Page 49 of His Forgotten Wife
“What? So you knew I was coming?”
“Yes.”
Once again, the recessed lights of the different ceiling hit her eyes and Dolly found herself on her back. Staring up at the man she’d love forever.
“That’s not nice of you. To make me come here without asking me yourself.”
“Would you have come if I had asked?”
She shrugged.
He sighed, long and deep. “Just hear me out, okay? If you don’t like what I say, I will never show you my face again.”
“I like your face,” she blurted out before she could stop herself.
He grinned and then sobered. “I like yours too,agapi. In fact, it’s quite stupid of me that it’s taken me this long but I more than like you. I love you, Dahlia, and I never should have sent you away, wife or not.”
Tears swam in her eyes and hope unfurled like some slumbering beast, ferocious in its bite. But Dolly fought it back, for now. Fear had a deeper, fierce hold on her. And she knew it would hurt him but she couldn’t help it. “I want to believe you. But, Ares, I understand if you’re simply unable to do without me at work. You’re a creature of habit and nine years is like a lifetime to you.”
Hurt flashed in his eyes but he didn’t chase it away or cut eye contact. He let her see everything that traversed his beautiful features and Dolly stared as if she were a starving man offered a feast. “I can see why you would think that.”
Putting one knee on the bed by her thigh, he bent until his forehead pressed against her lower belly. Something about the supplication in the gesture nearly broke her heart all over again, even as it patched up the fragmented pieces. “In five weeks, I’ve tried everything to remember that scene at the cabin, during the blackout. And it won’t come to me. It’s as if my mind has decided to cloak it in darkness forever. Ashamed of itself.”
Dolly couldn’t help it. She might as well stop breathing than stop herself from sinking her fingers into his hair. His confusion, his ache, it was an open book to her. “It’s okay, Ares.”
“It’s not,” he said, placing a kiss on her belly. “I hurt you. And I can’t fathom a version of me that would do that to you. The only answer I have is what you surmised so cleverly. I never realized how well you truly know me, Dahlia. I think my brain couldn’t make the jump, couldn’t sustain the idea of losing you. Then there was the way my parents and their so-called passion ruined so many lives. I convinced myself that I didn’t need passion in my life and nothing could distract me from that stance. Until you. And even that night at the cabin, I would have been afraid, Dahlia. So afraid that I couldn’t be all that you would need in a man. All my life, I’ve been told again and again that I fall short and you…you were the most important thing in my life.
“So, I chose contempt to hide my own panic beneath. I’m so sorry for thrusting that on you.”
“I had just confessed to loving you, Ares. Why would you lose me?”
His lean shoulders rose in a shrug. “I’ve never wanted a woman as a lover before, Dahlia. The one time I had kissed a girl, the meatheads had paid her to kiss me when I turned sixteen, and then to tell me that I was the worst kiss she’d ever had. It only cemented the feeling that something was wrong with me.”
“God, I wish I had punched the daylights out of at least one of them at the pool that evening.”
His laughter reverberated against her flesh. “That would have been something to see.”
Now she glided her fingers from his hair to his forehead and he looked up. “As clichéd as it sounds, I didn’t know what it was to be loved or how to do it in return, Dahlia. You, your friendship, even if we didn’t call it that back then, was the onlyconstant in my life. And when you confessed your feelings to me, I think my entire world was hit by an earthquake. My own family, who was supposed to love me, had mocked me, ignored me, abandoned me. I didn’t trust that love wouldn’t take you away from me.”
His gaze cut to hers then. “I hate the idea of hurting you again by bringing up that moment.”
She nodded. And then made up her mind. “I think I trust you and myself enough this time to know that you’re only doing it because it’s necessary. Because we can put it behind us, then.”
“I don’t want to put it behind me. Because I never want to hurt you like that again.”
“You won’t, Ares,” she said, that hope gaining force inside her.
“The anger as I was driving to Corfu, the distraction, it wasn’t at you. It was at myself. I think the moment I left you and got on the plane, I realized how badly I had erred. How I ruined any chance I had with the person I truly adored. Your stricken face… I kept seeing it when I tried to sleep. You were right that I crushed you. I was driving so recklessly because I wanted to come right back to you, Dahlia. I wanted to tell you I was sorry and I hated myself with an intensity I’ve never known before.”
“Shh,” Dolly said as his voice quivered. “Please, Ares, I don’t want to think of the accident. I felt so guilty that I drove you to it.”
“You didn’t,matia mou,” he said, now pressing kisses to her upper belly. His tears drenched her skin, washing hers away. “And when I woke up from the coma and I saw your face, it was all crystal clear. The thought before I crashed…that I couldn’t lose you, no matter what.”
“You promise?” Dolly asked, like a little child demanding forever.
Ares kissed the corner of her mouth. As if he understood exactly why she was asking. “I do, sweetheart. I was angry and hurt that you didn’t tell me about the contract. Coming on top of what my father did, and refused to do, it felt like another betrayal. It felt like nothing in my life was worth caring about. That I wasn’t worth caring about. Processing emotions healthily is obviously not one of my brilliant qualities,” he quipped. Dolly knew what he was doing and she hated everyone who had taught him to minimize his pain.
“No,” Dolly said, pushing up and planting her own kisses all over his face. “Don’t you dare say that, Ares Demetrius. You’re mine and you’re the most wonderful, arrogant, wickedly charming man in the entire world, and you’re worth more than a hundred men together because you’re also the kindest. I love you, Ares. I’ve loved you since you sat by my bed those nights in college, because you made me feel less alone in this world. I will always love you.”
