Swim Deep - Page 72

Get out. Get out now.

“I’m sorry. God, Anna, I’m so sorry. You have no idea. Every day that’s gone by, every hour, I’ve fallen further and further into this hell of my own making, knowing what I’ve done to you.”

“I don’t care if you do burn in hell. I don’t want your apology. I don’t even know who you are.”

I grabbed the handle of my suitcase and started for the door. My lungs had locked. I couldn’t breathe. All my focus and energy was being channeled on forcing my feet to walk away from him.

“I know you think that I married you because you look like Elizabeth. You believe that I was so in love with her that I wanted her double after she died. But you’re wrong, Anna. Things had gotten so painful and toxic between Elizabeth and me toward the end. The last thing on earth I wanted was to be reminded daily of her, of the ashes or our marriage, or how helpless I was in stopping how bent she’d become.”

My feet stopped moving. I didn’t make a choice to look over my shoulder, but suddenly I stared at his face.

“I didn’t fall in love with you because you look like her. I fell in love with you despite that, Anna. Please,” he said, coming toward me slowly. “I know you feel like you can’t trust me right now, and I don’t blame you. But pause a moment. You’re angry now, and hurt. But that’s not all of your feelings. Once you walk away, once time passes, you’re going to realize that. And you’re going to want to understand. You’re going to want to make sense of it all, at the very least. If even a tiny bit of what you’ve felt for me was real, couldn’t that be enough for you to listen to my explanation for why I did it?”

“My feelings for you have nothing to do with this. This is about what you’ve done. This is about how you’ve manipulated me.”

“Yes,” he agreed emphatically. “I have manipulated you. In the beginning, I was coldhearted and ruthless about it, too. But that was before I met you. Before I understood how honest you were… how talented… how clean of spirit. God, you were everything that my life wasn’t, everything that could have been before I came here, before I met Elizabeth,” he gave a wild glance around the room. “Before I’d begun to breathe and eat the corruption and sickness of this place.”

I almost looked away, his misery—Pretended misery. It’s faked suffering, Anna—was so palpable. But at the same time, wasn’t this what I’d longed to see for so long? My husband without his guard up? Evan exposed?

Witnessing it now was horrible, but riveting.

“What have you got to lose by hearing my side of the story?” He waved toward the window. “It’s raining out right now, anyway. You should at least wait until it stops before you travel.”

The last tactic struck me as ridiculous, given the enormity of our situation. I laughed bitterly. “That’s what you bring up at a moment like this? My safety driving in the rain?”

“I bring it up, because believe it or not, I care about you. More than I’ve cared about anything in my life.”

“I told you never to talk about your supposed feelings for me again.” I turned to go, but he grabbed my elbow.

“I say it because it’s true. I’ve been worried sick about you ever since I brought you to Les Jumeaux.”

I rounded on him. “But not worried enough to tell me about your twisted plans to replace your dead wife with a double.”

He gave a rough moan and abruptly released my arm. He pressed his hands to his face, before fisting them into balls and dropping them to his side.

“It is twisted, all of it. Me. Elizabeth. Noah most of all. That much, I’ll admit with no argument. But it kills me to hear you say I wanted to replace Elizabeth? Why would I want to replace her? Elizabeth repulsed me, toward the end of our marriage.”

A shiver tore through me.

“That’s the real kicker of all this, Anna. The single most amazing fact, the one thing I still can’t wrap my head around? I fell in love with you, even when you look so much like the woman I’d grown to hate at times, and pity at others. You’re genuine and kind and unspoiled. You’re the type of light that cou

ld never touch her. No, he had choked off the possibility of anything truly good coming from Elizabeth years before I ever arrived on the scene.”

Chapter Sixteen

Despite my anger, I found him convincing. It terrified me, my vulnerability to him. He may be telling me the truth. He may be lying, as he’d clearly done before.

But the only tool I possessed was honesty.

“I don’t want to be hurt by you anymore, Evan. Let’s just say for the moment that you do care for me, which I doubt,” I added sharply. “Why wouldn’t you just let me go now, if that’s true? You’ve admitted that you’ve drawn me into something you shouldn’t have, that you’ve come to regret involving me in… God knows what? If you really cared, you’d let me go.”

One second passed. Two.

“You’re right. If you really want to go now, I’ll take you to the airport in South Lake. I use a private plane service out of there. I’ll arrange to have you taken anywhere you like.”

It felt as if someone pulled a plug on me. My legs went weak. I clamped my eyes tight against a surge of emotion.

“Anna?”

Tags: Beth Kery Romance
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