‘I don’t.’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t believe that. You’re...you.’
‘And I’m a monster. And that’s all you need to know. You asked for the truth. I gave it to you. You can’t change it now just because you don’t like it.’
And even though he’d known what he was all these years, it sounded so horrific falling from his lips in this room, with Isla standing across from him.
He suddenly realised he’d have done anything not to be the kind of man who’d put that expression on her beautiful face.
She stared at him a moment longer, then shook her head.
‘It was self-defence, surely? How did it happen? Nikhil, please talk to me.’
‘To what end?’ He felt as though the words were being torn from his lips. ‘What more do you want me to tell you?’
‘I want you to talk me through it.’
‘No.’
‘Please, Nikhil,’ she cried. ‘You’ve told me this much. What have you got to lose?’
‘It was the worst night of my life. You think I want to relive it?’
‘I think you’re afraid to.’
And it was the way she stared at him, unblinking, and so confident in him, that was his undoing. It made him wish for things that could never be. And that was the most hollow, scraping feeling of all. He stared at her, his mind in tumult.
‘Even if I wanted to, I don’t remember anything after pulling the knife out of my shoulder,’ he ground out at last. ‘It’s all hazy.’
‘What about the police? Surely they were called?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then what did they say?’
She clearly wasn’t going to let it go. He could tell her what she wanted to hear—so easily?
??but that didn’t mean he believed it. A fresh shame threatened to overwhelm him.
‘The police exonerated me,’ he offered flatly. ‘Apparently there was a neighbour who told them what my father was. She’d seen it over the years, but she’d been too afraid to ever say anything. When she knew he was dead, she confessed every fight and every beating she’d heard over the years.’
Isla made a sound that was half a cry and half a shout. He made himself continue.
‘When the police wrote their report they simply stated that I had passed out through blood loss, that I would have lacked the strength and so my father must have rushed me, and impaled himself on the knife.’
‘So then, you did nothing,’ she exclaimed.
‘I don’t believe it.’ He shook his head. ‘If I did nothing, then why can’t I remember it? Why have I blocked it out?’
He didn’t realise she’d closed the gap between them until he felt her hands cupping his face tightly, her expression fierce.
‘Because you were suffering from blood loss. You said it yourself.’
‘It just feels too...convenient,’ he growled. ‘I’m a monster, pyar.’
There was that word again. That term of endearment. Suggesting things that could never be his. He wanted her far too much, even now. Especially now. It had to stop.
‘I’m a savage, Little Doc. An animal. I always was. He didn’t just rush me; it doesn’t make sense. I remember that final expression on his face. It was me, Isla. It had to be me. Everything else is just too...easy.’
* * *