Page 112 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 5-8

“I flew across Europe to prove you’re a liar,” he told her in that low, bittersweet voice. His gaze was so dark it made a lump grow in her throat. “Yet all I found was the truth, exactly as you’d told it to me. And the whole way back, while your cousin backed up all you told me and shared a good deal you did not, all I could think of was what you’ve been through. What you had gone to such trouble to save her from.” He shook his head. “What my father must have done to you, all of these years. I have no doubt that he was imaginative. And vile. He always is.”

She held on to him as if the sea might sneak in if she wasn’t careful and steal him away.

“Your father is dead,” she told him, her gaze on his. “There’s no need to keep digging up his grave.”

He made as if to put space between them at that, but she held on. And she could see that familiar light of battle in his gaze, but for the first time, it occurred to her that his first fight, always, was with himself.

As hers was with herself, too.

Because neither one of them had wanted this, and yet here they were, drawn together yet again.

“I don’t want to dig up any graves, but I don’t know how to begin to apologize to you,” Apostolis told her, his voice almost too low to hear over the surf. But then, she thought she would be able to hear him anywhere. He was already etched into her skin. Her bones. Maybe it had always been a kind of arrogant foolishness to pretend otherwise. “I don’t even know where to start. I can think of nothing else—but it has finally occurred to me what has to be done.”

She frowned at him, still gripping the inside of his arms. “You can’t divorce me. You can’t even leave me effectively. It’s right there, in the will.”

His mouth curved, just slightly. And her treacherous heart, which should have been left in tiny little pieces too small to ever come together again, blossomed into a brand-new kind of hope.

“I owe you a reckoning,” he said quietly. “Because I am the liar here, not you.”

She found herself whispering his name.

“Seven years ago I did not give you marital advice, such as it was, out of the goodness of my heart,” he told her as if he was making a confession before a court. “I took one look at you and told myself that I disliked you on sight. But I didn’t.”

“I was there, Apostolis. You did.”

He shook his head, and there was gold in his gaze again. “My darling wife. My favorite stepmother.” He ran a hand over her hair as if he marveled at the feel of it, just as she gloried in his touch. “I felt something at first sight, but it was notdislike. And it was not allowed. I believe that in that moment I decided that you must be evil if I could fall like that, and therefore a liar by definition. I excused myself, of course.”

She thought of running down the steps to the beach. Of tossing herself so heedlessly into his arms. There were a thousand things she could have said, but all of them were ways to fight—because she thought she had to fight to protect the soft parts of her she kept inside.

But she’d already told him what she wished for. What did she have to keep safe now that she’d already exposed herself?

“I excuse you now,” she said softly.

“You shouldn’t,” he returned, sounding almost outraged at the idea. “There are so many more lies. I told myself I hated you when, in fact, you are the only woman I have ever wanted enough to make me weak. To make me behave like this. This monster who has more in common with his father than I ever imagined possible. If I am honest, Jolie, I am disgusted with myself.”

“This is why we have to stop these wars,” she said, her eyes stinging with the effort of keeping her tears at bay. “Because all they do is tear us apart. Just imagine—”

“I have imagined very little else,” he told her, hoarsely. “But I will tell you now, I don’t deserve it. I will never deserve it. When I think of the things that you deserve, none of them involve me. The son of the man who treated you this way. The man who, all on his own, in some ways treated you worse.”

But Jolie shook her head, moving even closer to him.

“Arguing with you has always been like a dance. I don’t want to lose the spark of it.” She shook her head, not sure she believed that she’d said that out loud...but then she realized that it was true. There were years that she had lived for his few visits and the opportunity to fence a few words and fake smiles with this man. After the will was read, after their wedding, she would be lying if she claimed there wasn’t a part of her that was thrilled they got to poke at each other the way they did. And she could have moved herself right back to the back house. She hadn’t. Because she’d wanted the excitement of waiting to see what he’d say next. Or what she’d say back. “All I want is for it to be different. To be about us, not about him. Do you think that’s possible?”

He was shaking his head, as if she was causing him pain. “What I don’t know is why you would want it to be possible. Why you would want any of this at all.”

“Because,” Jolie said quietly, as if it was a secret between her and him and the sea, “whenever I think of love, I think of you. Not because we found that, you and me. But because I want it from you. Because I want thewhat ifs,and themaybes,and all those nights we pretended to be real. I want to see where that goes. I want all those possibilities, Apostolis. I know you think that’s losing the war, but I think—”

He whispered her name, like some kind of incantation.

“Nothing is worse than losing you,” he told her. “Not even death. I would lose a thousand wars, every day, as long as I had this. As long as I have you.”

He leaned in and kissed her. And it was sweet and light—until she kissed him deeper. More urgently.

Because sweet and light was not who they were.

She wanted him. All of him.

“I’m so sorry,” he said against her mouth, between tasting her and teasing her, and making her feel like she was home at last. “I don’t know the first thing about loving anyone, but I promise you, whatever I have in me, it’s yours.”

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