Page 74 of When Hearts Surrender

My breathing feels labored. My vision is dizzy and my eyes are heavy.

“Stay away from him,” a ghoulish voice rasps in my ear. “Stay away.”

I succumb to the darkness.

Chapter 27

“Sir, Belle’s been inan accident.” Melody bursts into my study without knocking, her eyes flaring in panic.

Chills crawl up my back, and I stand up. “What do you mean?” Images of Mom, Sydney, and all their accidents float through my mind.This can’t happen again.

“Belle. S-She…the hospital called. Agnes isn’t here, so I picked up. S-She…She—”

“What? Tell me!”

Melody flinches and I would’ve felt guilty if it weren’t for the clawing terror ripping my heart into shreds. “S-She was volunteering at the shelter and fell down a flight of stairs. They sent for an ambulance and took her to Mount Sinai.”

Panic mauls me like a rabid beast, my heart lurching to my throat, and I quickly grab my cell phone and dart toward the door.

“Car? Where’s Morris?” I bark out as I pass by her.

“I didn’t look for him! I ran up to you after I got the call.”

“Fuck!” I jab the intercom button and as soon as a voice comes on, I command, “Bring a car around—any of them, right now!”

Please be okay, Belle.I run down the empty corridors, my footfalls echoing in a thunderous beat. Flying down the stairs, I take several steps at a time, every inch of my body needing to be where my wife is, where a piece of my heart is.

I thought I’d protected her by being an ass.Had I not done enough?

Heavy regret smothers my lungs as I sit in the town car minutes later. I think back to how I’ve treated her these past few months—momentsof intense passion peppered with cold rejection, the hurt in her eyes whenever I left her after we had sex, when I wanted nothing more than to peel off her clothes and worship every inch of her delectable body.

I wish she knew how difficult it was for me to hold back the impulse to kiss those pouty lips, the lips that had worshiped my scars and called them beautiful, instead of the ugly flaws they were. She saw the monsters lurking inside me, and yet she accepted me all the same.

But I keep telling myself I’m doing this for her own good. To keep our hearts intact. To keep her safe.

Did I not do enough?Does any of this even matter to the curse?Is it already too late?

And if it is, she’d die not knowing how much I care about her, how much I regret hurting her feelings, how hard it was for me to stay away from her. I didn’t even get to apologize to her.

It’s too late, Maxwell, a ghoulish voice whispers in my mind.

Too late, just like before, all those years ago.

“I want to annul our marriage.” Sydney stared at me, her green eyes coated with moisture. The bitter wind beat against our bodies as we stood at the helm of the family yacht, the dark waters of the ocean pitch black around us.

The knife she hurled at my chest ever since I overheard her confession to Ryland twisted into my heart, severing an artery, leaving me a bloody mess before her.

A bloody mess she couldn’t see.

Shaking my head, a few mirthless chuckles escaped my lips.

“For better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish as long as you both shall live,” I spat out the civil wedding vows we said to each other on our elopement, my middle finger to the curse and the path laid out before me as the eldest Anderson offspring.

Because I refused to let a curse run my life.

She whimpered and stared helplessly at me.

“I overheard you and Ryland, you know,” I seethed, burning rage sifting through my veins like a wildfire.

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