“No, I will send you to an early grave!” she snarls, shoving my chest with her shoulder, all of her slight weight backing it, and sending us both toppling to the floor. She lands with her chest flush against mine, but pushes herself up and wedges the blade under my chin. “I will send you to an early grave. You are an evil, godless man, Malachi Sterling, and you deserve all the retribution that hell can rain down upon you.” Her breath hitches, and her face contorts with palpable anguish, and I feel the tears roll down my temples. “You are not the goodhearted boy I loved for my whole life. You are as bad as those men in the picture.” A sob bursts from her lips. “You’re just as bad as they are.”
I open my mouth to agree with her, but can’t say anything before the knife falls with a clatter to the marble floor next to my head, and she collapses onto my chest. She begins to sob with more intensity than I have ever seen in all of our lives.
I have no right to touch her, but I can’t stop my arms from wrapping around her, holding her as close to me as humanly possible, and I’m so sorry.
I’m so sorry.
I didn’t know.
I should have known.
“My sweet Isla.” I have no right to even use her name, let alone call her mine, but I can’t stop. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I have failed you in the worst way imaginable. In every way imaginable.”
Her sobbing intensifies to the point that she doesn’t even sound like herself, but then she drags in a ragged breath and squeaks in a tiny voice that sounds exactly like little eight-year-old Isla. “Malachi… I needed you.”
My head is throbbing from restraining the tears I have no right to cry because I am the one who did this to us. It was me all along. She is innocent and pure as freshly fallen snow, and I am the shit-covered boots that have stomped it down and soiled it.
I hold her closer and stroke her hair as it falls in a curtain over us both, and her fingers curl, weakly and shaking, into the fabric of my shirt. “I know. I’m sorry. I don’t have adequate words. I wish there was something I could do or say to undo all of this. Everything that happened to you. Everything you suffered at my hands. I’m so sorry, Isla. For as long as I live, I will never be able to adequately make amends for any of it.”
Isla lifts her head, her hands bracing my chest as she lies on top of me. Just like countless moments when we were lovingly and intimately tangled up together, except right now, she’s not looking at me through big, enamored eyes that overflow with love, rather those eyes are spilling with hot, angry, devastated tears. Her beautiful mouth isn’t pulled wide with a captivated smile, rather it is tugged downward with a sharp, quivering frown. Tear-stained cheeks. The polar opposite of everything we were always supposed to be.
There’s only one thing I can think of to attempt to right this situation.
“Do you want a divorce?”
Her brow is tightly knitted, but her eyes droop with pure exhaustion and hurt. Eyes that, for all my life, held the entirety of my hope for every good thing in life; everything that was always meant to be, but isn’t, and won’t ever be because I failed her so egregiously.
Her trembling lips part with another hitched breath. “Yes.”
FIFTEEN
ISLA
Present
I SHOULD FEEL VALIDATED in the aftermath of learning that I never actually cheated on Malachi, that none of this was my fault after all, but I don’t. I feel emptier than ever. Lonelier than I ever have. And more hopeless than I even thought possible.
Arriving at the airfield to board the plane, I can feel the weight of Malachi’s eyes on me before he pushes open his door to step out. Through the windows, I see him wave away the driver and approach my door to open it himself. He offers his open palm for me to assist me, but I don’t take it. I don’t even look at it for more than a second, and then step out on my own. I do not need anything from him, and I certainly don’t have any interest in touching him.
Malachi follows me at a distance as we traverse the blustery tarmac toward the stairs that lead to the plane. One of the staff offers me his hand, which I do accept as I climb aboard. After taking a window seat, I cross my legs away from the aisle and tug the hem of my skirt so that it covers my knees and stare out the window. In my periphery, I see him enter the cabin, pausing to speak with the pilot for a moment. When they finish, Malachi turns slowly, lingering as he casts another long, weighty look at me, then he walks to the seat on the opposite side of the aisle from me and sits down.
He unbuttons his jacket and adjusts his tie as he clears his throat. “Would you care for coffee or tea, Isla? Perhaps a mimosa?”
I turn my head farther away from him and remain silent.
He pauses for a moment. “Are you hungry?” Another uncomfortable clearing of his throat. “We have an assortment of—”
“I am not hungry,” I clip, shifting even farther away from him.
He hesitates again. “If you change your mind, I can—”
“If I change my mind, I can ask Abigail to bring me something.”
That silences him for several minutes, and I become so hot under the collar of my blouse that I can’t help turning to him. “Your trivial platitudes are hollow, Malachi. Please spare me having to listen to them.”
He meets my gaze, his pewter eyes limpid and saturated with guilt, and after a moment, that tell-tale sheen of emotion glosses over them. The sight of it causes my veins to light with the fire of indignation because he has no right to cry over any of this. His throat pulses above the knot of his steel blue tie, which draws my attention to the red, scabbed-over slice of the knife from when I should have slit his fucking throat yesterday, and he offers a single slow nod.
“Of course.”
I continue to stare him down for a second, and he absently slides the length of his tie through his hand, smoothing it against the flat, solid slope of his torso, and I hate him.
I hate him for the gobsmacking levels of stupidity that caused him to believe something so absurd. I hate him for giving up on everything we had without even a semblance of a fight. I hate him for his pride that was so injured by the idea of infidelity that he threw away our lifelong relationship and our entire future. I hate him for causing me to actually hate him for the first time since he reappeared on the day of the engagement.
I draw in a sharp breath as a rage-filled tirade threatens to spew from my lips, but I manage to restrain it and turn back to the window. “Do not speak to me again unless it is to provide a status update on the progress of this divorce.”
And he doesn’t.
We spend the remainder of our travel time in total silence.
YEARS AGO, AFTER MY parents had brought me home from my strange, chaotic excursion to Mexico that I can’t remember, I began secretly writing books as a means to provide for myself in the event that Papá chose to kick me out and cut me off. Amidst the chaos of being married to Malachi, and especially after he caught and humiliated me for writing the books that were my safety net, my secret work as an author dwindled and was put on hold. Upon arriving back at the palace in Corwick, after everything he’d been holding over my head was proved to be a lie, I started writing again.
Writers speak of writing as therapeutic, but that has never been the case for me. Writing has never been anything to me but a means to build a secret nest egg. But now, I have arrived at the point of writing for catharsis.