"Yet you feel comfortable enough telling me about it now?" she asked, curious, and he snorted.
"I can't hear them anymore," he pointed out, and she tensed. "So getting self-conscious about any sounds you produce while we're making love is a little pointless."
"Are you going to tell me what happened to you, Bryce?" she asked faintly, and it was his turn to tense up. "Or are you never going to afford me the opportunity to defend myself?"
"You were there," he reminded grimly, and she frowned irritably.
"Why do you keep saying that? What do you mean I was ‘there'?" she asked angrily. "Where the hell was I?"
"There when I had my goddamned accident!" he snapped before launching himself out of bed and stalking around the bedroom angrily, looking for his clothing. She leaped out as well and walked around his back until she was facing him again. She was stark naked, but she no longer cared about anything except getting to the bottom of this strange accusation.
"I was not there when you had your accident!" she retorted indignantly.
"I saw you," he forced the words out between clenched teeth.
"What?" She was completely baffled now. "Saw me where? Bryce I don't even know when you had your accident. Please just tell me what happened!"
"It burns me to have to tell you something that you already know, Bronwyn," he gritted. "You're playing me for a fool and I don't like it!" He moved to step around her but she put her hands up against his broad chest to stop him. He felt about as immovable as a block of granite.
"Please, just . . . just . . ." Her eyes begged him when words failed her.
"I went after you that night, when you raced out of here like a bat out of hell," he said so quietly that his lips barely moved. "As you knew that I would. You were going so fast that I was terrified you would get into an accident." His lips twisted at that bit of irony. "It took me a few minutes to get my car out, so by the time I headed out in the direction you had gone, you'd disappeared. I was frantic and wasn't paying attention to anything around me. I was so focused on trying to spot your car that I didn't see the couple crossing the road until it was almost too late. I swerved to avoid them and the car rolled. I was drifting in and out of consciousness, trapped in the car, when I saw you standing there amongst the crowd, staring at me with nothing but ice-cold contempt on your face . . . you heartless bitch!" He hissed viciously. "You turned around and walked away without so much as a backward glance.
"I wasn't even surprised when I woke up three days later in Intensive Care to be informed that you hadn't even bothered to visit or call. I couldn't have cared less if I never saw you again but for the fact that you were having my baby. You were having my baby and you had simply disappeared off the face of the earth. Is it any wonder I hate you? Not only is my accident your fault, but you walked away from me when I was at my most vulnerable, when I needed you most, and you took my daughter along with you!"
Bronwyn's face was ashen with shock at his story. She ached to think of the agony he must have gone through in that hospital, wondering about his baby, but she was also filled to the brim with fury and offense that he dared to think she could do something so awful as walk away from him while he lay injured and bleeding. Not to mention his ridiculous statement that the accident had been her fault when he had caused the entire sorry situation.
"I concede," she began quietly, with barely repressed sarcasm, "that maybe the accident was my fault because for some crazy reason I saw fit to flee after you drove me out of the house right when I needed you most. But I absolutely refuse to listen to this nonsense about me standing impassively by the side of the road while you lay bleeding and trapped in a car. Or, worse, walking away while you were still in the car!
"I didn't know that you'd been in an accident until the day you walked into my hospital room. I would never have stood there watching you suffer, and if I had known you were in the hospital, no force in heaven or hell would have kept me away from your bedside, because, even though you had treated me like something to be scraped off the bottom of your boot, I still loved you so damned much!" He started to say something but she held up her hand.
"No. You've had your turn; it's only fair I get a chance to defend myself against this . . . this insult! I did not think you would immediately come chasing after me-you were so irrationally angry that I knew you needed time to calm down. I headed straight for the beach house in Knysna. I stopped only for brief bathroom breaks and drove the distance in just under five and a half hours. I was confident that once you had time to calm down and think, you would change your mind about the baby."
"I saw you," he maintained, clearly not believing her. "Saw you with my own eyes!"
"You were sliding in and out of consciousness; you were in shock and in pain . . ." she pointed out reasonably. "You don't think that maybe you were delirious as well? Seeing things that were not there?"
He frowned and shook his head.
"No, of course not," she scoffed. "Not Bryce Palmer, he never makes mistakes."
"God damn you," he growled. "I know what I saw . . . you were standing there looking impassive and completely uncaring."
"This?" She waved her hand back and forth between their naked bodies. "This thing that just happened between us? It was a mistake that shouldn't be repeated. I should never have let you touch me, but you got me in a moment of complete weakness. That ends now. I won't allow a man who just hours ago said I made his skin crawl use me like this again. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need a shower," she informed him unsteadily. There was really nothing she could say or do right now to prove that she hadn't been there that day. She didn't know if she'd ever be able to convince him that she hadn't been there. He seemed so convinced.
That a man she had once thought loved her could believe something so unspeakable about her was incredibly painful. Bryce was completely wrapped up in his thoughts and did not even seem to notice when she left the room. Bronwyn escaped to the en suite bathroom and locked the door securely behind her, afraid that he would come in and bombard her with yet more reasons he did not believe her. She ran the shower as hot as she could stand it but shivered beneath the relentless spray. God, if he had spent the last two years believing something so awful about her, it was no wonder he hated her so much. It was an obstacle that could not easily be overcome because he had it firmly in his head that she had betrayed him in the worst possible way by leaving him literally broken and bleeding.
She knew how her stubborn ass of a husband's mind worked. To his way of thinking, all of his sins were now superseded by her "unforgivable betrayal." How very convenient for him. It made complete sense that he would believe something like this about her. It was easier for him to blame her and hate her rather than deal with the fact that due to his own thoughtless actions he had lost his wife, his child, and his hearing all on the same night. Unfortunately he didn't doubt what he had seen that night, and while Bronwyn could understand why his mind had fabricated this bizarre coping mechanism, she couldn't forgive it.
She hunched over and clasped her arms around her midriff, afraid that she would be sick. She swallowed down the nausea and leaned back against the tiles of the shower stall, sliding down against the wall until she was sitting on the floor with her knees raised to her chest. She had her face buried in her knees and her arms covering her head.
She did not know how long she sat there shivering, unable to get warm, unable to even cry as she tried to deal with the shock of knowing how very much her husband despised her. The needle-like spray suddenly stopped and Bronwyn raised her head hesitantly, a bit disorientated by the sudden cessation of water. She looked up to find Bryce standing at the entrance of the shower stall and was baffled by his unexpected appearance.
"But I locked the door," she murmured in a small voice that he might not have caught if he'd had his hearing.
"You forgot to lock the other door," he pointed out quietly, able to read her lips despite the steam, and she groaned, remembering that the luxurious bathroom was shared by two bedrooms. "Come on, Bron . . . you need to dry off. You'll make yourself sick again." She noticed, for the first time, that he had a huge, fluffy, white bath towel draped over his hands. She nodded but didn't move, and Bryce shocked her by stepping into the wet stall, uncaring of the fact that he wore socks and was dressed in clean boxer shorts and a T-shirt. He hunkered down in front of her and draped the bath towel around her shoulders, helping her up in the process.