Of course she would. She would give until there was nothing left of her, until her beautiful heart gave out. She didn’t know the truth about love, that you could only give so much. And if she gave it all to him, there would be nothing left for their child.
He couldn’t have that. He couldn’t have yet another casualty of Ulysses’ death.
Achilles let her wrist go and stepped back, taking himself away from the heat of her. Because a void swallowed heat. It crushed it, suffocated it. And he couldn’t do that, either.
‘You’ve already given me everything I could possibly want,’ he said carefully, wanting to keep the hurt to a minimum. ‘It’s not your fault, chriso mou. It’s not your fault I can’t give it back.’
She went suddenly still, tears starting in her eyes, as if she knew already what he was about to do. She was perceptive, his Diana.
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Please, don’t.’
But he said it anyway. ‘You can live at Thornhaven. When our child is born, and if it’s a boy, I’ll sign it over to you. If it’s a girl, I’ll buy another manor for you, one with lots of woods for you to ramble in.’ It was the least he could do. Strange how his inheritance now seemed...unimportant, his anger at his father and his brother gone. Perhaps it meant that he’d finally managed to do what she’d tried to help him with weeks ago. Perhaps it meant that he’d finally let go.
‘You will receive a generous sum of money every month for you and the child.’
‘Achilles, please—’
‘The divorce will be quick and painless, I promise. The woods should have always been yours.’
Tears ran down her face, fury blazing in her eyes. ‘So you’re leaving me? Is that what you’re doing? What did I do? Was it me loving you? Was that the difference? Is it my love that you can’t handle?’
He couldn’t bear the cruelty of a lie, not to her, not about that. ‘No. Your love is precious and you should save it for someone who needs it. And our child will need it.’
‘And you don’t?’
‘No. Of course I don’t.’
‘But...that’s not true.’ Her face was flushed, tears staining her cheeks. ‘You do need it. You want it so badly, Achilles. So why won’t you take it?’
That at least had an easy answer.
‘Because I can’t give it back, chriso mou,’ he said expressionlessly. ‘I told you already. I don’t love you. I don’t love anyone. All the love I had I gave away, and now there’s nothing left. Nothing for you or for our child, and I can’t have that. I can’t have you giving your heart away to another man who won’t give you anything back. You deserve more than that, my Diana. So much more.’
Fury flickered in her eyes. ‘Oh, that’s rubbish. Love doesn’t work that way. You wouldn’t have spent all this time and energy on marrying me and getting Thornhaven if you really had nothing left, because you wouldn’t have cared. You would have sold the house and moved on. But you didn’t, did you?’
She’s right.
He ignored the thought. ‘You don’t understand.’
But she hadn’t finished. ‘Oh, I understand. I understand that you love me, Achilles. You want me and you want our child, and you want us desperately. But you’re afraid, and that’s the real problem, isn’t it? You’re too afraid to take what you want and are telling yourself a whole pack of lies instead!’
That pierced the emptiness inside him, letting a hot thread of emotion in, and he’d gripped her, taken her by her upper arms before he knew what he was doing.
‘You’re wrong,’ he said roughly. ‘I gave everything I had, everything I was to my parents, and it still wasn’t enough for them. They sucked me dry, Willow. And I have nothing left. Theos, don’t you think I would love you for ever if I had a choice?’
All at once the fury in her gaze turned into something else—anguish and a terrible pity. ‘But you do have a choice, don’t you see that?’ Her voice was hoarse. ‘You can choose to stop letting your childhood dictate your own heart to you. You can choose to let that go. You might not choose me, I can understand that. But at least you can choose our baby.’ Tears slipped down her cheeks. ‘There’s always love left, Achilles. It doesn’t run out, no matter what you think.’
Dimly, somewhere inside him, there was pain, a brief, flickering agony. ‘You’re wrong,’ he said harshly. ‘Because if love didn’t run out there would have been some left for me. And there wasn’t, Willow. There was nothing at all left for me.’
‘Oh...my Achilles...’ she whispered brokenly, reaching up to him.
But he let her go and stepped away before she could touch him. Before anything about her could touch him.
Then he turned on his heel and walked out.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
AFTER ACHILLES HAD left for his gala, Willow commandeered his helicopter—because she didn’t see why she shouldn’t—and got his pilot to take her home, back to Yorkshire.
To get her through the agony of leaving, she gripped onto fury, letting it propel her. She took nothing with her, leaving everything behind, including the beautiful yellow diamond engagement ring he’d given her.
He’d made his choice and so she would make hers, and that was to have nothing of his ever again. The only thing she would take was his child, which was half of herself anyway. It was only fair. He didn’t want it anyway, he’d made that abundantly clear.
Except of course that was a lie. Everything he’d told her was a lie. That he didn’t want her, that he wasn’t desperate for her. That he didn’t love her. Because if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have pushed her away so completely.
