to shove me off,” I say, hoarsely. “I don’t have the strength to let you go myself.”
She does as asked, pushing at my chest with gentle forcefulness. I stumble backwards against the hallway wall behind me. Meanwhile, she closes her eyes and tilts her head up, resting it against the opposite wall.
Silence stretches as we wait for the sexual chemistry between us to fizzle out. The air is still thick from our kiss, the tension palpable around us.
Relief, which had been so quick to appear when I’d gotten her back in my arms, dies a quick death, replaced in its stead by a gaping wound that seeps poison into my bloodstream.
What if she never forgives me?
“Do you hate me?” I whisper, afraid of the answer. Afraid of the fact that I feel like I already know what the answer is.
Her eyes open and where I expected to find anger, I find pain and sadness instead. There’s a fracture in them that reflects the wound in my chest and it devastates me.
“I wish I hated you, Tristan,” she says, a single tear falling down her cheek. Her face doesn’t move and she doesn’t acknowledge it. I wonder if she even realizes she’s crying. “Hating you would be such a welcome distraction. Maybe then my anger would burn out and I could move on and forget you. But instead, I love you. And no matter how hard I try to kill that love, itrefusesto dim in any way. I can’t forget you, I can’t move on, but I can’t forgive you either. I’m stuck in purgatory and yearning for hell. So, what am I supposed to do? Am I just doomed to love someone who lied to me and betrayed me for the rest of my life?”
“You can choose to trust me again,” I urge, moving from my side of the hallway to hers. “That’s what you can do.”
“Last time I chose to let you in, you made me pay for that naivety in a pretty spectacular fashion,” she says, laughing humorlessly. “Why would I ever do that again?”
“I made one mistake, Nera. One. A terrible one and I deserve all your anger, resentment, and reprisals because of it, but it does not negate the fact that I am in love with you and I never intentionally set out to hurt you. I lie awake every night, unable to sleep without you by my side. I ask myself how you’re doing, if you’re taking care of yourself. If you think about me, if any guys are trying it on with you. There’s a fist of dread and rage that hammers my chest every time I think about someone else touching you. You haunt my dreams and reality alike. I feel like I can’tbreathewithout you. There is no Tristan that exists without Nera anymore.That’swhat I’m trying to make you understand. This wasn’t a fling or a distraction or a game for me. This,you, are the most important thing in my life.” Slowly, I reach for her. I cup her face with my hand, my thumb finding those cute little marks on her nose and brushing softly over them. Her dark, sultry eyes spear mine unwaveringly. “If you smile, I smile. If you hurt, I hurt. If you die,I die. Get it? I will be your shadow for the remainder of your days whether you like it or not.”
She closes her eyes and leans into my touch, unknowingly seeking the comfort of my embrace.
“I’m not ready to forgive you yet,” she whispers.
I hang on to that last word like a drowning man in the middle of an open ocean who’s been flung one tiny buoy.
I stroke her hair gently, secretly inhaling her scent like an addict. Notes of vetiver and vanilla hit my senses and loosen my muscles. She’s intoxicating in every way.
“Then make me suffer. I can take it,” I whisper back, “as long as I know you’ll come back to me one day.”
???
Chapter 49
Nera
June.
“Ahem,” Rhys says loudly. “Looks like we’re going to have lovely weather today.”
“Yes, quite,” Adélaïde, Sixtine’s mum, answers blushing heavily.
The three of us are standing in the hallway along with Rogue, Bellamy, and Thayer doing our best to ignore the noises coming from the bridal suite.
Minutes earlier, Phoenix burst in and demanded time with his fiancée before she walked down the aisle to him. We all knew exactly what he meant when he asked for ‘time’ but we’d hoped the walls would be thick enough to do away with any awkwardness.
We were wrong.
Passionate moans leak into the hallway once more.
“You really never know with English weather. Even in June it could be pouring rain!” Thayer adds even louder, coming to her boyfriend’s help.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Rogue says, exasperated. “Let’s just move further away so we don’t have to be subjected to this.”
He grabs Bellamy’s hand and tugs her along with him. The rest of us follow him to the end of the hall where a small round window looks out over the gardens.
