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“You don’t deserve one.” She walked passed him and flicked the kettle on. “You didn’t just say the wrong thing, or hurt me by mistake. You set out to seduce me, for the sole purpose of what happened today. You told me to trust you, but you were playing a part the whole way through. You didn’t come to earlier meetings with William because it would ruin your dramatic moment. And so you let me suffer through them without your help. You haven’t been there for me, Hendrix. Not really.” She sloshed boiling water into a cup then fished a peppermint tea bag out of the canister.
“You made a thousand decisions this whole time, and each one was leading up to what happened today. So don’t act as though this wasn’t what you wanted. What you expected.”
His stomach was in knots. “What I want,” he groaned, “would be to take away every bit of hurt you’ve ever felt in life.”
“And when you’re the one who inflicted the worst of it?”
“I want to take it all away. I can’t … I’m lost. I need your help to figure this out. Because I believe, like you, that what we have is worth fighting for.”
“No.” She sipped her tea, pleased when it scalded her tongue, because it took away from the rest of the pain she was feeling. “We have nothing except a stage for disaster. But,” she put her teacup down pensively. “Do you really want to take away my pain? Do you really want to know what you can do to help me heal?”
“Yes,” hope flared in his chest for the first time since arriving at her flat.
“Then I need you to go.” Her eyes had a bleak ache in them. She lifted her fingers to her heart and rubbed, as though it could relieve the painful lurching. “I need you to walk out that door and never, not even if you think your life depends on it, contact me again. Don’t you dare call. Don’t you dare message. Don’t you dare send me flowers, or insult me with any other crappy romantic gestures. I will not let you hurt me again.”
“Chloe…”
“Do you know what I keep thinking about?” She changed the subject swiftly.
“What?” A reprieve? Hope renewed.
“Vous étiez tout ce que je serais attend. You were everything I’d been waiting for.” She closed her eyes. “I thought you meant that you had fallen in love with me at first sight, as I probably had with you. The minute my bag snapped and everything went scattering across your floor…” She shook her head to clear the memory. “Of course, you only meant that you’d been waiting for a chance to get back at William, and I’d come right to you.”
His tone was gravelly. “You were so much more than that.”
She fingered the rim of her teacup. “Not in the end.”
“Yes. In the beginning, the middle and the end. You are everything to me. You and Ellie. Please let me show you.”
“You have shown me. That’s my point. It’s very easy for you to stand here now and use these lovely words to try to convince me that you really are sorry. But you showed me today. You showed me just how you value me today.”
“I …”
“What would you do if Eleanor were alive, and this had happened to her? If some guy had done to Eleanor what you’ve done to me, what would you say? If she was falling madly in love with a man who intended to use her in the most vicious and heartbreaking of ways? If she had fallen in love with a man who knew a dreadful secret about her past, and her marriage, who intended to use that secret against her? What would you tell her to do?”
“Jesus!” He thrust his hands into his pockets. “I know! Everything you’re saying is right. You’re right. I’m not asking you to give me another chance because it’s the smart thing to do. I’m asking you to forgive me because I am in love with you.”
But Chloe had heard all of this before. Not from Hendrix, but from another smooth talking, far too handsome man. “And William?” She pushed, her tone cold now. “When William hit me the first time, and begged me to forgive him? And I did. I forgave hi
m. I believed he was sorry. And it didn’t make sense, but I gave him a second chance. And then, when he hit me again? I forgave him again. I finally learned that someone who hurts you, who’s prepared to hurt you, will always hurt you.”
Hendrix’s skin was ash grey beneath his tan. “I would never hit you.”
“Perhaps not.” Her smile was wan. “But what you did today hurt me far more than William ever did.”
And though he’d loved her for a long time, Hendrix was beginning to understand exactly what a person of value Chloe truly was. She was brave and she was unbreakable, and she was strong beyond belief.
“When I first left William, I bought a poster from the Seventh Street markets. It said, She needed a Hero, and so she became one. I hung it above my bed so that it was the first thing I saw in the mornings and the last thing I looked at each night.” Her eyes locked to Hendrix’s earnestly. “I wasn’t going to be a victim ever again. And I was going to teach my daughter that lesson too, by making good decisions.” Chloe’s voice snagged on unexpected tears. She pressed a hand into his chest, feeling his warmth and hating that she had to push him away. “I do love you, Hendrix. But I need to be rescued from you, and what you can do to me. I’m being my own hero.”
He wanted to beg her to be his hero, too. To rescue him from the wreckage he’d wrought from the most beautiful relationship he’d ever experienced. But he knew he loved her enough not to do it. He stroked her cheek gently, and then took a physical and mental step back. “You are the meaning of my life. If you ever change your mind, I will be waiting for you. If you ever need anything, I will be here for you. I will never forget you, and I will never stop wanting you. You will always be the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me.”
He kissed her forehead and left, before he lost the strength to do the one honourable thing he could.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The silence had become a deafening drone. His loft was a cavity, devoid of life and love now that Ellie and Chloe were no longer there. Every single room taunted him with the memories of what they’d had. What he’d had.
He had known loss before.
