I nearly got knocked onto my butt with the frenetic energy that blazed back.
Heavy footsteps pounded from the bedroom at the back, the walls trembling and the air screaming with pain.
Warily, I inched that way, my breaths coming short and my pulse ratcheting in anxiety. By the time I made it to the bedroom doorway, my head was dizzy, and my heart careened in a manic beat when I found Leif there.
As hard as he’d ever been.
Every muscle in his body stone.
Jaw grit.
Hatred in his movements as he frantically stuffed his things into a bag.
Horror etched every cell in my body.
“Wha-what are you doing?”
He didn’t even flinch. Already well aware I was there.
“Leaving.”
It didn’t matter that his intention was already plain as day, the word jolted me back.
Like I’d been impaled by an arrow.
All the way through.
“What? Why? What happened?” I stumbled into the room. Knees weak. Trying to hold it together.
He zipped up the bag. He refused to look at me as he slung the backpack over his shoulder. “Just time to go.”
He shouldered around me.
Was he kidding me?
Anger surged. A crashing wave that slammed against the heartbreak that sliced through my chest.
I reached for him, my hand curling around his wrist. Fire streaked up my arm. This man who I was connected to in some intrinsic way. “Don’t you dare walk out on me, Leif Godwin.”
He jolted like he was shocked, his voice haggard, refusing to look at me. “Don’t make this any harder than it has to be, Mia.”
“Any harder than it has to be?” My head shook. Frantic. Disoriented. “I trusted you. Put my faith in you. Took all your reservations because I could see that you were haunted by your demons. I took on that pain, Leif, and I let it break me.”
I touched my aching heart. That place that he held in the palm of his hand.
I angled around, trying to get him to look at me. To listen. To hear me. “And you know what, it was worth it. It was worth it because we met there. In the middle of it. In a place that was just for us. And from it, you promised we were going to build a life together. That we were going to make this thing work.”
He whirled around, spite on his tongue as he released the foul-words into the bitter air. “Yeah, and I also promised you that I was going to ruin you.”
“You’re a liar.”
His face blanched at my accusation.
White as a ghost.
Grief curled around me. Terrified of whatever was happening in his dark, bleak mind.
I pressed on, refusing to let him just walk out.
“You’re a liar,” I repeated, “if you say this doesn’t mean something. You’re going to stand there and pretend like you don’t want me? That you don’t feel me? Pretend like you don’t know that we belong together?”
His sorrow darkened the atmosphere.
Finally, he looked at me.
Those sugar-brown eyes held nothing but torture.
His soul slaughtered.
“You’re right, Mia. I am a liar. I’ve been lying to myself. Telling myself that I could possibly have this. That I could have you. That I might in some small way be deserving of those kids.” He pointed aggressively in the direction of the guest wing. “Time to give up the ghost. Because guess what, those ghosts are here for me.”
“What does that mean?”
“Means I can’t fucking have you, Mia.”
“No.” My head shook, and a sob crawled up my throat. “No. I . . . I know you’ve experienced the worst kind of sorrow in your life, and I know the kids’ father was on the phone and that’s going to be hard to navigate, but—”
He had me pinned to the wall in a flash.
I gasped. Words silenced beneath the potency of this man.
Gloom covered me whole.
An eclipse.
But this darkness? It was vile and depraved.
He pressed his hands to the wall on either side of me as if he were trying to hold himself back, his nose pressed to my cheek as he grunted the anguished words, “You don’t have the first clue, Mia. Don’t have the first clue what I’ve done or what I’m getting ready to do. And I promise you, when I’m done? You’re going to hate me.”
He ripped himself back.
Torment and malice written in his expression.
Then he turned, nothing but a storm that thundered through the house as he moved for the front door.
Despair ravaged through the middle of me.
Violent.
Fierce.
Overwhelming.
I ran after him.
It didn’t matter that it probably made me a fool.
That I was desperate.
Pleading.
We’d come too far, experienced too much, shared too much hope for me to let him just walk out.
Without an explanation.
Without a reason for the poison he was spilling on our lives.
I was a foot behind him when I rasped, “Then tell me you don’t love me. Tell me that was a lie.”