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I cut straight to the chase. “What’s going on, Rupert?”
He stared back at me with assured conviction. “I’m working with the Rebellion. They’re helping me put an end to the production of Bas on this island.”
I cocked my head to one side. “Is that all? It’s been six months. What have you been doing in the time I’ve been gone?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets and cut his gaze to the window. “I’ve been a dutiful son.” I detected a ton of bitterness on his tongue. He stared out of the window for a long moment then panned back to me. “But it got me to the heart of the business. I got the keys to the bank accounts, Ossian’s biggest customers, the suppliers, the schedule.”
My spine straightened in a bid to curb the hurt pumping through my heart. “And it got you a wife.”
He breathed out a tense breath. “Yes.”
I didn’t wait for an explanation or an excuse. “So now what? You sank a boat filled with supplies. That isn’t going to stop Ossian and Sinclair and you know it.”
“Do you know how the boat sank?” Rupert dipped his chin to level his gaze with mine.
I shook my head.
“We blew it up,” he said, calmly.
I jerked my head back as if someone had slapped me. “What? How?”
“We made an explosive device using a ton of fertiliser. It’s full of nitrogen,” Rupert said, matter of fact, as he walked to the window.
“That doesn’t answer my question. What now?”
His face darkened and he turned to looked sidelong at me. Even with half his face in shadow, he was painfully beautiful. His sharp jaw ticked as he assessed me and his solid chest pressed against his shirt as he maintained a steady breath.
“We’re getting a shit ton more delivered.”
“How?” Adrenalin coursed through me. “If you can get things on to the island, surely you can get things off too.”
He tipped his head back. “It’s not that easy.”
I stood, feeling the embers of anger catch fire in my belly. “Sure it is. If you can get a load of fertiliser past the people guarding the coast, you can get me past them too.”
He clasped both his hands to his face and hurled a muffled curse into them.
“Rupert.” I kept on. “I want to go home.” I stepped towards him. “After everything he put me through, how can you deny me that?”
His hands fell from his face and his eyes dragged to mine reluctantly. They looked tired but defiant. “I don’t want you to leave.”
If I hadn’t been sitting, his words would have knocked me over. “What?”
“I don’t want you to leave,” he repeated. “Not like this. I need another chance. I need to remind you of what we have. If I let you go now, all you’ll feel for this place is hatred, and I don’t want to be a part of that. I want us to be together.”
“Does what I just went through mean nothing to you?” My voice sounded as hollow as I felt.
He inched towards me and I curled my legs beneath myself.
“It means everything,” he replied through gritted teeth. “It’s changed everything. What he did… it’s fucked with your mind. It’s fucked with us both. But that was his intention. We can’t let him come between us like this. We have to be stronger than that.”
My legs trembled as I defied the urge to stand and scream. “You’re married Rupert,” I said. “You put a wife between us.”
He scrubbed his hands down his face, his eyes emerging tight and reddened. “Fuck,” he muttered. “I know.”
I watched the battle play out behind his features. I couldn’t see a way forward for us. Not now. And that thought killed me. When he helped me leave the island, he told me he’d come back for me. He told me to look after my heart for him, and I did. But too much had happened. I’d mistaken Ossian for Rupert, and Rupert had taken a wife. We’d crossed a bridge that burned down behind us – there was no route back.
Being in such close proximity to someone I’d felt one with more times than I cared to count, whom I could no longer touch, or crave, or love, made every inch of me want to curl up in a ball and weep.
