She didn’t understand. Nor did she understand the sudden constriction in her lungs.
“I needed to believe it, Laurel, because it was the only way to get rid of you. And make myself marry Olympia.”
“I don’t understand,” Laurel said again, her voice faint.
But then he hadn’t understood, either, not for for seven long, tormented, wasted years. Not until he’d stood in his father’s garden did he realise why he’d needed to believe in Laurel’s guilt.
She was looking at him with an uncomprehending expression that did not hide from him another emotion in her face, that self-protective withdrawal from him. It hurt him to see it—guarding herself from him from what he’d done. Done to her so that he could make the choice he never should have made.
“No more than I,” he said again. “But now I do. Now I know that I needed to accuse you, condemn you.” He took a breath that came from the bottom of his lungs, said what he had just flown two thousand miles to tell her. “Or I could not have let you go.”
Chapter Twelve
LAUREL’S HEARTSTARTEDto thud. Heavy, bruising strokes. Xander was looking away again, and an expression she could see filled his eyes. Sadness—and guilt.
“Though I married Olympia, making everyone happy, it seemed, it was always doomed to failure. Because you, Laurel, destroyed my marriage.”
Her eyes flashed, repudiation in them. “Don’t you dare blame me!”
He gave a negating shake of his head, his gaze coming back to her. “I don’t blame you. I blame myself.”
He took another breath. “All through my marriage I could not forget you, however hard I tried. However much I excoriated you as a liar and a thief to try and crush your memory, obliterate it. Trying, so fruitlessly, to make my marriage work. The marriage,” he said, “I should never have made. Because of you.”
For a moment Laurel was silent. What he had said churned within her. That he’d needed to believe her guilty. The tightness in her chest was like a vice. Yet it was a vice that was forcing her to speak, to answer him. The words, when they came, were low and painful. Hard to speak. They were new to her. Until this moment she had never known them. Now she spoke them. Making herself look at him. Say what she must admit—confess.
“I needed you to believe it too. I needed you to believe me guilty.”
He frowned, looked at her strangely, as if her words could make no sense. Slowly, she spoke again. “It was the only way to hate you, because of your accusations and condemnation. And I needed to hate you, Xander, because if I didn’t hate you, then—”
She broke off. She could not say more. Confess no more. Her heart was still thudding inside her. Deafening her. But not so she could not hear him speak now.
“And if I hadn’t clung on to your guilt…” He left it unspoken. “Making myself hate you for it…”
He broke off. Something was changing in his face, his eyes. Something that melted through her.
“Shall I say it for both of us?” he asked softly. “Say what would have happened if there had not been such cause for anger and hatred between us? Say,” he said, his eyes, filled now with so, so much, never leaving hers, “what would have happened? Should have happened?”
Xander’s voice was low and slow, and saying what had been impossible to say until now.
“We nearly fell in love, you and I, Laurel, seven years ago. Out there in the sun-filled Aegean days and in the moonlit nights.” He paused, his voice changing. “But I never let it happen. Instead, I threw you away, banished you from my life, because I didn’t have the courage to face what was happening between us, that it meant I must not marry Olympia, despite all the expectations that we should do so. When I saw her bracelet in your suitcase I knew I had found the means to go on being gutless.” Self-accusation lacerated him, but he deserved it.
He looked down at her now. Her face was still drawn, sadness etching the beauty that had captivated him. That he had thrown away because he’d lacked the courage to claim her, to win her love, to make his life, his future, with her. He’d taken the easy way out instead. Done what had been expected of him.
Failed catastrophically.
Wasted seven long pointless years.
And yet, all along, those years had not been wasted.
His thoughts went to the room above them, where his son slept.
Our son—the gift that I have been given by the woman I should never have thrown away.
That now he wanted only to reclaim.
Without realising what he was doing, he reached for Laurel’s hands, which lay inertly in her lap, and drew her to her feet. She came unresistingly, did not pull free. Emotion was full in him. So much emotion—seven long years of it.
He looked down into her eyes, which were lifted to his but still veiled.
