Page 45 of Forbidden Until Midnight

Something happened to him then. She saw it distantly through the haze that was slowly wrapping itself around her.

‘Yes, I did,’ he said, pulling himself to his full height. As if he were shedding the person that she had known only moments ago, the person she had given herself to. ‘I did, because I made a promise long before the one I made to you, and I believe that those two promises weren’t mutually exclusive.’

‘Mutually exclusive?’ she just about managed to repeat. ‘This is mylife, Santo.’

‘And it is mine. I owe a debt to your father.’

A knee-jerk reaction had her thinking of Edward, instead of the name of the man who Santo knew more than she did. Enough to make a promise, enough to pay a debt.

She shook her head as he made another step towards her.

‘I meant everything that we shared tonight, Eleanor. Everything I said, everything I did.’

‘You lied to me,’ she cried, the outburst shocking them both. ‘You lied to me, and that’s not even the worst of it. Because whatis, Santo, is that you knewthen, when you made that promise, what it would do to me if I found out. You made that promise, knowing what breaking it would do to me.’

The betrayal was devastating. Her heart tore apart as she reimagined the last eight years under a new lens. One from Santo’s perspective, of knowing more about her than she knew about her own life. Each successive New Year’s Eve overlaying the next, seeing things differently, remembering little oddities—a vague recollection of Santo talking to her mother. Of Edward interrupting her and Santo.

‘Does my mother know? That you know my father?’

The muscle in his jaw flexed. ‘Yes.’

‘Does Edward?’

‘I think he may have suspected,’ Santo admitted.

‘What else did you lie to me about?’

Something flickered in his gaze. Not a lie as such, she was beginning to see, but something else. ‘How else have you interfered with my life?’ she demanded, thinking through all the possibilities. She came to the realisation almost as he opened his mouth to speak.

‘I spoke to Mads before you...’

Eleanor’s legs nearly gave way, the hand she thrust out to the wall the only thing keeping her up.

Her job. The one thing she’d had. Theonething she’d thought she’d achieved herself. And everything that had followed from that job, fruit of the poisoned tree. Lies.

Everything.

Could she even trust him? Could she trust anyone in her life? Every single person had lied to her, kept secrets from her. Everyone.

‘I need you to leave,’ she whispered, wrapping the last thread of determination she had left around her heart like a bandage. She didn’t care that it was his hotel room. He could wait out in the hall naked for all she cared. But she needed to gather her things,herself, and she couldn’t stand him watching her while she did.

‘No, Eleanor. I’m not leaving until we talk this out.’

‘There is nothing to talk about,’ she spat.

Santo wrestled with control, anger, frustration, fear. She was slipping through his fingers, he could feel it, and it terrified him. But fear had never been a friend to him and it wasn’t going to start now.

‘Of course there is—this is worth fighting for, Eleanor.’

‘Fighting for? Worth it?’ she demanded, glaring at him from where she stood. ‘You ruined this before it even had a chance, Santo. You knew what lying to me would do.’

‘They were lies to keep you safe, Eleanor,’ he ground out, frustration and fear pushing him to a point he knew was wrong. Pushing him into a corner that he knew he’d fight his way out of.

‘Lying to yourself now? That must be a new experience for you,’ she threw at him.

‘Oh, don’t be such a child, Eleanor. Things aren’t so black and white,’ he lashed out.

Fury whipped into her gaze. ‘You don’t get to accuse me of being a child, while saying all this was to protect me,’ she bit back. ‘You don’t think that keeping these secrets has cost you too—kept you isolated, separate from forming proper relationships based on trust, on understanding?’

---