The High Price of Secrets(79)
He found her in their bedroom shoving the last of her things into her case. Her face was pale, her eyes holding a world of hurt as she looked up and saw him. She turned her attention back to her case, wrestling with the tab on the zipper and uttering a string of curses before the thing came off in her hand entirely. Defeated, she slumped onto the floor beside the case.
“Need a hand?” he asked, stepping closer.
“Go away,” she replied, her voice tearful, shaky.
He had the distinct impression that if he reached out and touched her she’d shatter into a thousand pieces where she sat. She was clearly operating on her last reserve.
“Don’t go, Tamsyn. Please?”
“There’s nothing left for me here now. Do you hear me?” She turned her face to him, her beautiful lush mouth twisting as she repeated herself. “Nothing!”
She’d meant the words to hurt him, and they had.
“I’m sorry, so sorry.”
“Empty words,” she said, forcing her attention to trying to clip the zipper tab back on her case. “I don’t want to stay here anymore, I don’t want to see you anymore.”
“I understand, you have every right to feel this way, but please stay. At least for Ellen’s funeral.”
She uttered a sound, a bitter ringing laugh. “Your precious Lorenzo wouldn’t let me see her alive, what makes you think he’ll let me be around now she’s dead?”
“He was only trying to protect the love of his life, the way I was trying to protect mine.”
“Don’t give me that,” she said, her voice cracking under the strain of holding on to her anger, of holding back the tide of her grief. He knew how it felt. He was doing exactly the same thing himself. “The choices you made right from the beginning had nothing to do with what was best for me. You were his willing puppet all along. He must have commended you on going above and beyond the call of duty. You’re quite a guy.”
“You deserved to see Ellen—we were both wrong to stop you. I saw that earlier on but I couldn’t convince him of that. I couldn’t go against him, not when I knew how much he loved her. He’d never have forgiven me if I let any harm come to her—just like I’ll never forgive myself for what I did to you.”
“I don’t believe you. Why would you begin telling me the truth now?” She gave a small sound of satisfaction as she got the tab onto the zipper and managed to successfully close her case.
“Because I love you and because I want you to stay.”
She shook her head. “Good try, but not working.”
Tamsyn rose fluidly to her feet and extended the handle of her bag. Finn rose to block her way.
“Stay, at least for Alexis’s sake. She wants to meet you properly.”
About to step around him, he was relieved to see that his words had temporarily stopped her in her tracks.
“Alexis? She wants to talk to me?”
“More than that, she really does want to get to know you,” he assured her.
Tamsyn visibly sagged. All the bravado, all the fight leeching out of her before his eyes.