She’d given him everything she had to give and all along…
She’d thought she’d been taking control but she was the one who’d been controlled, right from the moment she’d woken up in that hospital bed.
She snapped her gaze back to him. ‘I’m sure you can soothe your conscience by telling yourself that youtriedto resist the chemistry between us, and, quite honestly, I can imagine living with youwaslike living in a form of war zone. I’m a prickly bear when people are mean to me—you lash out at me and if I’ve got nowhere to hide then I lash right back, and I know perfectly well that if you of all people had been cruel to me then my self-defence mechanism would have kicked in, and when I say you of all people I mean it’s because I spent six years painting you in my head as this romantic hero, luckily not to the extent where I fancied myself in love with you or anything, but enough that it would have hurt to learn you really were the unmitigated bastard the Tsalikis always painted you as being, and I am trying so hard right now not to lash out at you and call you every vile name under the sun for what you’ve done to me and for all the lies you’ve been feeding me…’
‘I’ve tried very hard not to tell you outright lies.’
‘Oh, aren’t you a regular saint?’ she scorned bitterly, needing tobescornful, needing to keep speaking because something was swelling inside her, pushing into her chest and throat, something hot and ugly and dripping with the pain that every word uttered by Thanasis had made her bleed with.
‘Everything apart from our past has been the truth, I swear.’
‘Quick, polish your halo. But as I was saying, I’m trying very hard not to call you all the vile names that are lining up on my tongue, and trying even harder not to imagine breaking your nose and, and…and…’ She couldn’t contain the agony a second longer. Before she could stop them, tears were pouring down her face and Lucie was on her feet and charging at him, pushing as hard as she could into Thanasis’s chest to send him falling back onto the mattress, climbing on top of him, straddling him as she screamed obscenities and pounded her fists at his chest.
‘How could you?’ she sobbed when all her obscenities had dried up but not an ounce of the agony had been purged. ‘How could you, how could you, howcouldyou? How could you do that to me? I did nothing to any of you except love you and you all lied, and you, you bastard, you pretended that you loved me and cared for me when all along you hated me…’
Finally, he grabbed her wrists to control her and flipped her over, pinning her down. ‘No, Lucie, I haveneverhated you, never believe that. I only thought I did, and it’s only now that I look back and can see it was a lie I fed myself.’
She shook her head wildly. ‘Every word out of your mouth has been a lie!’
‘No.’
‘You made me fall in love with you, and all so you could save your bastard business when you didn’t even need to tell me the lie!’
‘I know, but once the lie had been fed I had no choice but to go along with it.’
‘You’re Thanasis Antoniadis,’ she screamed. ‘Of course you had a choice! The only person in this whole sordid affair not given a choice is me because all the choices I made were choices based on lies because I’m the expendable one, the one who never fits in anywhere so who bloody well cares about Lucie?’
‘I care, more than anything.’
‘Well, I don’t. I don’t care about you and I don’t care about the Tsalikis. You can all rot in hell together—you deserve each other, now get off me, get off me, getoffme!’
Breathing heavily, he let go of her wrists and moved off her.
In a flash, she’d scrambled off the bed and was out of the door before Thanasis had managed to haul himself off the mattress to chase after her.
He slammed her bedroom door open. The room was empty but he could hear her throwing things around in her dressing room and snatched a tiny breath of relief that she hadn’t run off naked into the night.
He stood by the door. ‘Lucie, please, I know you’re hurting, but please don’t do anything rash. Hate me, hit me, punch me, do all the things you want, just don’t go. Not like this. Stay with me. Please. Just give me a chance to put things right.’
She appeared in front of him hugging her overnight case to her chest, a broken Aphrodite with bloodshot eyes and hair like a nest and a thin black dress she’d put on back to front. ‘Put things right so I’ll marry you and keep the public lie going?’
‘I don’t care about the wedding,’ he roared. ‘All I care about is you, and right now I’m terrified you’re going to go off and do something stupid like you did the last time.’
There was a moment of complete stillness before Lucie slowly straightened, seeming to grow and magnify before his eyes, as proud and as powerful as Hera herself.
‘The only stupid thing I’ve done other than believe your lies is fall in love with you,’ she said with deadly, ice-cold precision. ‘But, believe me, I’m over that now, and if you think I’m going to do something rash that puts me in danger then you’re the stupid one because you’re the last person in the world I’d hurt myself over. Do not follow me, do not ever make contact with me again. I have nothing left to say to you.’
This time, Thanasis let her go.
* * *
Lucie sat on a rock by the harbour watching the sun rise. She would never now have the chance to watch it rise on the mountain’s summit. Never mind. There were lots of things in life she would never get her chance at. Getting married was but one of them, and it was with that philosophical thought in mind that she got to her feet at the sight of the boat approaching the harbour with supplies for the wedding that would never take place.
An hour later she was sailing away from Sephone.
She didn’t look back.
* * *
