The last time. The last moment they would ever be together.
She wanted to weep. With the devastation of it. With the triumph of it. This was it for them. The final nail in the coffin of their marriage. How she desperately needed it. How she resented it. She wanted to transport herself somewhere in the future. Years from now, maybe. To a time when she’d already healed from the wounds that would be left behind after they separated. A moment in time when she would have already learned to be Just Tabitha again, and not Tabitha, Queen of Petras, wife of Kairos. But Tabitha, on her own.
At the same time, she wanted to stay in this moment. Forever. She wanted to hold on to him forever and never let go.
Which was why she needed to let go. She so badly needed to let go.
The pleasure stretched on, an onslaught of waves that never ceased and she couldn’t catch her breath. Couldn’t think beyond what he made her feel. It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair. Why was this happening now? She had always believed this was there between them, that it could be unlocked, somehow, but they had never found it. Not until this moment. This very last moment.
Finally the storm subsided, leaving her spent, exhausted. Smashed against the rock. She was wrung out. She had nothing left in her to give. No more rage. No more desire. Nothing but an endless sadness for what her life had become. She looked at the man still holding her tightly. The man still inside her body. The man she had made vows to.
A man who was a stranger, half a decade after she’d first made love to him.
“I hate you,” she said, the words a hoarse whisper that shocked even herself. A tear slid down her cheek and she didn’t bother to wipe it away. “For every one of the past five years you have wasted, I hate you. For being my husband but never really being my husband. I hate you for that too. For not giving me a baby. For making me want you even when I hate you.”
He pushed away from her, his gaze dark. “Let me guess, you hate me for that too.”
“I do. But the good thing is, that after today, we won’t have to see each other.”
“Oh, I think not, agape. I think we will have to see each other a great many times after today. A royal divorce is going to be complicated. There will be press. There will be many days in court—”
“We signed a prenuptial agreement. I remember the terms well. I don’t get anything. That’s fine. I’ve had quite enough from you.”
He made no move to dress, made no move to collect her clothes. And he didn’t look away as she bent to gather them, pulling them on as quickly as possible, internally shrinking away from his gaze. Finally, she was dressed. It was done. It was over.
She made her way toward the door on unsteady legs, everything inside her unsteady, rolling like the sea.
“Tabitha,” he said, his voice rough, “I want you to know that I don’t hate you.”
“You don’t?” She turned to face him, her eyes meeting with his unreadable face. As immovable as stone.
He shook his head slowly, his eyes never leaving hers. “No. I feel...” He paused for a moment. “I feel nothing.”
She felt as though he had stabbed her directly in the heart. Anguish replaced any of the pleasure, any of the satisfaction that had been there before. He felt nothing. Even in this moment he felt nothing.
The rage was back then, spurring her on, keeping her from falling over. “You just screwed me on your desk,” she said, “I would have thought that might have made you feel something.”
She was all false bravado. It was either that or burst into tears.
His expression remained bland. “You’re hardly the first woman I’ve had on a desk.”
She swallowed hard, blinking back more tears. She had made the right choice. She knew she had. Had he yelled at her, had he screamed, had he said that he hated her too, she might have wondered. But those black, flat, soulless eyes didn’t lie. He felt nothing. He was indifferent, even in this moment.
Tabitha had heard it said that hate was like murder. But she knew differently. It was indifference that killed. And with his, Kairos had left her mortally wounded.
“I wish you luck in your search for a more suitable wife, Your Highness,” she said.
Then she walked out of the door, out of his life.
“WHERE IS YOUR WIFE, Kairos?”
Prince Andres, Kairos’s younger reformed rake of a brother, walked into Kairos’s office. There was still glass on the floor from where Tabitha had shattered it two days ago. Still a dark stain where the scotch had splashed itself over the wallpaper.
All of it shouted the story of what had happened the night Tabitha had left. At least, it shouted at Kairos. Every time he walked in.
It was nearly as loud as his damned conscience.
I feel nothing.
A lie. Of course it was a lie. She had stripped him down. Reduced him to nothing more than need, desperate, clawing need.
Another woman walking away from him. Threatening to leave him there alone. Empty. While his pride bled out of him, leaving him with nothing.
He couldn’t allow that, not again. So he’d said he felt nothing. And now she was gone.
“Why? What have you heard?” Kairos asked, not bothering to explain the glass, even when Andres’s eyes connected with the mess.
“Nothing much. Zara tells me Tabitha called to see if I could find out if you were using your penthouse anytime soon. I wondered why on earth my brother’s wife would be stooping to subterfuge to find out the actions of her own husband.”
Kairos ground his teeth together, his eyes on the shards of glass.
I feel nothing for you.
If only that were true. He was...he didn’t even know what to call the emotions rioting through him. Emotions were...weak and soft in his estimation, and that was not what he felt.
He was beyond rage. Beyond betrayal. She was his wife. He had brought her up from the lowest of positions, made her a queen, and she had the audacity to betray him.
“No explanation, Kairos?”
Kairos looked up at his brother. “She probably wants to go shopping without fear of retribution.”
“Right. Are the coffers of Petras so empty she has to worry about your wrath? Or is her shoe closet merely so full.”
Kairos had no idea what her closet looked like. He never looked farther than her bed when he was in her room. “She left me,” he said, his tone hard, the words like acid on his tongue.
Andres had the decency to look shocked. Surprising, because Andres was rarely shocked and he was never decent. “Tabitha left you?”
“Yes,” he ground out.
“Tabitha, who barely frowns in public for fear it might ignite a scandal?”
Kairos dragged his hand over his face. “That is the only Tabitha I know of.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Neither do I,” Kairos said, his voice a growl.
He paced across the office, to the place where the remains of that glass of scotch rested. It reminded him of the remnants left behind after an accident on the highway. One of the many similarities the past few days bore to a car crash.
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