Page 144 of Carnal Wagers

He staggered to a halt just past the doorway, his back to me.

“And your surname?” he spat. “You going to find some subterfuge to explain away Marine for De Villier too?”

The words whipped out of him and slashed at me. The brutal angles of his shoulders rose and fell with each of his serrated breaths. There wasn’t even an edge of understanding in his bitter tone, and it snipped away my last fragile threads of hope. My heart crumbled into a paper ball.

“Your brother tells you something, and that’s it, you condemn me. You don’t check. You don’t talk to me. It’s that simple for you to get rid of me. Again.”

“Alice,” he growled.

It was better that he couldn’t see me right now. I didn’t think I had the strength to stay composed if I felt his contempt and saw it.

“Did you ever look through the first page of our divorce papers?” I wrestled with the neck gaiter and its constricting feel, with the need to get away from this small space and away from him. “Marine is my middle name. Alizé Marine De Villier. All the divorce papers I sent you list it. You would know that if you took even the smallest amount of time to look me up. But you never cared to. Not even when you were told the truth.”

I wiped-patted the foolish wetness trailing down my face and walked through the door to face the man who made me believe I was worth more than scraps of affection, only to steal it all back.

“Everything I ever told you about myself was true. What I do for work. My history. My likes. My dislikes. I revealed things to you I’d never said to anyone. I trusted you with them.”

Now he reached for me, but I stepped out of range.

“Did you spend even a moment thinking that maybe I wanted you to know who I was? That maybe every day we had together, I hoped you would realize who I was on your own? Did you never think that it hurt me that you cared so little about who I really was? It did. So much.”

“There was a reason behind my avoidance.”

“I don’t care. I deserved better. I’ve been patient with you, but now I’m done. Let’s see if you really have the stomach to kill the woman you supposedly love.”

I shoulder-checked him and strode back into the hangar-turned-lounge and gear facility. Somewhere, since him threatening my death, I lost the stomach for his crap. When he tugged me back around to face him, I twisted out of his hold with a sneer.

“What?” I snapped. “Not quite ready to send me to my death?”

If I’d been expecting any softening on his part, I’d have been in for a sorry disappointment.

“You should’ve stayed away.”

A throaty, humorless laugh cackled out of me. “Why? For you to ignore me for another eight years? To keep my life on hold for some narcissistic jerk who never spared me a thought? No, thank you. None of that serves me. I deserve to be thought of. Especially by myself.”

“So it was all a ploy? I should have known.”

My seduction plan stopped feeling like a ruse long ago, but I didn’t correct him. He was going to hear whatever fit the narrative he had spoon-fed himself since last night.

I sidestepped him, ignoring the curious glances a couple of employees threw us.

“After seven years, why now?” he growled, his stomps hammering after me.

“I got tired of waiting.”

“For what?”

“What do you think?”

“The divorce?” Again, he jerked me to a stop, and I glanced longingly around his shoulder at the athletic brunette waving us closer from ten steps away.

“Yes, what else, Cillian?”

A hiss of pure venom shot out of him, and I rolled my eyes.

“Oh stop. After the number of papers I sent you, did you really think I would forever stay in the shadows?”

“You didn’t seem to mind it for seven. Fucking. Years.” The menacing bitterness of his tenor ricocheted across the hangar.