Chapter Forty-Five
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
S HE’D MADE IT NOT TEN STEPS OUTSIDE OF THE MANSION BEFORE his voice reached her.
“Miss Cross? Miss Cross?”
Miss Cross. So they were back to it, were they? Pretending.
A shaky breath. Then, she stopped and turned. “Yes, Mr. Gallier?”
He flinched at the sound of that name. His false name. But she didn’t care. Let him hurt.
“I … I don’t know what to say.”
“Say?” She laughed, though it clattered through the air like a poorly crafted joke. “What is there to say?”
Thomas straightened to his full height. Evelyn watched as he took firm control of his emotions and settled back into that dead-eyed coldness of his. “You couldn’t have expected us to last forever, could you? We were both using each other. You needed me to save your career. I needed to sow my wild oats before I became a real gentleman. You are not fashionable, accomplished, rich, wholesome, or connected enough to last. This relationship always had a natural conclusion—you always said so yourself. This just happens to be what that conclusion looks like.”
Evelyn had been hit by many men in her life. Once, she’d been beaten so badly she lost a month of bookings because she couldn’t even spread her lips to sing.
She’d never been hurt by a man as badly as she was in that moment. Looking at the man she loved, wondering if it had all been in her head.
“You have made your choice. You’ve made it very clear why. In a contest with your ambition, I couldn’t win,” she said, voice wavering. “You don’t have to hurt me.”
“I’m not trying to hurt you. If the facts hurt you, then that is entirely your problem. I’m simply laying them out. You cannot ever crawl back here—back to me.”
Oh. It was so obvious now. She knew what he was doing.
Trying to break her heart. Trying to make it seem like he hadn’t ever cared. Because if he was a heartless cad who’d manipulated her, then she wouldn’t see him for what he really was, what he’d always been, what she’d always feared he was:
A coward who cared more about his status than his heart. Just what she’d always feared—a rich man who abandoned her the second she fell for him.
In that moment, her pain ignited into white-hot rage.
“Crawl back to you?” She let loose, no longer concerned with anyone overhearing. Let them hear. Let them know what kind of man he was. “You think I would ever crawl back to you ? You love me and you’re throwing it away and now you suppose I could ever want you again ? You are a spineless, weak, pathetic man who has everything and still traded it for an illusion. You think these people have power? You think they’re worth a damn? You think they’ll make something out of you? You’re wrong. It’s smoke and mirrors. What we do at The Empire is fake as cardboard trees and still we’re more real than the whole lot of them put together. And that’s what you’ve traded our love for, Thomas. You bargained away something real for a lifetime of fake . That mask you wear, this character you play? That’s all you will ever be now—all they’ll ever let you be.”
In her speech, she’d subconsciously stepped forward until they were almost nose-to-nose. Even then, he didn’t blink. Evelyn’s heart collapsed in on itself.
“You know what?” she breathed, her words vanishing to clouds in the cold air. “I actually don’t think I’m hurt. I think I feel sorry for you.”
Thomas’s hands flexed. “Why?”
“Because you showed me how to love. How to really love, not just play-act at it. And now that I know how, I have years ahead of me to love again. But you? You couldn’t really love someone if you had a thousand hearts to give and a thousand lifetimes to try.”
“You don’t understand. And you never will,” he growled.
“Then explain it to me,” she challenged.
For a moment, she thought he might slap her. Or kiss her. Or explain himself.
But then, a sweet, thin voice rang out from the steps of the mansion. The voice of his fiancée.
“Mr. Gallier? Mr. Gallier?”
He turned at that sound. And Evelyn knew it was all over. “You’d better run, sir. That’s your future calling.”
His shoulders tensed, and she knew she had his attention. “I really am happy for you, you know. I’m sure the two of you will be very rich together.”