An Inconvenient Obsession (20 page)

Despair spiraled through Cate, tempting her to relent. She wanted so badly to accept his apology, to forget what he’d done and simply accept the love he offered. But the icy prickling of warning along her skin urged caution. She couldn’t bear to court more pain, to always, always doubt his word. She couldn’t bear to bury her fears beneath desire, his seeds of resentment and revenge always germinating beneath a soil fraught with wanting.

She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t trust him again.

So she pulled her hands from his, the sacrifices of her past merging with the heartbreaking certainty of her future. “No. I won’t marry you.” Her fingernails dug painfully against her palms. “I won’t marry without trust and I can’t trust you again. Ever.”

“You can’t or you won’t?” The question, soft with regret, abraded her skin and made her flinch. But the vulnerable pain lacing his voice made her throat constrict, as well. She knew what he wanted. What he needed. He needed a woman who could love him without reservation, a woman who would never hurt him or reject him. He needed a partner he trusted and who trusted him, a soul mate, a woman who shared his goals, his dreams and his future. Once, she’d dreamed of being that woman. But no longer.

Her dreams had died this morning, beneath the harsh pummeling of truth.

“I’m sorry, Ethan, but I won’t,” she said.

“So we’re through?”

“Yes. This isn’t about what we’ve done to each other or the pain we’ve endured. It’s about the way you view me. And the way you view yourself. You may have climbed the ranks in everyone else’s eyes and amassed a fortune too large to ever spend, but to yourself, you’re still that same boy who was forbidden to speak to me. You’ll always feel like you have to prove something, and then you’ll lash out when your perceptions of yourself don’t change.”

“But your love has changed those perceptions.”

She shook her head. “No. If it had, we wouldn’t be here now. I can’t fix how you feel when you’re with me and you will always resent me for it. We’d forever be stuck with this huge, insurmountable obstacle that you’ve shown yourself incapable of moving past.” Though she knew it was the only thing she could say to convince him, the words tasted like ash in her mouth. “We don’t belong together,” she said raggedly. “We never did. You know that.”

“No, I don’t,” he rasped. “After these past weeks, after all we’ve done together, I don’t. You gave me your virginity, for God’s sake. You let me touch you and hold you and you can’t tell me it meant nothing to you. I won’t believe that.”

“Of course it meant something to me.” She forced the words through a throat gone tight with sorrow. “But that doesn’t change who we are. It doesn’t mean we can be together.”

His fingers threatened to crush the fragile bones of her shoulders. Taking a steadying breath, he lowered his forehead against hers. “Cate,” he whispered, his pride wavering like a tangible offering of alms between them. “Don’t do this. Please. I can’t chart a future without you in it. I won’t know who I am.”

Her eyes stung, her throat convulsed spasmodically and she could no longer stem the flood of her tears. They slid down her cheeks, burning tracks of pain and remorse along her jaw and neck. She jerked away from his grip, when all she wanted to do was burrow into his warmth and hold his sweet mouth to hers. “You’ll find someone,” she said in a quavering voice. “Someone whole who loves you, a healthy woman who makes you happy and whom you can treat as an equal. You’ll be grateful I didn’t accept this reckless proposal of yours and that you won’t have to forever live with the memory of the pain we’ve caused each other.”

His jaw hardened and he dipped his head. He stood in silent contemplation for several long, weighted moments before he again lifted his gaze to hers. The desolate sheen in his eyes sent a chill through her, and she realized that his rejected love would soon reclaim its previous icy veneer of hatred.

A hatred she knew would never dissipate, she thought bleakly, averting her eyes.

He inhaled and stepped back, creating even more space in the growing gap of coldness between them. They stood that way, the brittle silence broken only by the hushed murmurings of the rain, until Cate mustered her courage and lifted her gaze to his once more. She couldn’t see the exotic blue of his eyes, only the glittering black of his pupils. He looked
pale and grim in the dim light, his typical vitality tempered by bleak, embittered acceptance.

She threaded her fingers together at her waist and swallowed thickly. “Please know that I only want you to be happy,” she finally whispered.

He didn’t move so much as an eyelash. “Right.”

