‘He contacted me the other day, you know,’ she volunteered spontaneously.
Octavio’s whole bearing changed.
‘Christopher?’ His voice was sharp. Phoebe glanced at him, nodding once.
Octavio swore. ‘He called you?’
‘No, he sent a message through the app we used to use.’
‘Did you reply?’
She shook her head. ‘No. Why?’
‘You can’t speak to him.’
Phoebe narrowed her eyes. She hadn’t been planning to, but the way he was telling her what to do rankled. ‘It’s really not any of your business.’
‘I beg your pardon, but you are my wife.’
A shiver ran down her spine. Not a bad shiver, but a delicious, delightful shiver of warmth. Despite everything she’d just said, despite everything she knew to be true in her heart, hearing him call her his wife so possessively, so intently, set a fire in her bloodstream.
‘I am also my own person.’
‘Not any more you’re not. You are Queen of Castilona and you are a target. People will be trying to sell stories about you for the rest of your life. This man cannot be trusted, Phoebe. If you engage with him again, he will betray you.’
Anger and something like crushing disappointment mingled in her belly, making her throat feel acidic. ‘I know that,’ she hissed, scraping back her chair and standing. ‘He’s ruined my life once already. Do you think I’d give him a chance to do it again?’
Octavio stared at her though, a muscle ticking in the base of his jaw. ‘It wasn’t that long ago that you broke up. Do you still love him?’
‘I hate him.’
‘You can love someone and hate them at the same time.’
She pulled a face. ‘No.’ She was emphatic. ‘I don’t love him. He’s nothing to me.’
‘Then it should be easy to ignore his message.’
‘Which is what I was planning to do. You don’t need to tell me how to act, Octavio. I’m not stupid.’
‘Except with him—’
‘Don’t say it.’ She held up a hand, silencing the rest of that sentence. ‘I already think the worst of myself for how I was with Christopher. I don’t need you to reinforce that.’
He glared at her, the angry words they’d exchanged sparking in the air around them. Octavio controlled his temper first.
‘I meant to protect you, not to undermine you. I know you understand what you should do, but when it comes to relationships, things get murkier.’
‘I never want to see nor speak to him again.’
‘Okay.’ Octavio nodded slowly, but it was clear to Phoebe he didn’t completely believe her. Maybe he’d learned the lesson she’d been preaching: trust no one. It was just safer that way.
Octavio watched her walk away, a sinking feeling taking over his body. He didn’t like it.
He didn’t like the way that conversation—argument—had made him feel. He didn’t like anything about it. He didn’t like her revelations about her ex, what the other man had done to Phoebe, how he’d lied to her and treated her. He didn’t like to think how close she’d come to marrying the guy, how eager she’d been to have his baby. He didn’t like to think that in an alternate reality, in which Phoebe hadn’t discovered the truth, shewouldbe married to him by now, perhaps still blissfully unaware of Christopher’s duplicity.
But most of all, Octavio hadn’t liked the way it had felt to learn that the other man still had a way of reaching out to Phoebe, of contacting her. Of trying to reignite their relationship?
Phoebe surely wouldn’t be so stupid, after what he’d done, but the fact there’d been contact between them had flooded his body with ice and something else. Something foreign and unwelcome.