He was afraid, and she understood that, but he should have trusted her. He should have trusted that she had enough love for both of them and for their child too, and that was what hurt the most. That he’d held on to the lie instead of her.
Perhaps she should have stayed and spent weeks trying to change his mind. Or months. Or even years. But she couldn’t face spending the rest of her life trying to get another man to change his mind about her the way she had with her father. Achilles had been right about that at least.
As the journey home stretched out before her and her fury gradually began to dissipate, the bright thread in her heart grew sharp blades, cutting her to pieces.
Love made her strong and gave her hope, but it also hurt so much.
She managed not to cry all the way back to her rundown Yorkshire cottage, but once she’d opened the door and stepped into the dark hallway, and the silence closed all around her, she leaned back against the front door and slowly slipped down to sit on the floor, tears falling silently down her cheeks.
He’d told her that it wasn’t her fault, but she couldn’t get out of her head the sight of his face as he’d told her that if love hadn’t run out then there would have been some left for him, and there hadn’t been.
He’d been so damaged by his family. So hurt. And he really was beyond her ability to heal. All she could do was push, and if she hadn’t pushed, then maybe he wouldn’t have pulled away from her. If she hadn’t told him she loved him, then perhaps she would even now be on his arm at the gala.
But she had told him. And in the end, that love hadn’t been enough for him, the way it hadn’t been for her father. At least not enough to change his mind. Or maybe it just wasn’t the right kind of love.
Willow lifted her hands and wiped her cheeks as her heart slowly ripped itself to pieces in her chest.
There were only two choices in front of her now: she could go back to London and beg him to take her back, tell him she didn’t mean it, that he didn’t have to take her love if he didn’t want it. They could be together, live together, her loving him and he... Well, who knew what he would do? But that was the kind of life she’d lived with her father, where she was constantly checking herself, constantly fighting the thread of passion that lived inside her.
Or t
here was the other choice: staying here. And bringing up their child alone.
The thought hurt, it hurt so much. Because she knew there would never be another for her. Achilles would be the only man in her life and perhaps she’d known that the moment she’d seen him coming out of the lake.
It would be lonely, but in the end that was the choice she had to make.
He’d taught her that she was perfect just as she was, even if just as she was had been too much for him in the end. She couldn’t go back to who she’d been before. She didn’t want to. Not with a child to think of now. A child who needed her. And if Achilles wouldn’t let her love him, then she would pour all that love into his son or daughter.
She would be strong for them.
Willow took a shuddering breath, pushed herself to her feet.
And got on with the business of living.
She was gone by the time he returned from the gala, but he’d expected that.
He sent someone to watch over her, because she was pregnant with his child and he wanted to make sure the pair of them were safe.
He did not go after her. He’d made his choice and he didn’t regret it.
He felt nothing and that was a good thing.
Some time passed, he didn’t know how long. He’d forgotten to keep track of such things. The member of staff he’d sent to keep track of his wife and unborn child kept him up-to-date with what was happening.
Apparently she was cleaning the cottage from top to bottom. She hadn’t touched the money Achilles had sent her, so he doubled it and then got his member of staff to do a survey of the cottage and make any alterations to it that were necessary to make it a warm, safe environment for their child.
He didn’t think she would argue with him on that and sure enough she didn’t.
He stayed in London working. Eating when his body needed fuel, sleeping when he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer, running when his muscles needed strengthening.
He existed.
Or, at least, he thought he existed. But sometimes he’d sit in his office and the city would sparkle in the sunlight, and he felt like a shell of his former self. A shadow. Thin around the edges, mere vapour in the air that the slightest breath would scatter.
A man with a void at the heart of him.
It was a feeling he’d only ever had at Thornhaven, where he was nothing and no one. It shouldn’t happen here, in his office, the sun around which the solar system of his company revolved.
More time passed and the feeling worsened. There were days where he felt as if the emptiness inside him might swallow him whole.
The only thing that helped were the daily updates from Yorkshire, keeping him informed of what his wife was doing. For whole minutes at a time he sat reading those emails over and over, feeling himself solidify and become real.
He wasn’t sure why that was, and really he needed to stop reading them, because they didn’t concern him, not any more. But he couldn’t help himself. Couldn’t stop imagining Willow, filling up that cottage with her warm, bright presence. Couldn’t stop thinking about her passion and fire, her laughter and joy.
And he couldn’t stop reading those emails.
Then one day the email came with an attachment. A picture of an ultrasound examination. A picture of their baby.
He stared at it, shocked. Had so much time really passed?
You let it pass. And you did nothing. You sat here in your office pretending you felt nothing. Missing out on precious moments with the woman who loves you. The woman who is carrying your child. Your family. Lying to yourself over and over again...
Achilles shoved back his chair and got up from his desk, pain filtering through him, turning into a sudden unbelievable agony. It hurt so much he couldn’t sit still, pacing to the windows and then back again.
