Page 93

The words came out with more conviction than I’d intended. When had the line between performance and truth become so fucking blurred?

She sighed. “You can’t possibly be serious about marrying me.”

“I can’t? And why not?”

“Well, for one thing, you don’t…love me. We don’t…love one another.”

I transferred the last of the frittelle to a plate.

“Is that what you need? Perfumed, poetic phrases of love and devotion?” I kept my voice low. Dismissive. As if she were being naive.

She played with the cuffs of the sweater. “No. I’m not saying that.”

“Then what are you saying?”

I placed a plate in front of her, then joined her at the table.

Beside her, not across from her. Deliberate. I wanted her to feel the heat of my body, the solid reality of my presence. A reminder that I was here. That I wasn’t going anywhere. That she had no choice but to accept what I was offering—whether it was real or not.

She picked up her fork but didn’t eat. The tines pushed a raspberry across the plate. “I know none of this has to do with me. It’s about whatever is happening between you and my father.”

I put down my fork. Truth wouldn’t serve my purpose—but Christ, the lie was getting harder to maintain.

I placed my fingers under her chin and forced her gaze to meet mine. “What if that were true in the beginning, but not now?”

Her eyes widened.

Hope. Raw and devastating in those blue eyes. I was handing her a weapon that would destroy her, and she was reaching for it like a gift.

I ran my thumb over her bottom lip. “What if you were so busy looking for conspiracies and betrayals that you missed what was happening between us?”

I kissed her.

Soft. Almost tender.

Then pulled back before she could deepen it.

Control. Always control.

“Maybe instead of trying to figure out my intentions, you should ask yourself why you’re so determined to deny how I feel about you.” I let the words land. “Why you’re so determined not to trust me.”

The allusion to her mother—all that suspicion and deceit—was not lost on her.

A cruel manipulation. Using her deepest wounds against her. I told myself it was necessary. That I was protecting her from her father by binding her to me. That the end justified the means.

Almost believed it, too.

“Do you really mean it, Sebastian? That you…love me?”

So fucking beautiful in her hope.

Hope I was manufacturing.

Hope that would shatter when she learned the truth.

But looking at her now, I wasn’t sure which truth would hurt her more—that I’d been lying from the beginning, or that somewhere along the way, I might have stopped.

I couldn’t say the words. Wouldn’t.