“You mean the world to me too,” I said.
But my love for your sister is bigger than the world.
Elena stared at me. She was still waiting for the punch line of a bad joke, for me to laugh and tell her it was all a ruse.
I sat taller in my chair.
It would be unkind to allow her to think she stood a fighting chance of winning me back so even though doing it sickened me, I slaughtered the last of her hope.
“But I’m not in love with you and I’m not going to change my mind about this. I want you to have the Gramercy apartment and the furniture. I’ve moved out the things I wanted to keep and had them put into storage. We never had shared bank accounts, or any other permanent assets.”
A choked sob escaped her lips like the whistle from a punctured balloon. She clapped a hand over her mouth, cleared her throat and resumed her enforced dignity.
I had never wanted to hold her more than I did in that moment.
I cleared my throat too. “I am sorry, Elena. It makes no difference, I know, but I need to tell you that you are my dearest friend. Hopefully, after the dust has settled, we can find that again.”
Elena stared at me impassively for a long time. It was utterly silent throughout the hotel suite but I didn’t allow myself to linger over thoughts of Giselle and what she thought of the entire conversation. That would come later. For now, I owed it to Elena to be present.
I tried to relax the muscles in my face, open my posture up so that she could see how much I was grieving and even, if she was perceptive enough, how little I deserved her understanding.
“You are serious,” she finally breathed.
I nodded.
She took in a deep, shuddering breath and let it out slowly through a mouth I had kissed a thousand times. It was indescribably strange to look at the woman I had thought myself in love with and feel so devoid of feeling. I was sure it made me a horrible person. I let myself drown in it for a minute.
“Okay,” she stood up swiftly and strode forward to offer me her hand.
I stared at it before clasping it within my own. She had long, lean fingers that stroked piano keys more passionately than they had ever stroked me. I rubbed the back of them with my thumb and it felt absurdly final.
“I don’t want to see you for a while but I don’t see why we can’t be amicable about this. You’ve become a fixture with my family and friends,” - I fought the urge to wince - “and I can accept that sometimes, people just grow apart.”
“They do.”
She nodded curtly and dropped my hand. I watched her pick up her bag, carefully cross her coat over one arm and begin the slow walk to the door. It was the most surreal moment of my life to watch my former partner walk out of the same space she unwittingly shared with my new lover. If it hadn’t been so fucked up, it might have been a little poetic.
So, it took me a second too long to realize that Elena had tripped on something and was bending over to examine the purple scrap of lace caught on the sharp edge of her high heel. It then took me a half-second more than that to register the aberrant look of horror on her habitually placid features and the venomous bite of her words as she whispered, “you fucking cheating bastard.”
Chapter One.
I was the picture of a well-loved woman.
My skin was still flushed and naked beneath the plush hotel covers, my red hair a chaotic mass of just-fucked glory. I had just enjoyed the most glorious sex with the most glorious man I had ever laid eyes on and in the morning, after what should have been a night of continued sex and very minimal sleep, I was set to travel to the most romantic city in the world with the love of my life.
But happily-ever-afters were for princesses with hearts of gold and white knights in shining armor, not disloyal Italian artists who got off on being spanked or the morally ambiguous men who introduced them to said fetishisms.
So, it shouldn’t have surprised me that Elena had arrived at our door to remind me that this impure princess and tarnished knight did not deserve a happy ending, at least not that easily.
The moment I heard her perfectly enunciated English, I bit my lip so hard the skin broke and the metallic taste of blood replaced the flavor of Sinclair on my tongue.
It felt too soon after our reunion to ask Sinclair to fight any battles for us. Despite our recent lovemaking and his continued declarations of love and devotion it was hard not to doubt the man given the inception of our relationship and his initial unwillingness to end things with my sister and his girlfriend, Elena.