Additional beats of silence, an oppressive mantle of despair that nearly bowed her shoulders with its weight, pressed down on her. “I think you’d better go,” she told him. Awkwardly, Cate offered her hand.

He acted as if he didn’t see the gesture.

Self-conscious and clumsy, she felt her hand start to tremble. She pulled it back, but he caught it before it reached her waist, and brought the back of her hand to his lips. The heat of his mouth against her skin made her knees weaken. “Goodbye, Cate,” he whispered.

Her throat narrowed and a wintry shiver stole over her limbs as he released her wrist. She closed her fingers and brought her knotted fist to her ribs. Pressing hard, harder, as if she could relieve some of the pain that gathered within, she turned blindly as the old ache of her injuries rose up from deep within her bones.

E
THAN
left without being aware of the rain, fury and grief descending upon him like a suffocating mantle from which there was no escape. He wanted to rage at the sky, to sprint back to Cate and convince her she was wrong, that he’d changed. Failing that, he wanted to beat his fists until they bled against the black marble and glass that now belonged to him.

But it was over. He’d gambled his heart and lost.

He entertained a fleeting thought of walking out into the cold embrace of the storm until he reached the sea and its cruel undertow. He wanted to be sucked out to the merciless, yawning maw of nothingness. To stop feeling so damn much.

Black misery swamped his chest, making it hard to breathe. Great, gulping sobs fought for release, but he swallowed back the urge to weep, grimly mustering the control he’d honed for ten interminable years. He waited until the lights of Cate’s office turned dark against her windows before slowly, painfully making his way back to the car.

He made it two miles before he had to pull off to the side of the road. For several long moments, he stared unseeing out into the black night until, shaking, he lowered his forehead to his whitened knuckles and wept.

Cate didn’t really remember the next twenty-four hours. She spent most of it curled up in her childhood bed, miserably
weeping until her eyes burned and breathing became a chore. The words they’d exchanged had annihilated what remained of her composure, and she fervently hoped to never see him again. She doubted she could keep herself from throwing herself at his feet, wailing out her forgiveness. Begging to recant her words, to accept him and love him, no matter the hurt of their past.

Though her decision had been for the best, she couldn’t stop reliving the pain in his eyes. She knew the truth had wounded him in a way that was sure to leave yet another layer of deep, abiding scars. The grief and remorse that accompanied the knowledge that she’d caused him pain yet again, no matter whether he deserved it or not, had no outlet. She’d wrung herself dry, and yet the pain remained.

By the next morning, she realized that she would live the rest of her days in coldness. No amount of time could chase the chill away. So she cranked up her radiator, burrowed beneath a pile of thick quilts and stared numbly out at the gray sea.

She dozed fitfully until her back ached from being in one position for so long, until the glow of sunlight replaced the filtered light of dawn. A rattle at her door disturbed her sleep and she sat up blearily, staring at the twisting doorknob. She’d barely wiped aside the cobwebs of sleep when Mrs.

Bartholomew, laden with a steaming tray, banged the door open and strode to glare down at Cate as if she’d disappointed her greatly. “Enough, Cate.”

“Leave me alone,” Cate said with a disoriented grimace, lifting the blanket to her chin and flopping back onto her side.

Mrs. Bartholomew flipped on an overhead lamp, flooding the cold room with brittle light. “You’ve moped enough, and I won’t tolerate any more of it. You need to eat.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Too bad.” She stood over Cate with a frown. “Death looks better than you.”

“Thanks a lot,” she said wryly. “I feel like death, too, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to go back to sleep. I’m tired.”

“If the condition of your clothing and hair is any indication, you’ve already slept too much.”

“So? It’s not like I have anything better to do.”

“I’ve supported you through a lot of foolishness, Cate, but this just takes the cake.”

“I’m living my life the only way I know how,” she shot back with a flare of annoyance. “And I’m sorry if it doesn’t fit with your approval.”

Mrs. Bartholomew waited a beat before answering, her mouth pulled into an irritated moue. “No, you’re not. You’re wallowing.”

“What do you expect? Am I supposed to go merrily along my way, alone and childless and betrayed by the only man I’ve ever loved?”

“I expect you to act like a grown woman, instead of throwing away your best chance at happiness.”

