His temper flared. “After I saw you go out with that model bloke, what did you expect?” he pressed closer.
He was pushing my irritated, agitated and very frustrated buttons. “You were shagging your best friend’s castoffs! You could’ve at least thought with your head up here!” I tapped the side of my head, almost screaming at him. “But you didn’t care about that tiny, sordid detail because you simply wanted to shag your way into oblivion.” Growling at him, the words freely flowed out of my mouth. “Oh, no—fucking the Spanish bitch wasn’t quite enough, you just had to get her pregnant and marry her in haste because I was ignoring all your pleas.”
“And that bothers you, doesn’t it? WHY? Is it because you wanted to be my bride?” he flung challengingly. “Or is it because you wanted to be the woman to carry my child?”
Each word pierced me because the truth of the matter was, I longed to be where Amelia was. By his side. His wife. The mother of his child.
Of course he was right. I envied her.
I had cast him aside, so my bitter words and resentment should only be mine to suffer and endure. Not him. Not Amelia. But me; the idiot who had thought I was doing the right thing by giving in to his mother’s manipulations.
Last night had been my goodbye. It should have been enough. I had made a string of mistakes because I was too heartbroken to think properly. Too broken to see through the fog of unshed tears—the heavy weight of my sorrow, and the love that had once been so great that I had completely lost myself.
Now everything had changed. The fog no longer blocked me from seeing things clearly, and as much as I liked to ponder my errors, I’d rather choose to think about what to do to improve the future.
Even though he had said he hadn’t consummated his marriage with her, it wasn’t right. From what I had gathered from Blake, both led separate lives but were staying together because of the baby that she was carrying. Even then… this didn’t make it right.
I had to set him free—free of the shackles of me, the ghost of me—of us.
“No,” I murmured. “You’re wrong. I never wanted to be any of those. When I thought of my future, I hadn’t included you in it.”
If my selflessness could make his marriage work, then I should be happy to know that I at least had done right by him in the end; even though I had caused him so much agony in the beginning.
He looked confused for a moment before the words slowly sunk into him. His facial expression looked beyond hurt. The rawness of his pain took my breath away. For a single moment, I thought about taking my lies back, however I held back and remained strong, hoping this would enlighten him towards a better life with his child.
“Everything I once thought or believed… are you telling me that it was all a lie?” he asked in a tone that made the hair on my back stand on end.
Swallowing the heavy lump in my throat, the weight of my lies pressed against my heart, vowing that this would be the last time I would hurt him. “I had never meant for it to go that far…” My eyes captured his lovely face once more, knowing that this could be the last time I saw him. “Your mother was my excuse to break things off with you, but the truth is…” My voice shook, however my determination pushed me to continue, “I’ve been in love with Troy since before I broke things off with you.”
“Don’t fuck with me like this, Luce…” he quietly begged, searching my eyes for the truth, as if the world had been pulled out from beneath his feet.
I loved you, but I had to let you go. “It’s the truth,” I uttered the ultimate lie, knowing that I was going to nurse a very damaged heart once I got back to England.
Chapter 3
Toby
“I’ve been in love with Troy since before I broke things off with you.”
Blinking a few times, I shook my head from the difficultly of wrapping my head around the information she’d just struck me with.
In love…
With another man? Sure, she’d dated him, but enough to fall in love that fast even before she had resolved her unfinished business with me? It’s a high possibility, my mind mocked, leaving me with anxiety.
“Don’t fuck with me like this, Luce…” I begged while I stared at her in disbelief, not willing to accept the lies that kept spewing out of her mouth.
“It’s the truth.”
Not only did her words leave me broken, but they also squashed what little lightness I had left in my life. Last night had given me hope, yet after this revelation, Lucy left me in a world of ceaseless pain and suffering.
I could tell she was waiting for me to say something—anything to challenge what she’d just said. I didn’t think my love for her would be enough for me to recover from this alone, so if she intended to say something more, I knew with all that I was that I couldn’t handle it.
Without a backward glance, I rushed out of the villa, past the awaiting car that was supposed to take me to the airport, and headed straight into the night, needing to get lost and never be found.
Three hours later, I found myself calling the driver to pick me up at a bar.
After hours of contemplation, I knew what I had to do. Even though I could barely speak coherently due to being too inebriated, my mind was clear as sky on a sunny day when I thought of Lucille Connelly.
It started with me calling her Lucille. Then Lucy for short before it became Luce.
Our story had begun quickly, like a rollercoaster ride—dipping high and low in accelerated speed with no means of stopping. Like most relationships, we’d had our rough times, however it had always been her who would pull us back together with the use of her endless supply of love and sunny optimism.
Falling in love with her had seemed natural, like how the sun sets and rises. Like the seasons shifts and changes. Loving her had consumed me from the beginning and I had thought then that I was the luckiest man alive to have such a gem in my life. Little had I known that about two years later, the life I had once planned for would merely be a thing of the past.
An illusion.
A fantasy.
And yet, even though I knew this path was surely never going to happen, I still found myself thinking about the past.
Thinking about my Luce.
Thinking about how we had once been together—blinded by love and happiness.
What had led us astray?
The half-filled glass of whiskey with two large ice cubes enticed my attention as I softly played the piano. Lucy was in the kitchen scavenging a light snack—she was famished—while I sat there and lazily played the keys, satisfaction humming in my blood.