The Mills & Boon Ultimate Christmas Collection. Kate Hardy

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СКАЧАТЬ like a sword. “I know.” She would not love him now though. Not anymore. Of that he was certain.

      “And still you betray her?” Kairos looked bleak. “You had the chance to have a woman look at you as she does...and you threw it away?”

      “Attend to your own marriage and the lack of love in it and leave mine alone.”

      Kairos stepped forward, gripped the lapels on Andres’s jacket and backed him against the church wall. “Do not speak of my marriage. You do not know what you’re treading on.”

      “But you feel free to speak to me?”

      “Yes. Because if I had a wife who looked at me the way she looks at you...”

      “What? You’d do your very best to make sure she stopped?”

      “Tabitha and I are not in love. We never have been.”

      “Perhaps you could have been.”

      “This,” Kairos said, “is not about me. I am not the one who is supposed to be married in five minutes, has hundreds of guests in attendance and yet has no bride.”

      “She will be here.”

      “You had better hope so.” Kairos turned and walked back into the church, closing the sanctuary doors behind him and leaving Andres outside in the snow.

      But she didn’t show. The snow began to fall harder, the temperature dropping as the day wore on. He imagined that people had left the church by now, spilling out the other entrance, leaving him alone here at the back, in the yard that bordered the cemetery and the woods.

      He took a deep breath, but rather than making him feel refreshed, the frigid air let a burning, searing ache into his chest that he could scarcely breathe around. It was unendurable, unending.

      And still, he stood and waited, even though he knew she would never appear. Even though he knew she wasn’t going to come. He had done it. He had tested her feelings for him, and he had broken them.

       Isn’t it what you wanted?

      He’d thought so. Had thought he would feel blessed relief at being released from her. From her expectations, if not her presence.

      But he felt nothing like relief. He felt ruined.

      Wasn’t that the sick, sad thing about a man intent on self-destruction? He was bleeding out, and desperately wishing he could stop it. Even though he’d inflicted the wound. It was too late. All he could do was stand here, dealing with the consequences that he had earned. Consequences he had been aiming for. Consequences he didn’t want.

       You’re in a hell of your own making.

      Zara had told him that. Zara had been right.

      But he was just so tired. So tired of wanting things and being denied. It was easier not to want them. Easier not to try. But Zara... Zara made him want. She made him think that it might be possible to have a life. To have love. A marriage.

      There had been little windows of time where he’d been able to imagine forever with her. Where he had let himself dream of children, of her looking at him with love in her eyes every single day. But the more he wanted it, the more terrifying it became. The most beautiful dreams had a tendency to morph into the foulest of demons.

      So he’d attempted to exorcise this demon before it had gotten him. But now he regretted it. And it was too late.

      With that exorcism should have come freedom, but he felt that he’d only bound himself up tighter, pushed himself deeper into perdition.

      The ache in his chest was overwhelming now. He couldn’t speak past it, couldn’t breathe past it. Before, he had tamped it down, medicated it with alcohol, with women. Surrounded himself with people so he could pretend that he wasn’t desperately, terrifyingly alone.

      So he could pretend he was somehow different than the boy locked away in his room.

      For the first time he allowed himself to feel it. Really feel it. It was the monster under his bed, the one he had pretended wasn’t there. He had buried it, drunk it away, ignored it, mocked it. But now it was going to consume him, and there was nothing he could do about it. Nothing he could do to stop it.

      He realized for the first time he’d left part of himself locked away. So that he couldn’t be hurt. Couldn’t be rejected.

      He loosened his tie, taking a step away from the church, toward the woods. He couldn’t breathe. Maybe it was the tie. Maybe it was the collar on his shirt. He undid a button. Then the next. He still couldn’t breathe. The constricting feeling was inside his throat, tightening, like a noose around his neck he couldn’t reach or control.

      He took another step away from the church, then another. And he refused to look back. He headed toward the trees, toward isolation. He felt driven to embrace it, driven to experience this moment of honesty. The first moment of honesty in his entire life.

      He kept walking, the air around him darkening as the trees thickened.

      He had always run into the crowd in moments like this. When the howling emptiness inside him became too much, he let it get swallowed up by people, things. But here he could do nothing but let it expand. Admit that Zara was right.

      He’d been happy when his mother was gone because it meant no more trying. No more pain. No more failure in any way that mattered.

      But Kairos had still demanded of him, and so he’d tried to rid himself of his brother too, though it hadn’t worked. And all the while he’d told himself it was because he was every bit as evil as his mother had said.

      Debauched. A mistake.

      He was still just a boy locked in his room. Away from everything. No matter how many women he touched, no matter how many parties he went to...no one ever really reached him.

      Until Zara.

      And he’d betrayed her. Now he was alone again and there was no denying it. No covering it up.

      Every year of isolation was catching up to him now, rolling over him in great, crashing waves. Years of it, threatening to suffocate him if he didn’t relieve some of the pressure.

       You could just go out into the woods and scream to make yourself feel better.

      Another bit of wisdom from Zara. Feral wisdom. She was filled with it. She was nothing more than a tiny woman who had been raised just this side of civilized. And yet she had taught him everything.

      Now he was in the exact place she had found herself years ago. Hurting. Lonely. Dying inside with no way to heal himself.

      He had nothing to lose. No image to maintain. He had just been jilted in front of his entire country. He had been left by the only woman who had ever loved him. The only woman he had ever loved in return. And he was responsible. It was his fault. His fear had destroyed everything.

      Because he had let it grow inside him, unidentified, ignored. He had pretended it wasn’t there and like a malignant disease it had grown, thrived, as he had allowed it to. He had told himself his relief at his mother СКАЧАТЬ