Chapter 11 #3
“No,” she pushed his chest again. “You don’t understand.
Seeing you with her … I can’t … I won’t ever let myself be with a man I don’t trust. This isn’t a month ago.
I don’t feel that now. I don’t want you.
I don’t want you. I don’t want you.” The words fell from her mouth as tears poured from eyes.
“He hurt me. And you hurt me. And now I just don’t want to be hurt for a while. ”
Thaddeus nodded but he couldn’t accede her point. “What if I tell you I won’t? What if I tell you I just want to talk? We did not eat dinner. Let’s go and find something, somewhere, and talk.”
“No.” She blinked, trying desperately to stem the flow of tears. “I don’t want to eat.”
“Saphire …”
“It’s too late. Don’t you see that?”
“You left me and I was angry. Very angry.”
“I know.” It was a whisper. “I told you, I regretted it. As soon as I got back to London I knew what a mistake I’d made.
It was like a horrible dream.” She blotted her eyes with her fingertips.
“I couldn’t go home. I stayed in a hotel, trying to sort the mess of my life out.
And all I could think about was you. And the island. And the fact I’d never felt happier.”
“It’s still there,” he groaned, the words shocking him as much as they did her.
“No, it isn’t! Don’t you get that? If I ever went to that island again a part of me would die. It’s all wrapped up in you. I came to Athens needing, above all, a friend, and instead I got the worst version of you. A version of you I didn’t even know existed.”
The charge hurt for its truth was undeniable. “I have never experienced a loss like your departure.”
“But I came back. As soon as I was free to be with you, I came back.”
He leaned against the wall. The fight was leaving him. “I can’t lose you.” A simple statement; and also a request.
She nodded, but her heart was hard to him now. “You already did. You lost me a month ago when you let me walk away. When you told me I was just sex to you and that you’d replaced me with her.”
“I should never have said that.” He swallowed and a muscle jerked in his cheek. “I wanted to make you feel like I had. It was petty. I regret being so childish and unkind.”
“I don’t care.”
He reached for her hips and pulled her against him. To his surprise, she came. The second her body melded to his he felt a lightning bolt of comprehension; everything fell into place like the pieces of a puzzle clicking without any effort.
“Cassandra left after you did. She did not come to my bed.”
Saphire stared at his lips; she was mesmerized. She would stand up again soon; she would put the vital distance between them. But not yet. “If I hadn’t been waiting for you, she would have though.”
They were moving into a dangerous territory. “I had spent every moment since you left imagining you making love to another man. I was almost out of my mind with jealousy.”
“So you were going to try my trick? You were going to punish me by sleeping with someone else?”
“Actually, I was hoping to forget you.”
She nodded, and now she pushed up from him, stepping back on the footpath. A car hurtled past but neither of them heard its rumbling engine.
“I think that’s the right idea. We should forget each other,” she said with an attempt at coldness.
“That is never going to work,” he remarked simply.
“Eventually it will.” She shook her head.
“Or maybe it won’t. But I can’t go through this again.
Don’t you get it? I’m in the middle of a divorce.
My life is a mess. I’m finally doing something that I love, for the first time ever, and I just want to be good at it.
I want to wake up in the morning and smile; not to feel like I have this weight pressing down on my chest.” She squeezed her eyes shut on the emotions that were slamming into her.
“I miss you so much it hurts but I know I can’t make this mistake again. ”
“If you miss me then give me time. Let’s start with dinner tonight.”
“No.” She took another step backwards, and now she lifted her hand in the air to hail a taxi. One blinked its lights from a distance away. “I’m so tired, Thaddeus. I’m tired of hurting. I’m tired of feeling like this.”
“Then don’t.”
She opened the door to the taxi but he put a hand on it also, holding it steady and preventing her from slipping inside.
“Remember how you felt on my boat? Remember how we danced beneath the stars? Remember how everything in our world was perfect and right? Come back in time with me. Dance with me. Feel like that again.”
“Can you go back in time?”
“We can,” he promised her throatily.
She shook her head. “It’s a fantasy.” She reached up and pressed a kiss against his cheek and then sat down in the taxi. “It was all a stupid fantasy.”
He watched her drive off with a sense of despondency unlike anything he’d ever known. Thaddeus had been a reluctant bedfellow with rejection. He could count on one hand, with fingers spare, the number of times he’d failed in either his personal or professional lives.
He felt it now, though. He had failed. But if there was one thing Thaddeus Konstanides didn’t accept willingly, it was failure.