Page 167 of The Scandal You Started
“Alone, Dominic,” she declared.
She wasn’t going to budge. He knew that. But they weren’t leaving the house. He refused to.
After a moment to think, Dominic took her by the hand and walked past her. She voiced a single, tired protest as he led her up the stairs, but said nothing more when he drew her into her bedroom on the far left and shut the door behind them.
He let go of her hand in the middle of the carpeted room as he faced her. There was a double bed at her back and a four-door wardrobe at his.
“We are alone now,” he said, his stance wide, hands on his hips.
With a deep inhale, she hardened her expression, and Dominic braced himself to bear the pain of her words.
“Go home.”
“My home is where you are,” he said calmly.
“No. Your real home. In the past…where you’re supposed to be.”
“I’m supposed to be here with you,” he argued, moving towards her.
She backed away. “No, you’re not.” Her indifference splintered, revealing pained frustration. “This isn’t where you’re meant to be. This isn’t where you belong. That’s why history put you two hundred years in the past. And you can pretend we can fight it as much as you want, but we can’t. It’s impossible. Nothing we do or find here will ever let us have a life together. It will never work. So we should just stop fighting the inevitable.” She took a deep breath. “Go back to your time, Dominic, and forget about me.”
Her words gouged deep wounds through all his muscles, ones that would never heal if he let her push him away for good. But his own festering doubts taunted him.
What if she is correct?What if they really were impossible?
No. He refused to believe that. Because if that were true, why had they met in the first place?
“You keep referring to my history, Rayna,” Dominic said. “But what about yours? Perhaps in my original life, we never met, but in your life, we were always meant to meet. You were always meant to walk into my quarantine room, and I was always going to fight to have you as my Guardian. We were always meant to live together. And I was always going to fall in love with you. So how can you say it is impossible when it was meant to happen?”
He could see in Rayna’s eyes how she was chewing over the thought, but then she shook her head, quick and small. “Even if that was true, it still doesn’t mean I get to keep you.”
“Why not?” He swiftly closed the distance between them and ducked his head as he clasped her elbows. “Why can you not keep me? I am yours—”
“You’re not mine,” she snapped, breaking out of his hold. “You’re Lady Claire’s husband!”
“I am not,” Dominic spat.
He hated this faceless woman. Hated that her name was tied to his. He wasn’t her husband! He never would be. That man wasn’t him. It was false, intolerable to even think of himself doing such a thing.
Without a word, Rayna turned away and headed to the bedside cabinet. She opened the single drawer and whipped out some papers. Then she came back to him.
“Here.” She held it out for him.
He took it from her and flicked it open. “What is this?”
“It’s your history. Everything you were meant to do and be.”
His skin burned hot and cold with rage as his eyes rapidly skimmed the page, hooking on the words Rayna spoke aloud.
“You marry Lady Claire in March. You have four children with her. You build a school with her. You build a life with her.” Her voice cracked. “You’rehappywith her…”
“Where did you get this?” he ground out, his hands visibly vibrating.
“It doesn’t matter.”
He brandished the papers in the air. “Who gave this to you, Rayna?”
But he knew who. It was Jim or one of the other POTeM Board members. One of the ones who didn’t want him and Rayna to stay together. And it was working.