Cate shook her head, her throat going tight and her chest feeling as though it was too narrow to draw breath. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Too bad.”

“Go away.”

“No. I let you have it your way before, and I’ll be damned if I let you make another stupid decision about that boy.” She raised a pointed finger and skewered Cate with a slate-eyed glare. “You made a mistake ten years ago when you lied to Ethan and sent him away. I watched you grieve the loss of your best friend and limp along with your wounded heart, all so you could give Ethan what you thought he wanted. I watched you become reckless with your own life and your own safety
because of it. I watched you nearly die. And I’m not willing to go through that again. I won’t.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“I stood by you for years while you relearned how to walk. And for what? So both you and Ethan could remain miserable and alone?”

“Ethan won’t be alone for long. He’ll get what he wants.”

“He wants you.”

“No, he doesn’t.”

“I saw his face when he brought you all those gifts. Being with you lit him up inside, and nothing you say will convince me otherwise.”

“If he wanted me, he wouldn’t have betrayed me the way he has.”

“Don’t you think he thought the very same thing about you? You made a mistake that just about killed him. And he’s made one now. It doesn’t mean you can’t forgive each other and move on.”

“Yes, it does,” she insisted, her throat thickening with defensive tears. “Neither of us trusts the other. How can we move on from that?”

“When are you going to understand, Cate? Life is never perfect. You work through mistakes and betrayals and pain to make it that way.”

Cate looped her arms over her bent legs and knotted her fingers against her shins. Staring down at her whitened knuckles, she said, “I can’t forgive him.”

“He forgave you.”

She lifted her gaze to Mrs. Bartholomew’s, ruthlessly crushing the feeble agreement that stirred within her chest. “I didn’t hurt him out of hatred and revenge. I hurt him because I loved him.”

“Pain is pain, sweetie, no matter the reason behind it.”

Frustrated, muddled and feeling backed into a corner, Cate firmed her jaw and argued, “No, it isn’t.”

Mrs. Bartholomew released a gusty sigh. “For heaven’s sake, Cate, he made a mistake. Just like you did. And I’ll bet my right arm he’s working to repair the damage. Isn’t he?”

“Yes,” Cate mumbled.

“So why should you be allowed to carry a grudge when he isn’t?”

A spark of irritation flared to life, sharpening Cate’s tone. “This isn’t a grudge!” she blurted. “Nothing would please me more than for him to find happiness and peace.”

“If that isn’t a pack of lies, I don’t know what is.” Mrs. Bartholomew shot her a speaking glance. “Your entire life, you’ve been the one with the power. Oh, you’re a fine princess, kind and generous to a fault, and not a soul could ever doubt the goodness of your heart. But other than your father, God rest his soul, people are always left feeling a bit lacking around you.”

“What a terrible thing to say!”

“It’s not terrible, sweetie. It’s just the truth, and Ethan’s been doing his best to navigate it for years.”

“Ruining Carrington Industries is his best?”

Mrs. Bartholomew shrugged an unconcerned shoulder. “He hasn’t done anything that can’t be undone.”

“That’s not the point.”

“You’re right. The point is that he loves you and you love him. Nothing else matters.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Why?”

She bit her lower lip. Hard. Until the pain of her lip eclipsed the pain squeezing against her lungs. “Because.”

Mrs. Bartholomew’s expression softened and she joined Cate on the wide bed. “Give him another chance, sweetheart.
I’m not saying it’ll be easy, but you’re strong enough to handle it.”

Cate’s eyes blurred as she felt Mrs. Bartholomew’s soft, warm arm settle over her shoulders. The back of her nose burned. Her heart burned. Everything burned as she realized she’d rejected Ethan’s love because she was afraid. She’d wounded the man she loved because she was too scared to take a risk.

Mrs. Bartholomew reached into her pocket for her ever-present supply of tissues. “Here,” she said, shoving a wad toward Cate. “Use this before you get snot all over your great-grandmother’s handmade quilts.”

Cate straightened, dabbing at her running nose and eyes with the tissues. She felt horribly raw, as if she teetered on a tightrope over a forest of sharpened spikes. “I’m scared.”

“Of course you are. But if you let fear rule your life, you’ll never be happy.”