Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 109608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 548(@200wpm)___ 438(@250wpm)___ 365(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 548(@200wpm)___ 438(@250wpm)___ 365(@300wpm)
Not at all, but I reply, “I suppose.” I don’t know how long I can keep up the pretense. I can’t believe I agreed to this. I could have made a million excuses for not riding this morning. This was nothing more than my pride getting in the way. Like somehow, I’m proving to him that I can’t be pushed around.
I want this to be over and to be back in bed with Loch.
He pulls a thermos from a leather pouch and fills the lid with piping-hot coffee. The steam billows from the top, reminding me how cold I am and causing me to shiver in response. Leaning over from atop his horse, he hands it to me. “Your jaw is chattering. This should warm you up.”
He almost sounds caring. Almost. I don’t know what to believe anymore. He’s completely changed now that we broke it off. Was that all he was waiting for? His freedom from me . . . from Céline? Anger isn’t shaping his features this morning. Quite the opposite, in fact. There’s an air of lightness surrounding him. He must feel the same relief I do. Thank God. “Thanks.” I take a sip of coffee, and then to keep us moving in the right direction of our relationship—the end—I ask, “Did you write a statement?”
After drinking from the thermos, he shakes his head. “I fell asleep. Hazard of international travel.”
“I’m feeling jet-lagged myself.” I leave out the part about Loch keeping me up and active half the night. Instead, I add, “I don’t think a statement is necessary.”
He takes another drink and then looks beyond the lake. A mixture of emotions flickers through his expression when he turns to look at me. The only two I pick up on are the most familiar on him—anger and irritation. “Were you ever going to tell me you have amnesia?”
My heart stops with a thud in my chest, my wrist weakening and the coffee spilling to the ground. Run . . . everything in me chooses flight over fight. But I may have missed my chance.
The horse shifts under me as it tries to find solid ground on the uneven shoreline.
His eyes darken as something more callous sets in, a vacancy of the emotions he frequents. Stone cold, he says, “You don’t ride anymore, Céline. Not after falling . . .” He points at the far side of the lake. “Right over there three years back. It’s too bad you only suffered a broken arm.”
“And why is that?” Do I want the answer to that? Good or bad, yes, I do. I need him to say the words that have been on the tip of his tongue since I returned.
Stroking his horse’s neck, he grins in his deviousness. When his gaze slides to me, he says, “You’re wild and unpredictable. You ran when I thought you’d stay. Now you claim to have fallen in love with some guy you barely know when you couldn’t manage to love me. You’re mouthy when you should keep it shut. The worst part is you still think you have a say.”
I glance back toward the château. It’s too far to get there on foot when he’d be on my heels hunting me down.
I scramble to grab my phone from my bag. When I retrieve it to call Loch, it rings, startling me and causing it to loosen in my hands. My only opportunity to call for help slips through my fingers. Directing the reins, he sidles his horse closer. The crush of my phone under his hooves is heard, and my heart sinks.
The cracking glass elicits a neigh from my horse, who starts stomping his hooves in protest. My fear can probably be sensed a mile away. If only Loch could also sense it. I hold the pommel of the saddle as the wind picks up, adding to an already freezing morning.
I won’t confirm anything for him. “What if I leave?”
He chuckles. “When I told you I tried to give you a way out, I meant it. When I said I loved you, I meant it. Maybe it’s not the kind of love that plays out in books or movies, but our marriage would have been good enough. Our union would have given us the world. Now . . .” His eyes deviate from me.
“Now what?”
When he redirects his gaze to me, he adds, “Now I have to worry about myself and do what’s best for me.”
“Seems you were doing that all along.”
“You never learn, do you? Sometimes it’s just better to keep your mouth shut.” He pulls a crop from the other side of his horse and whacks the back of mine. The horse rears up as gravity pulls me off the back.
I scream, unable to hold on, and land on my backside, my head bouncing off the ground. Roaring that softens as distance is put between the horse and me.