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And then he gets up, dusting off his jeans as he walks to get the horses.
He doesn’t look back.
22
GABRIEL
I’ve never felt anything like the riot of emotions inside of me in my entire life.
Bella’s answer was like a knife through the heart. I told her that I didn’t understand what she meant—but I think I do. She doesn’t want me touching her like that because of what our marriage is. Because of why it was arranged—the thing she hates the most. Because she believes I don’t love her.
Because I can’t make myself say it aloud.
I want to fucking scream. I want to curse. I want to hit something. A hundred violent emotions boil up inside of me as I walk to collect the horses, mingling with the aching frustration of being so completely aroused with no outlet, and I shove them all down hard, gritting my teeth against the feelings.
At the end of the day, I need to protect Bella. That’s all there is to it. If my desires are another thing she needs to be shielded from, then I’ll do that, too. Even if it feels like it’s going to fucking kill me.
I can still smell her on my fingers. Still feel her on my lips. Wanting her feels like a second pulse, throbbing through me. But if she wants something different, then I’ll make sure that’s what she has.
She manages to get back onto Honey on her own, and that feels like another dart to the chest, because all I can think is that it means she doesn’t want me to touch her. I get back up on Thunder, wincing at the discomfort of trying to ride with a still more than half-hard cock, and turn back in the direction that will lead us back home.
Except it’s not home. Temporarily, maybe, but not forever. Another mistake I guess I’ve made with Bella, because I know that choice has disappointed her. And who knows what might have happened if I’d chosen differently.
Halfway through the ride back, she finally speaks up.
“I’m going to leave, when it’s safe.” Her voice is heavy, flat, as if the decision doesn’t bring her any happiness. “I can’t keep doing this to you. And we know we can’t go back to the way it was before. So once it’s okay to go back to New York, we’ll get a divorce. And I’ll find somewhere to go on my own. It’s—” she draws a shaky breath. “I think it’s for the best.”
I hadn’t thought the pain in my chest could get any sharper, any more intense. But hearing her say it aloud, with finality, feels like the kind of pain that I haven’t felt since Delilah died. A feeling of having something vital severed from me, a loss I won’t entirely ever get over.
“Without really trying.” The words come out more sharply than I intended, but my ability to measure them, to speak carefully, feels fragile and uncertain right now. “We could try, you know, Bella. We could try to make something out of this.”
“You promised.” Her voice is still flat, as if she doesn’t want me to know what she’s really feeling. “You said that if I wanted to go, I could. Did that change?”
“No.” I swallow hard, glad that I’m in the lead so that I don’t have to look at her right now. Somehow, the argument hasn’t lessened my desire for her. It hasn’t changed how much I want her. I’d still get down and pin her against one of these trees if she said she wanted me right now, fuck her in the middle of the trail if that’s what would turn her on. I’d do anything she asked, if it meant getting to feel her wrapped around me one more time.
“Then that’s it.” She goes quiet for a long moment. “It doesn’t make me happy, Gabriel.”
“Then why are you doing it?” It feels like a fair question, all things considered.
“I think it’s what I need to do.”
She doesn’t elaborate, and I don’t know what to say to that. After all, I helped facilitate this. I gave her the keys to her independence. Money of her own, the beginning of learning to drive a car, a first job. I wanted her to be free to do whatever she pleased, to have the possibilities that everyone else tried to deny her. And I don’t regret it.
Even if it means losing her, I would never want to keep Bella in a cage. I just wish that she’d stay with me of her own free will.
Maybe she would, if you could tell her how you feel. I regret not saying it, before I tumbled her into the grass. I regret not saying it that afternoon after we came back from town. I regret so many times when I wanted to say it aloud, and didn’t—and now, it feels even more impossible, because she’s said out loud that she’s going to leave.
Now it feels like it would be less of a confession, and more of a last, desperate attempt to keep her. Now, I don’t even know if she would believe me.
The rest of the ride back is silent. Not a word is spoken on the drive back up to the house, and Bella goes straight inside, up to the shower in her bedroom, not mine. I wonder, grimly, if it’s because she knows I have things that I need to take care of.
Frustratingly, my erection doesn’t seem to have gotten the instruction that I’m no longer in the mood. Jerking off in the shower at this point feels more like maintenance than anything else. But as I get under the hot spray, my hand wrapping automatically around my aching length, all I can think about is Bella. Her mouth, her body, the way she sounds when I touch her, when I make her come. I feel certain that I’m going to think about her while I jerk off for the rest of my fucking life. That I’ll never take another woman to bed that will even come close to comparing to her.
And I’ve lost her before she’s even really gone.
Once I’m out of the shower, dressed, and slightly more in my right mind, I call Gio. He answers immediately, his voice crisp and to the point as always.
“I have news.”
