Because it doesn’t matter, something in him asserted. Nothing matters once she’s gone.
He told himself that life—frozen and haunted and consumed with the company—was better. It was much, much better than this.
“I’m pregnant, Leonidas,” she said then, as if the very words hurt as she said them. “Don’t you understand what that means?”
“Of course I understand,” he bit out.
Then Susannah did something extraordinary. She punched him.
She balled up her hand into a fist and whacked it against his chest. Not enough to hurt, or move him backward even a little, but certainly enough to get his attention.
The way no one had ever dared do in all his life.
Leonidas stared down at her, at that fist she held there between them as if she planned to punch him again, and felt something roaring in him. Loud and long. Raw and demanding.
“I would suggest that you rethink whatever it is you think you’re doing,” he said. Very, very quietly. “And quickly.”
“I am your wife,” Susannah said, in very much the same tone. “And I’m the mother of your child. Whatever else happens, those two things remain.”
Her fist seemed to tighten, as if she was contemplating hitting him again.
“I take it you have never heard of the divorce you asked for,” he said, not exactly nicely. “Perhaps they didn’t teach that in your strict little convent where you dreamed of wedding dances and were met with only cruel disappointment.”
Susannah punched him again. Harder this time.
“You’re a coward,” she said, very distinctly.
And that roaring thing in him took over. It was as if everything rolled together and became the same searing bolt of light. Leonidas reached down and took her fist in his palm and then held it away from his chest as if it was a weapon. As if she could do him real harm, if he let her.
And he had no qualm whatsoever pulling her closer, reaching down to wrap one hand around her hip and haul her the extra distance toward him so he could keep her locked down.
“Say that again,” he invited her, getting into her face so his lips were a mere breath from hers. “I dare you. And see what happens if you punch me again when you do.”
But she had married him when she was a teenager and she’d stayed his widow for years when anyone else would have folded. Maybe it wasn’t surprising that she didn’t back down.
If anything, her blue eyes blazed hotter.
“You’re a coward,” she said again, and with more force this time. “It took me too long to recognize this for what it is. I was so certain that you would behave exactly the way my mother said you would behave. Like all the men she knows, my father among them. Faithless and unkind because they don’t think they’re required to be anything more than the contents of their bank accounts. I assumed you were the same.”
“I am all that and more,” he promised her.
“Those men are weak,” she threw at him, and if she was intimidated by the way he held her, pulled up against him as if he might kill her or kiss her at any moment, she gave no sign. Her blue eyes flashed and she forged on. “If any one of your cousins went down in a plane, they would have died. And not from the impact. But because they wouldn’t have it in them to fight. Every single scar on your body tells me a story about the real Leonidas Betancur. And every one of those stories is a tale of overcoming impossible odds. It isn’t accidental that you ruled that compound. They could have killed you when they found you, but they didn’t. They could have put you to work as a cook. A janitor. Instead, you became their god.”
“A god and a janitor are much the same thing in a place where there is no running water and winter lasts ten months,” he told her, his voice a harsh slap.
“I told you that you couldn’t have me, but I was only protecting myself,” she whispered.
“Something you would do good to think more about right now, Susannah.”
“But you never told me the truth,” she accused him. “That no one can have you, Leonidas. That it’s not about me at all.”
That struck at him, and he hated it. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You are so filled with self-loathing and this terrible darkness you carry around inside of you that you think you have nothing to give anyone. Leonidas. You do.”
And her words sat there like heavy stones on his chest. Her blue eyes burned into him, accusation and something else. Challenge, perhaps. Determination.
Not that it mattered.
Because she was right.
“I don’t,” he heard himself say, as if from far away. “I don’t have anything to give. I never have.”