Broken Dove (Fantasyland #4)(169)

He shook his head. “What I said to you was unwarranted, Madeleine, this is true. But you strike back by committing the same sin? Inflicting your own wounds in this way? After all we’ve shared, all we’ve become to one another, asking with not one ounce of emotion to leave me?”

“What you said was inexcusable, unwarranted and unforgivable,” I replied, holding his eyes and squaring my shoulders. “I’ll not accept Pol’s physical abuse for a decade only to come here and allow his twin to verbally abuse me.”

I heard his sharp intake of breath even as his torso straightened abruptly and the mood in the room, already not good, degenerated further.

I told myself I didn’t feel that either.

“I’ve said this before but I will remind you again. I am not him, Maddie,” he said shortly.

“You aren’t,” I stated on a sharp nod. “You strike out in a different way that’s just as undeserved and perhaps not as physically painful, but it still hurts.”

“I apologized.”

“He used to do that too.”

His head jerked and I got another flinch, this one not almost imperceptible.

This one I couldn’t miss.

He felt those words. I’d wounded him.

No, I’d wounded him with the understanding of how deeply he’d wounded me.

I told myself I didn’t feel that either.

“In all the beauty that we’ve shared, in all the beauty you’ve given me, I forgot,” I told him. “I forgot I was trying to find my way. Forgot it so deeply, I lost it again. Until that woman pointed it out. And then you did what you did and it became even clearer.”

“What woman?” he asked, his brows drawing together.

“Franka Drakkar,” I answered.

He shook his head again but this time did it and took a step closer.

I didn’t move.

He spoke.

“Nothing that woman says is worth hearing.”

“You’re wrong,” I returned. “It was. After she said it, I took it in. I just took it in the wrong way. You see, how I see it is that I was Pol’s whore. A whore with a ring on my finger. I bought that, being me. Being who I am. Being a woman who likes nice things and wanted a good life. A life not like the one my mother lived with my father. Scraping and saving, existing day to day, paycheck to paycheck, but not doing that happily, knowing my home was a warm place where love thrived. Doing it putting up with shit. Living with negativity choking her every breath. I wanted so badly to make sure I had none of that, but all I wanted, I was blinded to what I bought when I took the easy way out and became a whore.”

“Madeleine—” he started but I ignored the new look on his face. The look that was not confused or angry or concerned. The tortured look that hurt so much to witness, it threatened to make me feel something, and I talked over him.

“In my world, a man treats a whore like Pol treated me. He doesn’t treat his wife like that.” I threw a hand his way. “Now I’m your whore, but without the ring, even though you’ve offered it. And I don’t want to be a whore, Apollo. I’m sure I could sally forth in this world and maybe make a living at it, and that’s the only thing I could do. I’m good at nothing else. But I don’t want that. I’ve been doing it way too long. I’m done with being a whore. So, since I can’t get on in this world without whoring myself to you or someone else, I’d rather go home and take my chances.”

“You are not my whore,” he whispered and it was not one of his sweet whispers. Not by a long shot.

It, like the look in his eyes, was tortured.

I told myself that didn’t affect me either.

“Then what am I?” I asked.

“I want you to be my wife,” he stated.

“And your son?” I pushed.

“He’ll come around in time.”

“Or maybe not,” I retorted. “Maybe, for the father he adores, he’ll just get better at hiding the pain.”

Another flinch before Apollo closed the distance between us and lifted a hand to cup my jaw, murmuring, “Another fatal error.”

I had no clue what he was talking about but I wasn’t going to ask.

He was touching me.

And I knew if I didn’t end that, and this conversation, and soon, I’d most assuredly feel something.

So I started, “Apollo—” but he talked over me.

“Franka’s drivel. This is what brought the dark to your eyes,” he declared.

Oh.

That was what he was talking about.

He was absolutely right.

“Yes,” I confirmed. “If there’s dark in my eyes, she put it there. But she wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t nice how she said it but what she said was absolutely right. You have a lot to give, Apollo. I have nothing but my body. And I’ve taken what you can give. Including when you treat me like shit.”

His fingers tensed into my skin as his eyes flashed, but I kept going.

“And really, is the world richer for me being in it?” I shook my head. “No. It isn’t. Not in any—”

His fingers again tensed in my skin, his eyes again flashed, but brighter, angrier, before he interrupted me.

“Cease speaking.”

“Cease interrupting me,” I shot back.