He stooped to pick up a stray paintbrush from the floor and put it carefully in an earthenware jar. “She’d only been driving a year and couldn’t control a car as powerful as the Lamborghini. I might as well have doused her with gasoline and set her on fire myself.”
“Oh no, stop.” She made a grab for his hand. “This is all wrong—”
“Don’t lecture me, Kizzy!” he said, pulling away. His voice shook. “You have no idea what it feels like to lose a sister and know that you are responsible.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” she replied, and heard an answering tremor in her own voice. “I lost a sister too. A half-sister. Alice came into the world a month too early and I only had a few minutes to love and hold her before she slipped away.”
“Not your fault, Kizzy,” he said and rubbed the back of his neck ferociously. “No comparison.”
“But I think it is! Mum only stayed with my stepfather because of me. He gave us a roof over our heads, a chance of an education for me, an awful sham of stability. I never told her that I didn’t care about those things and that I wished we could just run away.”
Kizzy took a step toward him, desperate for his touch, some morsel of warmth to soothe away the terrible ache building to a crescendo inside her body. But all she could register was the dull, black look in his eyes that spoke of something beautiful that had died before its time. Or was just about to.
“She stuck it out and protected me from some terrible things—my stepbrothers were animals—but she paid a terrible price for that protection.” A tear began to seep from the edge of her lashes. “Alice was violently conceived and her death was just as brutal. My stepfather pushed Mum down the stairs during one of his drunken rages, and she went into premature labor.”
…
Andreas saw the acute pain and bewilderment on her face and his stomach constricted.
Kizzy was hurting and he couldn’t help her, because he was in as much pain himself, selfishly consumed by his own raw feelings. She had forced him into an emotional corner, drawn out the hidden poisons that had dominated his life for so long, and now he just wanted to get away from her, to hide his vulnerability. But that wasn’t how Andreas Lazarides worked.
He felt his heart pulse with renewed shame and humiliation. He was used to fighting back. Fighting dirty. He was used to slamming down the lid of the sarcophagus that held his heart.
“I’m sorry about your sister. I had no idea—any more than you knew the secrets of my life, the details you’ve just forced me to reveal. Things I wanted to keep secret.” He took a sharp breath. “It was a bad idea to get into all this, and it only happened because you refused to trust me. It should all have remained unspoken—buried in the past. You should have trusted me, Kizzy. You should have let it all be.” He paused. “I hope you’re satisfied now.”
Andreas turned and walked silently to one of the open windows. He leaned both hands on the rough ledge and stared out to sea, the light breeze lifting his hair. He couldn’t face her a moment longer, was unable to bear the revulsion that would inevitably overshadow her face. He couldn’t keep looking at those deep blue eyes, knowing he would only add to the distress and suffering within them. His unrestrained anger and resurgent feelings of uselessness would chip away at her, catching at the open wounds she already had.
And she wouldn’t be the first person he would ruin. His sister had died because of his negligence, his mother following closely behind, consumed by grief. Even his own father despised him with the few functioning brain cells he had left.
Yet he loved Kizzy.
Andreas loved her more than anything he had ever known, and it would be like ripping out his own heart to allow her to leave.
But he had to. It suddenly became clear to him that the best way to demonstrate his love was to let her go before he polluted her any further with the darkness in his soul. Somehow he had to stop himself from taking her in his arms and telling her that he would take care of her and make everything wonderful. Because he couldn’t guarantee that he wouldn’t end up making her life as miserable as her mother’s had been.
He had already tried to force Kizzy into marriage so that she would stay with him. So he could keep her in close captivity like a beautiful, caged bird.
“You’re right, Kizzy. I should have listened to you from the start. Of course we shouldn’t marry—it would be a disaster. Not because I would stray, but because I simply don’t have the time to work at it.” His fingertips scraped the stone of the window frame until he felt the skin split and bleed. “A marriage between us could never work.”
“But, Andreas, it can work!” she replied breathlessly and took a hesitant step toward him. “Now we have no secrets, now that I know I can trust you—”
“Trust me?” He uttered a harsh and brittle laugh as he realized just how cruel he was going to have to be to her. “Now that you’ve forced me to my knees and ground whatever pride I had left into the dust, you’ve decided we can forge ahead with a futile marriage after all? Is that what you mean by trust?”
Kizzy halted in her tracks. “It’s not like that,” she said.
“It will be,” Andreas replied hollowly. “I can never become the husband you want or deserve, Kizzy. It’s impossible. You’ve made me see that now.”
“No, you’re wrong,” she pleaded. “Listen to me.”
“Oh, I’m never wrong, Kizzy,” he replied, his smile tight and ironic. “Don’t you remember that? And I’ve listened to quite enough today.”
Andreas closed his eyes briefly. Somehow, he had to find the strength to rip out both their hearts and destroy their hopes of a happy ending. He knew it was for the best. She, at least, would eventually recover from this and meet a better man than he could ever be.
“You said you trusted me before today, but you were lying, telling me things I wanted to hear, sweet, poisonous little nothings.” He ignored the determined shake of her head and thrust her small hand away. “You couldn’t leave it, could you? You couldn’t resist sticking in the knife and twisting it to see how far you could push me?”
“This is madness!” she cried.
“I agree, but this is as far as the madness goes. I don’t want to be your husband. Or your lover. It’s been difficult recently. Maybe it’s the pregnancy. I don’t know. Please leave now, Kizzy, it’s for the best and we both know it.”