“It’s different. What’s between us,” she insisted, “I know it is. It isn’t just sex.”
His lips curved upward, his expression unkind. “The virgin thinks she knows whether or not this is just sex?”
“As you said, I’m not even almost a virgin anymore.”
He chuckled, the sound flat, bitter. Sharp enough to cut straight through her skin. To pierce her chest. “Yes, I may have said that, but emotionally, you are much closer to a virgin than you are to a siren.”
“Why are you being like this?”
“I’m not being like anything. This is who I am. This is what I am. I was honest with you from the beginning. You know what manner of man I am. The kind of man who would sleep with his brother’s fiancée close enough to his brother’s wedding that it created a need for that brother to marry a woman he barely knew, much less loved.”
“Oh.”
“All that Kairos and Tabitha are going through now? All that strain you see? That pain? That’s on me. They never should have been together. It was never supposed to be the two of them. But I ruined things between Kairos and Francesca. So here we are. Here you are. Because of me.”
“But I... I’m happy to be here. I love you, Andres.”
Given the direction of the conversation, she didn’t know what possessed her to make that admission. And yet she hadn’t been able to keep it inside, not for another moment. She did love him, and she needed him to know it.
Did Andres believe that anyone loved him? She didn’t think he did. More than that, he didn’t love himself. She realized then, with blinding certainty, that he hated himself. That was why he was always telling her how bad he was, why he was always trying to reinforce the fact that he was no good.
He couldn’t love himself, so she would do it for him.
This went beyond destiny. Beyond being a princess. Beyond simply being intended for palace life and a marriage to a prince. This was about being a woman. A woman who loved a man more than anything else.
This wasn’t about running from loneliness or using him to fill a void. This was more than that.
He was more than that.
Had her life been full of love, had she been raised in the palace with her mother and father, she still would have needed him.
He would still have been a missing piece. It wasn’t the palace, the position that was her destiny. It was him.
“I love you,” she repeated.
The second use of the phrase seemed to jar him out of whatever trance he was in. “No.”
“What?”
“There you go again, questioning everything I say. You heard me the first time. No, you cannot love me.”
“Yes, I can. Because I do. That is not your decision to make.”
“It’s impossible. Maybe you have Stockholm syndrome. Or Overly Attached Fruit Basket syndrome, I don’t know. But there’s no way you can possibly love me. You were forced into being here with me. Forced into this arrangement.”
“I certainly wasn’t forced into your bed.”
“Again, Princess, that is sex. It has nothing to do with love. Nothing to do with emotional connections.”
“It does for me.”
“Why?” he asked, his voice broken, fierce. “Why would you love me?”
She sensed that this was important. This was essential. That her answer carried with it the power to heal or the power to destroy.
She closed her eyes, shutting out the people around them, shutting out the Christmas trees, the glitter, the Christmas carols that were being played by the string quartet. She shut out all the beauty. All the trappings that came with Andres, so all that was left was him. Them.
And she wasn’t alone. Not anymore. She wasn’t afraid.
“You remember how my childhood was. I lost my parents. My brother. I was so isolated. And I feared sometimes that I would die from it. That the hole inside my chest would one day expand so great that it would swallow me up. That there would be nothing left of me. People were all around me, but none of them touched me. None of them loved me. I have been starving for years. I have been starving for you. It has nothing to do with sex, though I enjoy what we have together. It’s more. It has everything to do with the fact that we are the same. My soul recognizes yours, Andres. And when I met you, I met the other part of myself.”