Page 59 of Seduced By the Enemy

“We need to talk.”

It wasn’t how he’d planned to preface this. He’d intended to lead into it gently, giving her time to absorb it. But now that he was here, and he’d decided to do it, he wanted to get it over with. He needed to, or he’d back out.

She turned to face him, camera lowered, her lips quirking in a half-smile. “Sounds ominous,” she said, teasingly, as she lifted the camera back up, twisted the zoom slightly then clicked a photo of him. He didn’t smile—he didn’t have it in him. This wasan utter mess, and he knew he was about to do the one thing he’d spent his whole life trying to avoid. He was going to hurt her. He was already hurting her.

A myriad of options ran through his mind. Ways to do this. What he could say. But each and every one had her fighting with him, fighting for this. Telling him she would choose him over her family a thousand times over. And what could he say to that? Knowing she felt that now was no insurance policy against the rest of their lives. This was the sort of rift that would become a ticking time bomb in their relationship. He could never know when it would explode—whether that be with a significant event that she was forced to miss, or if and when they were to have their own children, and she faced the reality of doing that without her own mother and father. He loved her too much to have her sacrifice that.

And suddenly, he knew the only way he could do this was to lie. Rather than telling her he was ending it for her sake, he would tell her he was doing it for his. That he didn’t want to be with her anymore. It sickened him even as he knew it was the only way, even as he opened his mouth and said, “I made a mistake, Emilia. This is all a mistake.”

She waitedfor the other shoe to drop. For the punch line to land. She waited for those beautiful lips she adored kissing to twist into a smile and tell her he’d ordered Thai instead of Indian—her favourite. But the longer she looked at him and silence held, the more she realised he was serious.

Deadly serious.

“What was a mistake?” she said, carefully, trying to keep her voice level.

He took two steps further into the apartment, then shrugged out of his suit jacket. He wore a business shirt beneath it, andas she watched he unbuttoned the sleeves and pushed them up a little, to reveal his tanned forearms. It was such a familiar sight; a simple act he did every time they came home from something and he wanted to unwind. Her gut kicked in recognition of that. She loved his arms.

“Us, doing this.”

Her heart stammered. For two months, they’d ignored the elephant in the room, and barely spoken of their families. She hadn’t told him when it had been her mother’s birthday, and not seeing her to celebrate had felt like a knife in her chest all day. She hadn’t told him that she’d been buying Christmas gifts for her family, even though she had no idea if she could possibly gift them or not. But he hadn’t spoken of his pain, either. Yet she knew he must feel it, because he’d been as ostracized from his family as she had hers.

“Has something happened?”

His whole body was rigid. She traced the outlines with her eyes, knowing it was as committed to memory as any photograph ever could be to paper. “I haven’t been in a relationship for a long time. I thought this was what I wanted, but I’ve started to realise: I don’t.”

Her heart went from stammering to shrieking. She lifted a hand and pressed it to her breast, as though that would stop the pain. She hadn’t regretted her decision for even a moment. Her family had cut her out, but Salvatore was more than enough. For her. Was he saying he didn’t feel the same way? “You don’t want this?”

His eyes held hers for a long moment and she could have sworn she saw anguish in them. She could have sworn he was looking at her as though this was the last thing he wanted to be doing. But then, “I’m not cut out for monogamy. I’m just not wired this way.”

Her heart went from shrieking to exploding, coating her insides with sticky goo, making it hard to breathe, and impossible to stand. She took several steps back, until her calves connected with the sofa and she sank into it, needing the support.

“You are wonderful, Emilia. This isn’t about you.”

She laughed then. A horrible, hollowed out sound. “It’s not you, it’s me? That’s what you’re telling me?”

Again she caught a fleeting glimpse of something in his expression, before he dragged a hand over his face as if to erase it. “Trite, but accurate.”

Every single moment they’d shared seemed to filter through her mind, like a thousand frames of a movie all jumbling on top of each other. Their meeting in Moricosia, the moment they’d succumbed to their chemistry, the way his hands had revered her body, and driven her wild, the charity balls, the hotel rooms…the way she’d wanted him and he’d wanted her. The moment he’d told her he loved her, with the morning sunlight filtering into this very apartment, casting his face half in golden light.

“But…you love me.”

His chest moved swiftly at that, almost like she’d hit him. “I thought I did,” he said, after an infinitesimal beat. She didn’t notice the hesitation, only the words.

“You thought you did?”

“I wanted to. I tried. But I just can’t do this.” She opened her mouth to argue, but he spoke first. “I feel suffocated, Emilia.”

“Suffocated,” she repeated, trying to comprehend. Because the truth was, regardless of the awful situation with their families, she felt the exact opposite. With Salvatore in her life, she felt more free than she’d ever known. She felt almost like she could fly.

“I should never have said I love you. I should never have let it get this far. Believe me when I tell you, I will regret this forever.”

Not only had the bottom fallen out of her world, she no longer recognised a single atom of it. She looked around and felt like the entire universe was out of focus. Salvatore’s love had so quickly become the constant in her world, something she relied on and woke up smiling about. Everything else had become a complete mess, but knowing he loved her made it okay.

Suddenly, it wasn’t their memories that formed a clog of images in her mind, but all the future memories she’d imagined them making. The house, somewhere, filled with light and laughter, and children of their own, that they would love and hold close no matter what—no matter who they chose to love, nor how they lived their lives. The future that had Salvatore at her side, no matter what.

“I trusted you,” she whispered, wanting to stand up and meet his gaze more at his level, but not trusting her legs to hold her. “I believed in you.”

“I’m sorry.”

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