Page 135 of When Hearts Surrender

Elias has his people searching for Cole—the bastard disappeared without a trace after he left Belle to freeze in front of the emergency room entrance.

I hear Silas bark and howl as I approach Belle’s room, and I grip the locket tighter in my clasp, dread curling around my heart, restricting every beat and flutter.

Forgive me, Belle.

I knock on the door.

“Come in,” she hollers.

I find her propped up on the bed, her raven hair piled on top of her head. She’s still too pale, her lithe frame too thin. Silas has commandeered my side of the bed, his body half on top of Belle as she giggles, trying to shift the fifty-pound dog off her chest.

My heart spasms as I stand at the doorway and stare at them, trying to commit every single second of this moment to memory—the way she closes her eyes as Silas smothers her with kisses, her hair falling out of her bun, but she doesn’t seem to care. How a fire seems to light within her, even now, when she’s still too frail and recovering, but the poison hasn’t dimmed her spirits.

She’s life and I’m death. Two people who never should’ve gotten together.

I rake in an inhale to steel myself.

At my silence, Belle looks up, her grin slipping off her face when she sees my expression.

“Maxwell? Is everything okay?”

My voice catches in my throat. The words I need to say are lodged in my throat, choking me to death. My body is fighting against my mind, refusing to let me speak.

Because we don’t want to leave.

“Maxwell?” She sits up straighter.

Death has always been my dancing partner, and I used to be afraid—fearful of those dark shadows looming in the corners of the house, the whispering echoes warning me of more misfortunes if I step out of line. I hated him with every ounce of my soul for forcing me to live in the darkness and resigning myself to a life that was merely to survive.

I was afraid of death visiting my doorstep again. He had taken far too much from me already. From my family.

But now, I realize, I’m no longer afraid of him. Because living a lonely life isn’t so bad anymore.

The worst thing in the world is to watch the one you love die in front of you, knowing you could’ve stopped it. It was a pain I saw on Dad’s face when Mom passed away, an agony I suffered growing up in the shadows of the estate, constantly reminding myself this would be my future if I weren’t careful. It was a pain I felt—a fragment of the real thing, I now understood—with Sydney, someone as I realized years later, wasn’t the right person for me.

Staring at my wife, the woman who has filled my cavernous heart with light, whose presence has obliterated the restlessness and yearning I’ve felt all my life, I know one thing.

I would give up everything for her.

Everything, including my life and my happiness.

As long as she’s safe and I can take death far away from her, I’ll gladly be his dance partner for the rest of my life, confining myself in the dark shadows of loneliness forever, knowing somewhere out there, a rose is blooming brightly. Thriving. Happy. Imbuing the world with beauty.

And it’s these thoughts that give me the strength to utter the next words.

“Belle, I want a divorce.”

“What?”

My pulse thuds rapidly in my veins. A splitting pain stabs me in my chest. I shake my head. I must’ve misheard him. That can’t be right.

“What did you say, Maxwell?”

He strides toward me, his muscles stretching against his fitted black suit—the frigid king in his full glory and what I now know is his armor against the world. He quietly sits down on the bed.

His jaw locks as he stares at my hand, at the wedding ring on my finger.

He won’t look at me.

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