Page 46 of Greek's Temporary "I Do"

‘Away from what?’ she pleaded. ‘I just married your brother!’

‘But you didn’t,’ he ground out through clenched teeth.

‘Do you think that matters? The press announced it across the globe, it made headlines in twelve different countries. How on earth could anything between us ever happen? You barely survived one Hadden. You wouldn’t survive this. Liassidis Shipping wouldn’t survive it.’

The look in his eyes was a shock. The fear, even the idea that he might lose everything he’d worked so hard for—she read it as if it were the lines of a book written on his soul.

It was a lightning strike right into her heart, burning a scar over already damaged tissues. It was the one thing she’d never wanted to see. She could have lived with her pain and her loss, telling herself that it was the situation that had come between them. That they had simply been star-crossed lovers. And then she could have still cherished the hope that what they’d shared had meant something, had meant enough.

But in that moment she knew. That was what she had been trying to protect herself from seeing. That nothing had changed. That she still wasn’t enough for him.

The blow to her soul was crushing. It stole the oxygen from her lungs and the ground from beneath her feet. She thought she might have swayed. Leo reached for her, but she batted his hand away.

‘Helena—’

‘Go. Go now,’ she said, shaking her head and turning back out to the view beyond the window, wishing she couldn’t see his reflection in the glass and hoping that he couldn’t see her tears.

‘Helena—’

‘No, Leo. It’s done.’

Helena held herself together as she watched Leo’s head drop. He had given up. It was what she’d expected, what she’d thought all along, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a stab to the heart.

Slowly, the shadowy image in the window turned, and she watched Leo Liassidis walk out of her life for the final time.

Helena woke up, not sure why and confused as to where she was. Her eyes ached from crying the night before and it took a while to prise them open. She was still in the living area. The sunrise must have woken her. Sleep had been her drug again and she should know better. She had barely eaten anything since the boat and that was more hours ago than she cared to do the maths on.

But an empty stomach was nothing compared to the agony in her heart. The force she’d needed to use to hold herself back as she’d watched him leave had bruised her chest. Every time she breathed the pain was a reminder of what had happened.

He’d gone. He’d walked away. She wasn’t enough. She never had been.

‘It needs to be enough for you, Helena.’

Her stomach clenched so viciously she rolled into a ball to protect herself from the hurt. She hated that he was right. Hated that he had been the one to say it. Nothing she did with Incendia would make her mother feel something she couldn’t. Her father was gone and would never be able to give her what she needed. She had to be enough for herself, but right now things were too raw and too painful from the loss of Leo for her to be able to consider it properly or even understand what that would look like.

A sound came from somewhere in the villa. The sound that had woken her.

She rolled her shoulders and swallowed. Leander was due back today. Perhaps that was him calling now, she thought, finally recognising the sound that had woken her as her mobile phone. She’d put it on silent when they were on the yacht, not wanting to have her last time with Leo interrupted by the outside world.

A tear escaped as her heart melted in a painful sob.

She couldn’t do this, she thought furiously. She wasn’t allowed to collapse, she wasn’t allowed to cry. She clenched her jaw and pulled herself up from the sofa.

In the shower she scrubbed every inch of her body and washed her hair, turning the water from scalding hot to freezing. Everything she could think of to give her body the jolt she needed to come back to the present. But somehow, despite everything she tried, she knew that she’d let part of herself, her heart, leave with Leo.

Dressed in a simple shirt dress, with her hair in a towel and her phone buzzing again, she finally went to retrieve it from beside her bed and gasped.

Thirty missed calls?

Some from unknown numbers, a worrying amount from Megan, despite the fact that it was six a.m. back home.

What the hell was going on?

Just then someone pounded on the door. ‘Helena? Are you in there?’

She walked towards the door on slow, jerky feet.

‘Is Leo with you?’

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