Page 21 of Forbidden Greek Mistress
But as he thought that, he wondered. A ripple of doubt wound its way into him, then became something more like a flood. Had he truly chased away her fears? Or had he held her, knowing full well that when their hands were on each other, it only ever led to one place?
And it was a magical place, but had that only made it worse for her? Had he underscored the things she worried about when he’d meant to wash them away?
Had she truly believed that all he wanted from her was a convenient body?
The very notion made him feel something like sick.
“What happened that night?” Saskia demanded. “Did she finally stand up for herself? You wouldn’t like that, would you. I can tell.”
Thanasis had to breathe then. Deep.
“I don’t know who you think you are,” he said, very carefully, when he could speak again. “And I mean that literally. I’ve spent the past two days doing a great deal of research on what I presume was a head injury and the memory issues that can follow.”
“I had no injuries,” Saskia snapped at him. Defensively, he thought, and he wanted nothing more than to pull her into his arms. To kiss her, run his hands over her, and make certain she really was all right.
But he knew that this version of her would detest that.
“It could also be trauma,” he said after a moment, when he could trust that he wouldn’t reach out for her anyway. “The brain is a marvel. It is also fragile, like everything else that makes us human.” He shrugged, though he felt anything but casual. “I thought she knew.” He heard the way he said that, and shook his head. “I thoughtyouknew, Saskia. You were the center of my world. I arranged my life around you. There was no shame in that. How could there be?”
“We are only talking about facts, not feelings,” she told him, maybe a little too fiercely. She stood even straighter. Her dark hair was piled on her head today, and he liked it. It made him think about pulling out the pins he could see she still used and watching them scatter between them. It made him think of burying his face in the cloud of her hair as it came tumbling down. She looked as if she’d been on a long walk and the loose-fitting, flowy clothes she wore were nothing like the wardrobeshe had preferred back in London. Then again, this was a Greek island like all the rest that dotted the Aegean, despite the presence of Pavlos. It was a place to flow about in linen and light colors.
But the loose, flowing clothing she was wearing today only made her eyes seem brighter. More intense.
“Ffion found me walking with great purpose down the side of a motorway where no one usually walked. And certainly not if they were dressed the way I was. She thought it felt off, so she picked me up.” Those steeped tea eyes studied him for far too long. “I couldn’t remember my name. Or where I was, much less why. And we did look. We both concluded I probably wasn’t on the train, because I would have had to have walked miles from the derailment site. Besides, I was no worse for wear.” Saskia frowned at him, possibly because he didn’t react to that. “People died.”
“Yes,” he gritted out. “I am fully aware that people died, Saskia. I thought you were one of them.”
He did not say,I grieved you. I bargained with the heavens and lost. Again and again and again.
He did not tell her that he had never slept again, not the way he had before. Not really.
“All I have of that night are my reactions afterward,” Saskia said, her eyes narrowing as if she was seeing only monsters when she looked at him. “Cutting off my hair, dressing in drab, dark colors and trying to hide. What does that suggest to you?”
Thanasis wanted to move closer. He wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her until she came to her senses. Maybe she didn’t remember him, but he knew from the other night that her body did, as clearly as he remembered her. But if he did that, no matter if she thrilled to his touch again, it would only prove this case she was trying to build.
This version of his relationship with her bore no resemblance to reality, but the fact that she might imagine it—and the possibility, however slight, that the Saskia who remembered him might see it that way too, if he could reach her again—well. He couldn’t risk it.
He cared too much about what had actually happened between them. He wouldn’t let memories, or the lack of them, change that.
Thanasis stayed where he was. “I would say that everything you’re describing sounds a lot like a person who suffered a significant traumatic event,” he said quietly. “And was likely depressed and confused in its aftermath.”
“But what was that traumatic event?” she asked sharply. “The train derailment? Or you?”
And she would never know, no matter what she remembered, how deeply that wounded him.
“Saskia,” he said, though it hurt to say her name, “I won’t deny that I could easily have hurt your feelings, but I would never—”
“But you don’t know, do you?” There was something hot in her gaze, a kind of knife’s edge that matched her voice. “All this time, you’ve been mourning something you might have broken yourself.”
And for what was, possibly, the first time his entire life, Thanasis was speechless. He could only stare at her—this woman back from the dead, the love of his life, who was treating him like some kind of criminal.
Who was suggesting things to him that made him want to howl and roar—
But he didn’t.
He couldn’t have said how long they stood there like that, staring at each other. Thanasis found himself playing the whole of their relationship over and over his head, and that wasnothing new. What was new was the way he felt as if it was a forensic examination today, as if he was turning it all over, poking at it, looking for clues to prove that she was right.
Not only that she was right, but that he had deeply and fundamentally misunderstood the most important relationship of his life. The only important relationship in his life.
