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“You… you killed her?”
Of the three emotional grenades Zach Savage had just thrown at her feet, this was the one that had wreaked the most devastation.Not that she wasn’t shattered by the other two…
Farrah was my wife…
We were married for one day…
Bethany Green shook her head, unable to fathom how to begin to process those pieces of information.Her mind was locked on the last statement that the man, to whom she’d confessed her love, had just flattened her with.
He’d killed her.Killed his wife.Farrah.Around them, crickets chirped in the dark Moroccan night, uncaring that two people stood frozen in the middle of what should’ve been a sultry paradise, but instead was ground zero of epic proportions.
Following his stark confession, Zach had paled alarmingly, his vibrant golden beauty turned into a taut, cold statue.He looked shell-shocked, as if his revelation had stunned the hell out of him.
She was equally stunned.Stunned that she wasn’t fleeing his presence as fast as her legs could carry her.He’d just confessed to… to…
“Say something!”The words were propelled from the depths of her ravaged soul, the consuming need for an answer greater than the fear twisting her insides that she could be in danger from Zachary Savage.
He jerked out of his stasis.Grey eyes pierced through the darkness.Suddenly, he lunged for her.
“No!”Bethany scuttled out of reach, narrowly missing the shallow pool to her left.Renewed fear slammed into her as she adjusted her position to avoid yet another looming threat.
Zach checked himself and froze, looking from the water to her face.
“Bethany, come here.”
She glanced from his tormented expression to the mound of stones behind her.The beautiful shrine he’d built to his dead wife.
Oh God.Oh God.“Oh God.”
“Bethany!”he demanded, his focus strengthening as determination and that iron control began to reassert itself.
“Tell me what you meant.”
His eyes darkened until she could only see black holes, fraught with chaotic despair.A breeze wove through the garden.They both shivered.
“I can’t.It’s… Bethany, I can’t tell you anything more than I have.I’ve already said too much…”
The ice, which had engulfed her soul, hardened several degrees more.“You can’t?You brought me to the place where you’ve built a shrine to your dead wife, and you can’t tell me how she died?How you killed her?Please, God, tell me you meant that metaphorically?”
The words jerked out of her and dropped into the yawning space between them.
Zach made a sound like a wounded animal.He twisted away from her and dragged his fingers through his hair.“God, this whole thing is a fucking mess.I shouldn’t… You shouldn’t have…”
“I shouldn’t have what?Watched you sleep?Been awake to hear you talking to another woman in your dreams?”
He whirled back round.“That wasn’t what I meant.”
“Then tell me what the hell you meant!”
“I shouldn’t have let you this deep under my skin.I shouldn’t have let myself crave you this desperately.And you shouldn’t have told me…”
She took another shaky step back, her heart hammering hard enough to snap her ribs.“I shouldn’t have told you what?That I loved you?That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”Her lips barely moved.Her fingers felt numb.The stone she’d half-forgotten she held, the one that formed part of Zach’s monument to his wife, fell from her nerveless fingers.
He stared at her, his expression bleak but no less intense.Then his gaze dropped to the stone at her feet.
Wordlessly, he picked it up, walked to the mound and placed it back where it belonged.The gentleness with which he did so shattered her heart into a few more million pieces.