“Hello, Theo,” she said calmly, as if this wasn’t the first time they’d spoken face-to-face, in the actual flesh, in touching distance, in nearly four years. As if being back in Barcelona, at The Chatsfield of all places, meant nothing to her. As if she felt nothing at all—as if she really was the person she’d gone to such lengths to convince him she was. Just a little bit longer, she promised herself. “Did you have a pleasant flight?”
“Of course.” He was so much more in person. She remembered the way his sheer presence had always seemed to scrape the air thin all around him, and it was worse now. As if he claimed more than his fair share of oxygen, simply because he could. Because he was Theo. “I do not maintain a private plane with my own staff for an unpleasant flight, do I?”
“I feel that way about closing down shops on Fifth Avenue and Rodeo Drive to make use of your black Amex card.”
“So the dizzying bills remind me each time I see them.”
His face was still so fascinating. Harsh and male and undeniably Greek, yet so intensely beautiful she wasn’t surprised to see the way women and men alike reacted to him. The double takes. The second, longer glances. And none of them, she was sure, could see that ferocity in his dark eyes. The hint of violence she knew he’d never direct at her. Not physically, anyway, not in a way that would truly hurt her.
Sex, of course, was a different story—but she couldn’t let herself think about that. About that last time, right after her “confession,” so raw and possessive and furious...
“Is this small talk?” he asked softly. She wasn’t fooled by that tone. She could feel its lethal power deep in her bones, tightening around her like a noose. “I haven’t grown any more interested in such things, Holly. I told you four years ago what we would discuss if you dared face me again. Is this really where you’d like to have that conversation?”
“Far be it from me to direct you in anything,” she replied, angling her body back so she looked far more at ease than she was, and it was harder than it should have been to remember what she was doing here, when he was right there and her instinct was to protect herself. To keep him hating her, which hurt more in the moment but was safer in the long run. Safer and colder and emptier. So much emptier. Hadn’t she spent all these years proving that to herself—in case her childhood hadn’t taught her that lesson first? “I know it’s so important to you that you remain in control.”
“I imagine that is the point of this charade, is it not?” He was stroking that wineglass the way he’d once stroked her body, and she was certain it was deliberate. That he knew exactly what that slow sweep of his tapered, too-strong fingers against the glass did inside of her. The streaks of fire. That deep, hard clench within. “The honeymoon suite, the clever little rose petals, like a forced death march down memory lane straight back into the fires of hell. And you have always done hell with such flair, have you not?” His gaze slammed into hers then. “What do you want from me?”
“I told you what I wanted.”
It was hard to keep her voice even when he was on the other side of such a tiny little table, his intense physicality, his rampant maleness, like an industrial-force magnet. Holly had forgotten that, somehow. She’d forgotten that so much of being near Theo was being utterly helpless and under his spell. In his thrall. She’d had to leave him or disappear into him, never to be seen again, and she remembered why, now. She could feel it, like a black hole, sucking her in all over again—the same way this same kind of destructive love had sucked in her father all those years ago. She’d watched how this ended before. Why did she think it could be different now?
She kept her gaze level on Theo’s and tried not to think about her parents. “A divorce.”
“I told you I wouldn’t give you one. And it has not yet been those magical four years that would release you, anyway. You shouldn’t have come to Barcelona if that was really what you wanted. This resets the clock, does it not?”
“What does it matter if we’re in the same city?” she asked, more bravado than anything else, and she threw in a little scoffing sound, just to maintain the brittle facade a few minutes more. “We’re not staying together. We’re not even staying in the same hotel.”
That surprised him. Holly could see it in a brief flash of something before he shuttered that dark gaze of his, and that made her decision to stay in The Harrington, a luxurious boutique hotel in Barcelona’s famous Gothic Quarter, seem that much smarter. As if she was getting good at handling him, after all.
After so many years apart, perhaps she’d finally learned something.
“I’ll repeat—what do you want?” Theo’s voice was clipped, his gaze when it met hers again uncompromisingly direct. “It was obviously important to you that we do this. Here we are. You have three seconds to tell me what your agenda is.”
“Or what?”
Holly made her voice a taunt, though the truth was, she didn’t recognize this version of Theo, and that was making her feel far more uneasy than she’d imagined she would. He wasn’t the lazy, sun-drunk lover she remembered, and even though she’d read enough about him over the course of these past few years to have expected that on some level, the reality was much different. He had an edge now. He wasn’t remotely tame. Back then, he’d reminded her of nothing so much as a great, lazy cat—tonight, he was all claws and fangs. Maybe that was why she was drawing this out instead of coming clean immediately.
Or maybe she was still too afraid. That he wouldn’t believe her.
That he would.
“What can you possibly do to me that you haven’t already done?” she asked instead.
“Excellent,” he said silkily. “We’ve moved on to the blame portion of this conversation. And so quickly. Are you truly prepared to pretend that I carry any of it?” He laughed. It wasn’t a nice sound. It rushed over her, making her skin prickle and feel too tight. It was as dangerous as he was. “I’ll admit, I’m looking forward to the performance. Please, Holly. Tell me how I betrayed you.”
She couldn’t breathe. His gaze was too hot and too condemning, his mouth too grim. It was as if he’d chained her to her seat with the force of his fury alone, and she felt a dangerous weakness steal over her. As if she could simply surrender, right here...
But she knew better.
“I’m prepared to talk about our marriage,” she said then, when she’d battled herself back from that cliff, down to something resembling calm. Or, at least, a good facsimile of it that might propel her through these last, crucial moments. “Are you? Because the way I remember it, the last time we broached the subject there was nothing but yelling and punching walls.”
And then that wild, insane thing that had exploded between them, nothing as simple as mere sex—but she didn’t say that. Neither did Theo. But it was between them all the same, the terrible heat and the violent blast of it as intense as if it had only just happened. That indelible claiming. Holly could hear the sound of his shirt tearing beneath her hands, could feel his skin beneath her teeth, the rage and the fire, the betrayal and the thick, twisted emotion like a hundred sobs pent up inside them both, and then that slick, perfect thrust of him deep into her, rough and complicated, their own painful little poetry. Their own goodbye.
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