It still wasn’t...love.
“I am tired,” she said. “And I must ready myself for our wedding. I should not like to be a hideous bride.”
“You could never be hideous,” he said.
“I am, I think, cursed with faint praise, eh?”
“You will be nothing but beautiful,” he said, his voice too smooth, his smile too easy. He was playing a part again.
Why? Because all of this was too real for him?
He ran, when things were intense. When they shared. Even if his body was here, his soul was running and she knew it.
“Says Maximus King? Or the King?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Ah, the Playboy. How nice for me. I will meet him again at the altar tomorrow. And he had better look exceptionally sharp. Had better do me proud. In my country.”
“As trophy husbands go, you have a very good one.”
“And one who could ward off the threat without so much as breaking a sweat. I am quite fortunate, I think.”
“You look angry.”
“I am angry. All the time. Aren’t you?”
And tired. Just so damn tired.
“I’ll see you in the morning. My very angry bride.”
“See you then.”
But when she went to sleep, she no longer felt filled with that momentary joy she’d experienced. That sense of wonder that she was getting more than she had ever imagined she might. Now she felt overwhelmed by the realization that what she wanted was the love of the man who had no heart left to give. The love of a man who did not even know who he was.
And wanting Maximus’s love was as impossible as wanting the love of her parents.
For when he said that his love, his heart, was gone, she believed it.
So she wrapped herself up in a blanket on her bed and then wrapped herself even deeper in a blanket of impossibility and futility, and she would not allow herself to weep.