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Mariana knelt beside John, reaching her hand out. With love. She reached for him with so much tenderness, so much despair, that it took everything inside Dornan to stop himself from putting the gun in his own mouth and pulling the trigger. Had she ever looked at him like that?
‘Don’t fucking touch him,’ Dornan said, jealousy surging through him as he aimed the gun at the woman he’d loved.
She swallowed thickly, guiding the gun up to her forehead. ‘Do it,’ she urged, tears streaming down her face. ‘DO IT!’
He grabbed her, pulled her back to her feet. He wanted to kill her. He wanted to save her. He wanted to take it all back.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said hoarsely. ‘For everything.’
She was sobbing, staring at John.
‘Ana. He’s not waking up.’ Dornan just needed to ask her one question. ‘Ana?’
She waited for his next words, searching his face.
‘The way you . . . looked at him. Did you ever feel like that about me? Or was it love because you needed me? Because the alternative was too much to bear?’
Her eyes flashed with emotion as she stepped back to him, taking his face in her bloody hands. He heard her chest rattle when she breathed and sobbed all at once.
‘I looked at you like that,’ she implored, her gaze the truest thing he’d ever seen. ‘I looked at you all the time.’
‘I didn’t see it,’ he said, his resolve faltering, his gun dropping to his side.
She shook him, and he let her. ‘You were too busy looking at everyone else!’ she cried. ‘All I ever wanted was you, don’t you understand, Dornan? All I ever wanted was the man who saved me. He was my everything.’
He wanted to hold her to his chest and never let her go. He wanted to give her fat babies and a house she could feel safe in, and most of all, her freedom. Her own name. He’d always wanted those things for her, but right now, more than ever before, he saw the life they could have had, he saw thebaby he’d killed as if it had survived and been born happy, he saw every single thing that would have happened if he’d played a different hand.
He wanted to make it right.
It would never be right.
He staggered back, pushing her away. ‘Go,’ he said hoarsely.
‘Dornan,’ she protested, reaching out.
‘Go!’ He gritted his teeth. ‘If you touch me again, Ana, I will grab onto you, and I will never, ever let you leave me. We’ll end in blood when I decide, and we’ll end together. It won’t be pretty. I’ll take everything from you, whether you give it to me or not.’
She shrank away like he was fire and she’d burn if she touched him. ‘If you loved me, you wouldn’t.’
‘I loved Juliette!’ he roared, and for the first time he let the weight of what he’d done to John’s daughter sink into his bones. Fifteen years ago, he’d watched her be born. He’d taken care of her. Today, he’d tortured and raped her and left her for dead. The girl who’d been like a daughter to him. The girl who’d been punished for her father’s sins.
Why can’t we ever turn back the fucking clock?
Still, Mariana didn’t move.
‘GO!’ he repeated.
And then, just as he’d decided to reach out for her, she turned on bare feet and fled.
Don’t chase her. Don’t fucking chase her.
Dornan turned slowly away. Every bone in his body screamed to go after her, until he saw John. Fuck. He crumpled to his knees beside his friend, the floor slick with blood, and shook his friend.
‘John,’ he whispered. ‘Johnny Boy.’
Dornan let out a guttural sound, the sound an animal makes when its child has been killed. With much difficulty, he shifted John’s dead weight onto his lap, his tears falling down onto his friend’s still face, a face now marred with a perfect round bullet hole, smack in the middle of his forehead.
‘John,’ he whispered. ‘Brother.I’m sorry.’
