But in there somewhere, she wanted him, too, and that was the thing she couldn’t quite deal with.
She breathed in the sea air. It was such a relief to be outside. To be on the beach instead of in that ballroom, which, as expansive as it was, had made her feel claustrophobic beyond words.
She’d escaped as soon as she could. Most everyone had gone and she’d made her excuses, as soon as was polite. She was dreading tomorrow’s headlines. Dreading the future. So funny, because she hadn’t thought of the future at all in a long time.
All of her days had been so alike at the convent. Her future had been so certain. So solid. She’d seen her days stretching out before, a calm and endless sea.
But now she was storm-tossed and she had no idea where she would land.
She sat down, not caring that the ground was wet, not caring that there would be sand on her gorgeous black dress. She would hardly be able to wear it again anyway. That was something she remembered from her socialite days. Never wear the same thousand-euro dress twice. Such a sharp contrast to her other life, where she wore the same threadbare shifts until they couldn’t be mended anymore.
She felt like she wasn’t wholly the girl she’d been before, or the woman she’d become, but damned if she had any idea who she really was. And she blamed Xander for that feeling.
She’d been fine before he’d walked back into her life. She’d been at peace with her choices. And now he was demanding so much from her. So much more than she ever thought she’d have to give to anyone.
“I thought perhaps I had seen a ghost.” She looked up and saw Xander standing there, his shirt open at the collar, his tie and jacket discarded.
“That’s how I felt the day I saw you at the convent.”
“I’m sure.”
“What are you doing down here?”
“I might ask you the same thing.”
“I am...brooding. I think that’s what this is called.”
He sat down next to her. “I’ll brood with you.”
“Brooding is best done alone.”
“Doesn’t that get tiring, though?”
“What?” she asked.
“Being alone.”
She looked out across the water, at the moon reflecting on the waves. “You’re never alone, though, are you? I mean, you’ve never had to be. You’ve basically been at a giant party for the past few years.”
“I’ve been surrounded by people, yeah. But it’s amazing what a hell that can be.”
“I doubt you’ve spent one night alone when you didn’t want to be alone,” she said, feeling bitter now. Because all she’d had was an endless void of alone. In that huge house without her family, with only a couple of servants to help her with things. Making sure she ate, making sure she didn’t overdose on her pain medication.
Locking up her pain medication. And then, when they’d taken her one bit of solace, they’d felt like her enemies, not her allies. Even though she knew differently now.
Xander truly had no idea how isolating her life had been. How low she’d gone. How dark it had been. Because he’d walked away. Because he hadn’t stayed. When things had gotten hard in his life he’d left her there, but there had been no way for her to unzip her damaged skin and crawl out of her own body. There had been no way to escape her pain.
“I’m sure getting smashed in a casino was terrible for you, but while you were doing that, I was by myself in my parents’ old home in a prescription drug haze, so excuse me if I don’t feel that sorry for your plight.”
“Layna...”
“No.” She stood up. “I wasn’t going to tell you this, and for what? My pride? What pride have I got? No, you should know. You should know because you should have been there, Xander. You should have been there with me. I...” A sob broke through, tears spilling down her cheeks. “I needed you...” The words were torn from her, pulling at any thread of dignity she might have had, but they were the truth. A truth she’d never even allowed herself to think before, let alone voice.
She wiped a tear from her cheek. “Do you have any idea... Sometimes I just wanted to be held and there was no one there. And it should have been you. You were supposed to be my husband, you weren’t supposed to leave me.”
“I won’t leave again,” he said, his voice rough. “Though...I don’t know that I would have done everything for you that you hoped I might.”
“Anything would have been better than being alone. My days just kind of blended and...I got addicted to my pain medication. It was so much nicer to be out of it than it was to feel. And the medicine helped with that. Helped things seem nicer. Without them it was just endless despair and...and I would think things like...if I walked out to the beach and went out into the ocean and just...kept walking until the water went over my head, would anyone care? Would I care? Or would everything just stop hurting?”