‘Very well. I’ll take you back to Katanos.’
‘No,’ she said, quickly shaking her head again. ‘Not you. I think it’s better if we say goodbye here. I can take the train. I just need someone to drive me to the station.’
‘I’ll—’
‘No, not you,’ she stressed. ‘Please, Nikos. Just let me go, okay?’
What could he say to that? She’d given him two options. Love her, or let her go. He’d chosen the latter with barely a moment’s hesitation. And he would have a lifetime to live with the consequences.
The trip to the other side of Greece took almost six hours, and from there, she had to take a cab to her hotel, which was another twenty minutes. By the time she arrived, she was exhausted, having not slept more than a few snatched hours on the train over, and even those had been tormented by dreams of Nikos, by her desire for him, her aching for him, her grief for him. Because he deserved so much more, but he would probably never see that.
She would have spent a lifetime trying to make him see it, if he’d let her.
If he’d fought to keep her in his life, in any capacity, she would have stayed. But he was too good and decent for that, too traumatised by his belief that his marriage had, for his wife, been purely bad.
She stared out on Katanos as the taxi approached her hotel, but already, she was mentally pulling herself away from Greece, and the life she’d suddenly built here. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be, when the feelings were so one-sided. Besides, she had a life in America she needed to return to. The business of finding a job and finally putting her college education to good use, and, most importantly, the getting on with her own life.
In a way, she supposed she should have been grateful. She’d arrived in Greece feeling emotionally bruised and battered by James, but now she barely thought of the man she’d once been married to. All of her heartache, all of her heart, belonged to Nikos Konstantinou, and always would.
It was the sight of her engagement ring on the edge of the basin that finally got through to him. She’d left, he’d watched her go, but it was seeing that ring—which, for him, had been so meaningfully chosen—discarded as a totem of their time together that really hammered it home to him that she was gone, and because of him.
That he’d hurt her.
Failed her.
That in some ways, he was no better than her husband.
Or wouldn’t be, if he didn’t at least send her away with more than a panic-driven insistence that she leave.
Not five minutes later, the rotors of the helicopter were turning and he was lifting up, over Athens, his mind already focused on Katanos, and the beautiful woman he knew he’d find there.
Genevieve had been sleeping most of the day. Grief, exhaustion and depression had all caught up with her, and her brain had wrapped her in a protective mechanism, all but sedating her into a deep slumber, so she felt as though she were miles beneath the surface of the earth. So at first, she didn’t hear the banging on the door. But then, like a mallet or a ratchet, it burst through her dreams, meaning she woke up disorientated and alert, her pulse thrumming with alarm as her body wondered what was wrong.
‘Genevieve?’
Even through the door and across the carpeted floor, she knew instantly that it was Nikos. From the sound of his voice, but also from the ache in her heart. She moved quickly, pushing back the sheet and crossing the small hotel room, with absolutely no idea what time it was. The sun was up, but, as far as she knew, it could have been anywhere from midday to sundown.
She wrenched open the door and stared at him, her insides twisting with love and familiarity, with the recognition that she was looking back at her other half.
‘Don’t go,’ he said, drawing her into his arms and holding her hard against him. Hope flared in her chest, soaring like an eagle, out of control and brilliant. ‘Don’t go like this,’ he said, taking that hope and strangling it into nothing.
‘What does that mean?’ she asked, pushing back to look up into his face. The expression there almost wrenched her apart.
‘I can’t let you go,’ he ground out. ‘I thought I could, but I need to know that, no matter where you are, you’re okay. I need to know you’re safe, protected. I need that like I need air.’
Her stomach dropped to her toes. ‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m saying I can’t be with you,’ he said, cupping her cheeks and staring down at her with every bit of intensity he possessed. ‘You know me better than I know myself; you know why I feel as I do.’
She swept her eyes closed against the assault of his desperation. ‘You love me,’ she whispered, knowing it was true.
‘I can’t be with you,’ he said, simply.
‘That’s not an answer.’
‘Isn’t it?’
Her eyes blinked open to face his and she saw the resolution there, the determination to stick to this viewpoint, no matter how painful it was to both.
