“I’m sorry, Leesha. But I can’t do this anymore.” Aveen had said the same words the other evening, and I’d been an eejit for letting her go. Leesha’s lips pressed flat as she reached for me once more.
“I do not feel the way I used to,” I blurted.
Her hand stilled mid-air before falling open at her side. “I don’t understand.” Her deep green eyes darted back and forth, searching mine for something she would never find.
“I do not love you anymore.”
“You don’t . . . love me?” she repeated slowly, as if the words made no sense. Then her eyes widened, pinning me in place. Leesha shot to her feet. Red splotches painted her freckled cheeks. “You don’t love me?”
So much for letting her down easily. “Calm down and let me explain.”
“You expect me to calm down? I gave myself to you!” she hissed.
“And I gave myself to you.” We’d gone into this relationship together, our eyes and hearts wide open.
Her eyes glittered, and her head shook as if she could deny the truth in my words. “And that meansnothing?”
“You don’t understand—”
She needled my chest with her finger, glaring up at me as tears leaked from her eyes. “Oh, I understand perfectly. You are just like your philandering brother. All this time, you pretended as if you were different. You know what?” Huffing a mirthless chuckle, she collected her hair with short, jerking movements, tying the long, heavy strands back with a black ribbon. “I take it back. You’re not like Tadhg. You’reworse.”
I accepted each and every vicious word, letting them steal away some of my guilt. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry, are you? For what? Being a lying bastard? You promised me forever!”
“That was two hundred years ago!”
Leesha’s jaw dropped. She caught the edge of the mantle, her face as pale as the marble beneath her fingers.
“You’ve seen the scar on your chest.” Her hand flew to her breast. “The Queen stole your heart. You have been dead forcenturies. I mourned you for years. But eventually I had to…”
Her palm rubbed idle circles over her heart as her eyes slowly widened. I wasn’t sure if it was a minute or an hour. All I knew was that it felt like forever before she said, “You’ve moved on, haven’t you?”
I nodded.
Sniffling, Leesha wiped her sleeve beneath her eyes. “The woman who was here. She isn’t Ruairi’s, is she? She’s yours.”
She had been mine. But now, after everything, I wasn’t so sure. “Yes.” Feck it all, I hoped it wasn’t a lie. “I’m truly sorry for the life that was stolen from us,” I said, meaning every word. I would have given her a good life, a happy one. But as Ruairi had pointed out, her life would have ended long ago.
“Twohundredyears,” Leesha whispered, the words muffled by her trembling hand. “My family…”
She’d been here for days and had been making plans to visit those she’d left at the cottage, but I’d always managed to dissuade her. But not today. This was a day for truths.
“Your family is gone.” I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about what I’d been forced to do to her sister. I couldn’t hurt her more than I already had. “You have distant relatives still living in the border cottage, but those you knew have long since passed. I am sorry. I have tried to find what I once felt, but there is nothing left.” Nothing but fond memories and heartbreak.
“You say my family is gone, and now you’re gone as well? What am I supposed to do?”
“You can stay here as long as you’d like.”
“Don’t you see?” Her broken sob made me feel every bit the villain I was. “Every time you walk into the room, I fall more in love with you. I cannot bear to be near you knowing you will never feel the same.” Leesha’s arms came around my shoulders. When she lifted onto her toes to press a soft kiss to my lips, I let her. She tasted of innocence and desire, but there was no fire. Not even a feckin’ spark.
Her grip on my collar tightened. “You feel nothing?”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Leesha.”
Nodding, she let me go and stepped away. “Then it’s clear I need to leave.”
“Where will you go?”