Sinful Love (Sinful Nights #4)(71)
He dragged a hand through his hair, and for the first time wondered if Julien had felt this way too. If he’d been crazed enough to want to have this woman all to himself, to erase her history, and mark her only with him. Michael would have wholly understood. Because this intense need to be her only, as selfish and single-minded as it was, gnawed at him.
“Doesn’t that matter to you?” she asked, frustration in her rising voice. “Knowing how much you mattered to me? I carried you with me in the only way I could. But Michael, this is unfair. This is where I have lived for the last several years. Do you want me to pretend I didn’t have a life when we were apart? Should I have hidden all the photos? Tucked them away in a drawer and whitewashed my home?” She tapped her chest. “This is me. This is who I am. I’ve been married, and I don’t want to have to apologize for it over and over.”
Ah hell. He was a complete f*cking jerk for feeling this way. He lowered his gaze to the cranberry red carpet with geometric patterns, poised to grovel, embarrassed at his ragged jealousy. But then a thought crashed unbidden into his mind, and he couldn't help but wonder if Julien had f*cked her on this carpet. A wave of self-loathing slammed into him. He was envious of a dead man. He was eaten up by the fact that she’d had a husband. Who. Had. Died.
Michael was alive.
What the f*ck was wrong with him?
“I’m sorry,” he muttered, though he knew that wasn’t enough.
She placed a hand on his arm. “Just because I cared for him, doesn't mean I can’t feel for you. You seem to forget that I was in love with you before I met him, and yet I was still able to love him and be happy. So I wish you would stop thinking I’m incapable of this. That I can’t feel so much for you. It’s not fair.”
Perhaps she was right. Perhaps he was too stubborn. Too narrow. But this woman – she was it for him. She was all for him. And that feeling inside him, of never wanting to be without her, made him rash.
“Do you still love him?” His throat was raw as he gave voice to his darkest fear.
“Michael,” she said, “a part of me always will. But I’m falling in love with you now.”
He swallowed, collecting himself. He drew a deep breath, trying to let it out while taking in what she’d just said. But his chest churned with black and white and gray emotions, and he didn’t know how to wrestle them to the ground and have them make sense. Instead, he spoke carefully. “Your home is beautiful. But I can’t be here.”
“But this is where I live. I want to show it to you,” she said, imploring.
He shut his eyes. “I know. But I need to go. And I would like to spend the night with you elsewhere.”
At the hotel he made love to her deep into the evening, letting the sex blot out the blackness in his heart, the ugly jealousy in his soul. For so long he’d been defined by loving her. It was who he was. He didn’t know how to take only half of her heart when she had all of his completely.
He didn’t want to be her second best, and yet he felt like the runner-up. The whole truth of his love for her boiled down to this—she could have chosen him in Marseilles, and she didn’t.
Maybe it was unfair to feel that way, but it was true. He’d put his heart on the line then, and if she’d wanted him, she could have called off the engagement and they could have run away together.
That was what gnawed at him.
And he wished that he could go home and ask his father’s advice.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
She supposed she could have put the photos away. She could have hidden them, tucked them into a cabinet, pretended they didn’t exist.
But what would have been the point of that?
As she raced down the metro a few days later on the way to a photo shoot at a client’s Montmartre flat, a poster in the station caught her eye. It was part of the new campaign to stop metro riders from talking on the subway—a chicken dressed as a businessman clucked on the phone while the other riders stared daggers at him. She felt a kinship with the other riders in the picture. Not over secondhand cell phone conversations, but because she was annoyed, too.
She was f*cking annoyed, as her train rattled into the station and she stepped through the doors. She was frustrated as she gripped the pole, and the subway rumbled away. She didn’t want to constantly justify her past to Michael. He’d have to accept it at some point if they were truly going to be together and pull off this transcontinental relationship. Wasn’t it hard enough to manage a long-distance love without this added layer of…bullshit?
She huffed and stared off, searching the faces of the other people in the car, wondering if the woman clutching six shopping bags on her lap was irritated too, if the teenage girl with her earbuds and the skinny jeans was ticked at the world like her. If everyone on this train was as goddamn frustrated as she was.
Michael had tried to be cool about Julien after they’d left her home. But she wasn’t a fool. She’d read his emotions and sensed his distance back at the hotel. He’d pulled away from her that last night, and everything since then had been bittersweet.
She wanted the sweet, hold the bitter, please.
And she didn’t want to make apologies for having loved before.
She reached her destination, climbing the many stairs out of the station, and walked along the curving, hilly streets to find her client’s home. All the while, she forced Michael out of her brain. There was no room for annoyance now.