I felt his eyes on me but couldn’t tear mine away from the intricate carvings along the arches. My attention was constantly shifting, drawn by a new element. “It’s exquisite.”
“I never thought you were a romantic.”
I shrugged. “I’m not. But when you’re shown a love like this, what other choice do you have?”
“It’s a beautiful building,” he said as we started up the steps.
“No,” I told him softly, taken in by every nuance of the monument. “It’s perfection. The symmetry is perfect, the art is perfect, the setting is perfect. Everything is taken into account.”
I glanced over to see him observing the architecture as we made our way around the space. “They’re both buried here?” he asked.
“They’re in the crypt below,” I answered. “And the only imperfection lies where the marble was broken when Shah Jahan was laid to rest with his beloved.”
“How beloved could she have been if he had other wives?”
“You’re one to preach on monogamy,” I drawled.
“There you go again,” he muttered. “I’ve done it before. It’s possible. With the right person.”
I looked up at him, skepticism crinkling my forehead. “Right. And how did that work for you?”
He stepped in front of me and turned, forcing me to stop. After a tense moment of silence, I finally brought my eyes up the wide expanse of his chest, over the lips I knew were impossibly soft, and to those eyes that currently looked incredibly wounded by my sharp tongue. “I didn’t say I didn’t fuck it up. I said it was possible for me to be with one woman. Love one woman.”
My stomach clenched, and my grip on my camera tightened. I tried to ignore the slamming of my heart and the way that tiny little flame of hope I’d tried to snuff out flared up just a bit. Maybe he meant it. Maybe he meant me.
Do not go there. He left you. Destroyed you. He only wants you because you’re unattainable, and once he has you, he’ll mark the notch and move on like last time.
“One woman like me?” I asked, my voice a hell of a lot stronger than I felt.
“Maybe only you,” he said softly.
Don’t let him weaken you. I gathered the bricks of my crumbling defenses and shoved them back into place. “What is it about me? Is it the chase? Are the other girls on board too easy for you, Nova? Am I a convenient game?”
His mouth dropped slightly. “You are anything but convenient. I’ve had parachute malfunctions more convenient than you. You’re the most frustrating, complicated, utterly addictive woman I have ever been around, but you are sure as hell not convenient.”
“So it’s the challenge. Nice to know.” Why did he have to do this here? Why couldn’t he let shit go and leave me in peace? I took one last look around and walked outside the mausoleum, leaving him behind.
I took a breath of the stifling, hot air and wiped the small line of sweat from my forehead. Breathing acid would have been easier than trying to breathe around him.
“Stop walking away from me,” he said as he came out behind me.
“Stop trying to convince me that you could be some devoted…” Lover? Boyfriend? “…guy.”
I kept moving until I reached the edge of the reflection pool and saw Bobby crossing the distance with a cameraman. Perfect fucking timing.
For the thousandth time, I cursed myself for signing that stupid release.
“No, Bobby. Not this,” Landon said, putting his hand over the lens. “I’ll give you whatever the hell you want later, but get this thing out of my fucking face.”
“Landon, it’s part of the experience,” Bobby argued, his safari hat ridiculously out of place.
“It’s my life right now.”
Bobby groaned. “You agreed, and we have every right—”
“And I’ve been pretty damn cooperative up until this moment, but that can stop.”
The two waged a silent war for a minute, then two. Finally Bobby glanced over at me before letting out a dramatic sigh. “You owe me,” he told Landon.
“Whatever you want,” Landon agreed.
Bobby retreated with the camera guy, leaving me with a visibly angry Landon. His frame was tense, his jaw locked, and his eyes narrowed on me. “I never cheated on you. Even the time between, when you were dating Wilder, I never cheated on you. Can you say the same?”
I shook my head. “Nope. I was awful. I dated him and loved you because I was too young and stupid to understand at the time that it was all going to crumble anyway. Our fate was sealed that first time you kissed me.” In the rain. He’d kissed me so thoroughly, our mouths so intertwined, sealed so tight that not even a single drop of water had slipped past our lips.
“Not the first time,” he whispered. “You weren’t his yet then. But he doesn’t know that, does he? I never told him.”
I shook my head. “No. It didn’t seem relevant at the time.”
“It was. Everything was.”
I stepped back, needing space. “It wasn’t. It didn’t matter that we’d met months before, that I had no clue you’d show up at Wilder’s, that you were the same Landon he talked about. It didn’t matter, because what we did was wrong, and we paid for it, right? We all did.”
“I loved you. The entire time we were together, there was no one else. I didn’t want anyone else—just the possibility of you was enough for me.” His voice was clear with the kind of truth I couldn’t bear to hear.
“Stop,” I begged, clutching my camera to my chest.
“I don’t want to.”
But I needed him to. Every time he said something like that—every time he reminded me of what we’d had and how very much I’d stupidly loved him—it shook my resolve, and that wasn’t something I could afford.
Fire heating my blood, I looked up at him, at the eyes that were more blue than hazel today against his collared, rolled-sleeve button-down. “What do you want from me?”
He swallowed. “I want you not to hate me. I want you not to think that I’m some heartless bastard who didn’t love you. I want—”
I couldn’t take another word. What did he understand of love? Love didn’t walk away without a word. It didn’t leave the person who shared its very space writhing in agony and confusion.
“Stop. Look around you. Look at that grave, that crypt. He spent twenty-one years building a place that he thought would be good enough to bury her. Twenty-one years, Landon. You couldn’t even make it two months with me before you ran back to Wilder.”
“Rachel—”
“No. Enough. Look at the towers. Do you see them?”
He sighed, the sound rushed and angry. “What about them?”