Chapter Eleven #3
Worse than having her break up with him because her parents had demanded it was this: living alongside her quiet, brutal contempt.
Knowing that she was choosing to ice him out, not because her parents didn’t see any value in him, but because she didn’t.
He was in freefall, and all of his usual anchor points were insufficient to stop it.
Just looking at her made the whole world lose its shape.
The following night, when Annie announced yet another public engagement—this time, the opening of a restaurant followed by drinks at the pier—he’d almost snapped at her that he was sick of being dragged around town for the sake of photographers before remembering that it had been his requirement, not hers. She was simply living up to it.
When she appeared in the living room in yet another stunning dress that showed way too much skin, he ground his teeth together and tried to ignore how much he wished they were just staying home.
They’d made their point. Their photograph had been splashed over the tabloids. Everyone knew about their marriage.
‘Can you be bothered going out again?’
‘I wasn’t aware I had a choice.’
His gut felt like it had been washed in acid. ‘Don’t say that.’
She tilted her chin, glaring at him. ‘I’m doing what you asked of me. If you’ve changed your mind, fine. I’m just as happy to stay in.’
But she wasn’t happy. Annie was anything but, and it was all because of him.
He ignored the pain in his chest, the feeling of something beautiful being tarnished forever.
‘No, you’ve made the reservation. We’ll go out.
’ At least when they were out, she pretended to like him.
Here, at home, he couldn’t escape her silent judgement, and it was eating him alive.
‘Great,’ she smiled, over-bright and clearly false. ‘I’m ready when you are.’
The restaurant was in an industrial part of the city that had gradually become a haven for exclusive bars and clubs, though Theo couldn’t for the life of him say why.
He presumed it had started as some kind of ironic joke, but now some of the most exclusive haunts in the city were in between abattoirs and box factories.
He couldn’t fault the decor of the restaurant though, nor the menu.
He sat opposite his wife and made the obligatory small talk, admiring the way she volleyed it back, as though she wasn’t hating him the whole time.
They were interrupted often, by people he knew, or she knew, or sometimes, people who knew them both, and for Theo’s part, he was as equally glad for the interruption as he was resentful of it.
It gave him a momentary reprieve, while also allowing him to watch her at work.
To watch the way she assumed a role so easily—not because he’d asked her to, this time, but because he suspected she’d been doing it all her life.
Being who she was expected to be. Playing a part.
Being Mary. Then her mother. Being whatever was needed of her, always putting other people first, always being what was needed, not what she wanted.
Had that been true of her then, too? Had she been that way with him—playing the role of what she believed he wanted?
He’d thought not. He would have sworn the Annie he’d spent time with was true to herself, to the woman she wanted to be, but how could he know? She’d been so perfect for him, their time together so—right—but maybe that was down to her acting skills?
As Annie spoke to the two women who’d approached their table, Theo looked at her without really seeing.
No, he was back in time, in the water at the island, making love to his wife in a way that was totally real, without pretense, without make-believe.
That had been an act of total honesty—his need, her need, raw desperation and hunger, bringing them together, bonding them in a way he’d resented at the time, because it had been her first sexual experience. Now he felt so differently about that.
Everything felt flipped on its head, and he hated it. He wanted to see the real Annie again, to strip her back to the essence of who she was, before this play-acting had come into the equation.
The waiter appeared to clear their plates, and the women dispersed with a manicured wave in Annie’s direction, which Theo barely noticed.
‘Let’s go back to the island.’ And until he heard himself say it, he hadn’t even been aware he was going to suggest it.
For a second—barely even a second, in fact—her mask slipped, and she looked at him like he’d sprouted two heads.
‘Why?’
Great question. But now that he’d made the suggestion, he found himself wanting to see it through. He leaned forward, an intensity in his gaze, as if he could make her understand if he just looked hard enough. ‘To get away from this.’
Annie compressed her lips in a gesture he was intimately familiar with: contemplation. She was trying to make sense of his statement. ‘This is what you wanted.’
And she was right. This had indeed been what he’d originally envisaged, back in Sydney, when she’d come to him for help.
And he’d responded by blackmailing her. His chest seemed to compress, as though a cement truck had dropped its entire load on him.
So much had changed since then, not least of all his certainty that this revenge plan was wise. ‘Now I want the island.’
Her lips pressed together again, harder, so her mouth was white-rimmed, and her eyes showed something a lot like panic. ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea.’
‘Are you saying no?’
‘Am I allowed to say no?’
That cut right through him, and he felt almost as though he couldn’t breathe, as though he were drowning. The last thing he wanted was for her to feel trapped. ‘Annie…’ He leaned forward. ‘No one forced you into this. No one is forcing you to stay.’
Desperation contorted her features. ‘Really? If I asked to leave, wouldn’t you just point out that we have an agreement?’
He hated that she was right. He hated that she evidently felt trapped.
But most of all, he hated the fact that if he were to invoke their agreement to get her to stay, he knew now that it had less to do with the terms they’d reached and more to do with him just wanting her in his life a bit longer.
Acknowledging that to himself was like leaping off the edge of a building.
It was a warning, and in an instant, his whole mindset shifted.
They couldn’t go back to the island. They couldn’t do anything that would strip away their barriers, and draw them closer together.
He refused to weaken where Annie was concerned. Never again.
‘Are you saying you want to leave?’ His voice was grim, and already he was preparing for the reality of that. She’d walked away from him once, and he’d known she’d do it again. Was he really surprised?
‘Please, let’s not do this here.’ She smiled tightly, for the sake of the audience, but he couldn’t wipe the stern insistence from his own features. ‘We still have the bar to go to,’ she reminded him. ‘I don’t want to fight.’
‘I’m not fighting.’
‘Nor am I.’
‘You’re implying that you don’t have any autonomy in this marriage. That’s not true.’ He had to hear her deny it. He had to hear her agree that she’d walked into this with her eyes open.
She pulled a face. ‘I told you, not now.’
And the fact she couldn’t give him the reassurance he suddenly needed was like a storm cloud breaking over his world. Everything seemed different, seen through that lens. ‘Then let’s go home. I’m not in the mood to preen around in some bar so we can get our photo taken.’
She flinched. ‘I thought that’s exactly what you wanted.’
‘No. All of Athens knows we’re married, including your father.
Job done. Let’s go.’ He scraped his chair back abruptly, dropping some money onto the table and holding out a hand to her.
She stared at it for a long time and his heart dropped at what he felt to be yet another rejection: not touching him.
‘Annie.’ His voice was meant to be a plea, but he supposed it could also have sounded vaguely like a warning, if she was intent on seeing him as some kind of monster—and why wouldn’t she?
Her fingers trembled when she put them in his palm.
He closed his own around them, in an effort to bring stillness, and when she got to her feet, he pulled her close to his body. ‘We need to talk.’
He didn’t know what he’d say, but with every single fibre of his intuition, he knew this was no way to live—even for eighteen months.
He was not going to subject her to it, not for all the revenge, or all the money, in the world.
Even when he desperately wanted her to stay, it wouldn’t be like this. It couldn’t be.