Page 21 of Deadly Seduction

“Yes,” she murmurs. Her voice is soft, but her brown eyes look up in silent defiance. “Why do I still feel like I’ve done something wrong?”

“You haven’t,” I say, snatching a knife from the drawer to butter her toast. My violent scraping almost tears a hole right through the bread. “Who you sleep with is none of my business.”

She joins me and rests her hand on top of mine. “If you’re not mad, why are you murdering my toast?”

I don’t answer.

“I never asked you to wait for me, Freddie,” she says gently. “You should have moved on.”

I drop the knife with a bang and send crumbs flying over the tidy kitchen. She jumps back, startled by my reaction.

How can she say that so casually? Have I got it all wrong? Are my feelings something I’ve made up in my head? Something I’ve fictionalised? Moving on wasn’t even an option!

“Moved on?” My anger rises, but I take a deep breath to regain my composure. “I didn’t want to move on.”

“Why?” she pushes.

Most women would run if they discovered a stranger has been obsessing over them since a fleeting kiss that happened years ago. She should leave. I refuse to look at her, refuse to speak, refuse to let her see how broken I am.

Am I the problem? I’ve wept for a girl and a future I thought was lost. Maybe I don’t deserve to find happiness. Everyone I love dies because of me. It’s a curse.

“Look at me,” Rose demands. “Freddie, look at me.” Her voice wavers. “Please.”

I sigh, and my eyes meet hers. Does she feel it too? A spark that makes everything else pale into insignificance.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I say. I shouldn’t have dragged her into that fight. When I saw her, I should have kept walking. Granted, Seb might have drawn her into our lives, but he was doing well to keep their relationship separate. But I brought her into the Duke’s world because I was too selfish to let her go. “I made a mistake.”

She flinches. I want to smash everything in sight, but I clear up instead. I tip the toast into the bin and wipe down the crumbs, but my breathing is heavy. A beast ravages my heart from the inside, tearing it to pieces.

“Why didn’t you move on, Freddie?” She’s not letting it go. “Why did you take Pippy? You didn’t have to do any of that. Why would you do that for a girl you just met?”

“Do you genuinely want the truth?” I ask, approaching her. She shrinks back as I advance, pressing her back into the worktop with nowhere to escape.

It’s now or never. I’ve rehearsed this speech multiple times, speaking to a ghostly apparition in my dreams, going over what I’d say if I ever saw her again, but this isn’t how I imagined it.

“Yes,” Rose says. “I want you to tell me.”

“Because I thought you were the one,” I say, realising how ridiculous I sound. “And I was wrong, wasn’t I? I spent five years reading into a connection that only I felt. Five years lost to a woman I’d never have again, and now you’re here. It’s all wrong.”

The colour drains from her face. She thinks I’m insane. Maybe I am. Maybe we all are. Callen is crazy, but at least he doesn’t hide it.

“Because of Seb?” she asks.

“It should have been me,” I murmur, more to myself than to her. I was meant to attend the launch party the night she met Seb, but he took my place at the last second. If I was there, I’d have met her before him. All of this would have been different. “You felt the connection when we met, didn’t you?”

“Five years is a long time,” she says like that’s the end of the conversation, but we’ve only just started. “I’m not the same person I was when we met.”

“But you still feel it,” I say.

I need to hear it and validate it’s not something I’ve made up. An invisible string ties us together, and it’s still holding as strong as the night we met, but she’s resisting it. She’s holding back. She’s wearing armour now.

“What I feel doesn’t matter,” Rose mutters. “Everything changed that night. I’m not the person you think I am. I’m not the girl you’ve been waiting for.”

“You’re lying,” I say. “You might like Seb, but you can’t deny how right it feels when you’re with me. You know it matters.”

Her dilating pupils and hard nipples give her away as I put my hand on her chest. She doesn’t move as I feel her heart pumping blood around her body through her skin. She’s alive. So very alive.

“I’ve been yours from the moment we met,” I say as her heartbeat jumps erratically. “I’ve never been more sure of anything. My instincts are never wrong.”

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