It lit him up like a torch and he had no idea where it had come from.
He was supposed to feel nothing. He was empty inside, a hollow shell. A void. And yet...there was pain. Pain for what he was missing. Pain for what he’d done. Pain for the future he’d denied himself. Pain for the woman he’d turned away.
He tried to tune it out, tried to ignore it the way he always did, telling himself it didn’t exist. Because how could it? Pain meant he cared and he didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything.
Yet as soon as he did that he felt himself begin to disappear, the terrible feeling of not quite existing filling him.
Because it’s a lie and you know it.
Achilles stopped by the window, the thought echoing in his head, along with the memory of Willow’s voice and the anger in it.
‘You love me, Achilles. You want me and you want our child, and you want us desperately. But you’re afraid, and that’s the real problem, isn’t it? You’re too afraid to take what you want and are telling yourself a whole pack of lies instead!’
He took a breath, staring outside but not seeing. Was she right? Was the emptiness inside himself, that terrible void, just a lie? A lie he held on to simply because he was afraid?
It’s true and you know it.
He took a breath and then another, the knowledge sitting inside of him all this time, a truth he hadn’t wanted to see.
Yes, he was afraid, so terribly, deathly afraid. Because if the lie was true, if love truly didn’t run out, then why hadn’t he been given any? Why hadn’t his parents loved him? Was it really because he wasn’t Ulysses? Or did it go deeper?
Was it him?
He closed his eyes, the pain running like a fault line through the centre of him. It had always been easier to tell himself that he couldn’t feel. That love wasn’t something he could give. That it was easier to be angry with his father and the brother he’d never met. Easier to blame them than to think it was something in himself.
Something that meant they could never love him.
He would never know the answer to that now, though. They were gone.
You have to let them go.
The pain fractured inside him, and for some reason all he could see was Willow in the bathroom the night of the gala. Willow standing tall and fierce. The light that filled her as she’d told him she loved him. The tears on her cheeks and the pain in her eyes as he’d told her he didn’t want it.
Let your parents go. Hold on to her instead.
He froze, every part of him going quiet and still.
She had given him everything. She had never turned him away. Never told him that she had nothing for him. She had opened her heart, had let him give her all his anger and his pain. Had given him hers, too, without hesitation...
Nothing about her had caused him pain except her loss.
Theos, why had he sent her away? Why had he been so afraid?
There was a roaring in his ears, the lie he’d told himself all his life giving way and revealing the truth. The same truth she’d given him in the bathroom weeks ago.
It wasn’t that he didn’t care. He did care. About everything. And most especially about her. He loved her. He’d loved her from the moment he’d seen her watching him at the lake. And he wanted the life they could have together, the family he could create with her. And he wanted it desperately.
He stood there before the windows, his heartbeat thudding in his ears, fighting to breathe, knowing that he couldn’t go on. That he couldn’t keep clinging to the lie, continuing to pretend that he felt nothing, that his heart was dead inside him. Continue with this half-life, this bare existence, because that was what it was. That was all it was. Just existence.
If he wanted more, he had to be brave like she was. Passionate like she was. He had to step out of the shadow of his fear, let go of the lie, and believe in something else.
He had to believe in her. She’d found something in him to love and he had to trust that. Trust her. Trust the love that was in his own heart too.
He had to, otherwise what else was there?
Only existing. And existing wasn’t living.
His hands were shaking as he got out his phone, but he didn’t hesitate as he ordered his helicopter.
He had one last trip to make.
CHAPTER TWELVE
WILLOW HAD GONE out blackberry-picking in the woods near Thornhaven. The last of the berries were still on the bushes and she had thoughts of making a pie. The morning sickness she’d experienced over the first eight weeks was starting to ease and she had a sudden and intense craving for the tart sweetness of apples and blackberries.
It was a beautiful day, still and hot, and the woods were silent and cool.
She didn’t go too near Thornhaven these days—it hurt too much, made her see things that weren’t there, such as a tall man with black hair and eyes like a midnight sky. A man whose passion had taught her soul to sing.
She hated those visions. Because they were never true and they only ended up causing her pain, and so she left the area alone completely.
Just as Achilles had left her alone.
She hadn’t heard from him since he’d walked out of his penthouse a month ago and she was furious about it. Not for herself, but for the baby she carried.
He might believe he had nothing to give her, but to continue to believe that when it came to his child made her furious.
Everything about him made her furious.
In fact it was better not to think about him, because she only ended up miserable, and she wasn’t going to be miserable. She absolutely refused.
She was passing by the lake when she heard the sound of splashing, and instantly she was months in the past, watching a man swimming naked. Watching him rise from the water like Neptune from the waves, a water god made flesh and just for her.
The World's Most Notorious Greek (Mills & Boon Modern) Page 16
