LITMIR.BIZ

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had to know he’d follow, had to know he’d need an explanation.

      ‘Flynn, I...I’m sorry.’ She looked so small curled up on the bed, her knees under her chin and her arms wrapped tightly around them.

      ‘Then come downstairs and sign the agreement.’ Maybe this was just last-minute nerves. Some fear of paperwork he didn’t fully understand.

      But Helena shook her head. ‘I can’t. I’m sorry.’

      ‘I don’t want apologies. I want reasons.’ He hadn’t even moved from the doorway, he realised. There was no point staying if she wouldn’t explain. He wasn’t sure, but he thought his grip on the door handle might be the only thing keeping him upright while he waited for her answer.

      ‘I can’t sign it because it’s not true. The declarations.’

      Flynn blinked at her, his mind foggy with incomprehension. ‘What? You’re already married?’ She shook her head. ‘You’re in love with someone else?’ Both sisters? Surely that was too cruel a joke for the universe to play, even on him.

      ‘No. Not that.’ Her words came out almost as a croak. As if her throat didn’t want to let them leave.

      And then her meaning sank in, and he wished he’d never heard her at all.

      ‘You have a child.’ There was no emotion in his voice, he realised, because it was all swirling inside him. Every possible negative feeling—betrayal, horror, pain and everything in between—ran through his blood, his muscles, his organs, causing them to seize up and scream in silent pain. ‘Where is it now?’

      It. He’d married the woman and he didn’t know she had a child—and even now he could only call the poor thing ‘it’ because he didn’t know enough to know if it was a girl or a boy.

      ‘She was adopted,’ Helena whispered, and every single drop of those awful emotions prepared to come tumbling out of him.

      ‘You gave her away.’ He couldn’t look away, couldn’t focus on anything except her face. He’d thought that she’d let him in, thought they were planning a life together. When all the time she’d been holding back, keeping him at a distance as he’d tumbled headfirst into love with her. His plan wasn’t hers, and never would be.

      ‘It was a mistake. I was sixteen and I was so, so scared.’ Her words were tumbling out over each other, but he was barely listening. He was still trying to make sense of this horrific reality he now found himself in. One where the woman he loved was a woman who lied, who left people behind. And to think he’d believed her when she’d promised she’d stay, that they could have a life together. He was an idiot. After thirty long years, didn’t he know better than to believe any person who said they’d take him into their heart, love him and keep him as their own?

      ‘When I told Thea—’

      ‘Thea knew.’ Of course Thea knew. Who else would Helena turn to? And why would Thea mention it to him? She could never have imagined that Helena would jump into her place so fast. No, he couldn’t blame Thea for this one. Only Helena. ‘Who else?’

      ‘Um...my father. And Isabella.’ Not his father, of course. If Ezekiel had known, this would have come up sooner, the moment the old man had realised they were married. He’d have rubbed this in just to cause Flynn pain.

      But Thomas. Thomas had known and he’d stood there and nodded when Flynn explained that he and Helena were getting married. Had laughed when Ezekiel talked about Flynn getting Helena pregnant—and had never mentioned that he wouldn’t be the first.

      ‘They sent me away,’ Helena said, those bluebell eyes still wide but somehow no longer so innocent. ‘As soon as they found out they got me out of town, somewhere I couldn’t be a scandal or a bother.’ She sounded so broken, so distraught, he almost wanted to take her in his arms and comfort her. But he knew that he was still seeing her as his Helena. And she wasn’t any more. She was a stranger, one who’d lied about who she was, what she could be to him. What he could be to her.

      If she’d truly loved him, if she’d really wanted their future together, she’d have told him about her baby. And if she’d told him before he fell...at least he could have discussed it rationally, seen if there was still a chance for them to make this work. Maybe not with all the hearts, flowers and romance they’d hoped for, but a pragmatic business marriage as originally planned.

      But she’d let him fall in love with her then torn his heart out by telling him that his whole image of her was a lie. That she wasn’t the person she’d promised to be.

      He’d told her everything—how it had felt, growing up as the spare part in the Ashton household, knowing he wasn’t wanted or needed any more, once his parents had Zeke. She must have known exactly what it would do to him, knowing that she’d done that to her own child—given it away to an uncertain fate. And she’d kept it from him until it was too late.

      Until he loved her.

      It was calculated, cruel, and the Helena he’d fallen for would never have done it. That was what he needed to remember. The Helena he loved didn’t really exist. Instead, all he was left with was a wife he barely knew and would never, ever understand.

      ‘This is what your father meant, isn’t it? When he said you were making up for past mistakes.’ Flynn lowered his head and laughed, all bitterness and no humour. ‘What? You think marrying one poor adopted boy makes up for the girl you gave away without a second thought?’

      ‘No! Of course I don’t. You don’t understand—’

      ‘You’re right—I don’t understand!’ Flynn roared, tearing himself away from the door as he strode across to the bed when she sat. He wouldn’t touch her—couldn’t bring himself to—but he wasn’t going to keep a safe distance either. Helena scooted up to cower against the headboard anyway. Another sign she’d never known him at all.

      ‘I don’t understand how you could have sat there at lunch yesterday and listened to me telling you how I wasn’t wanted—by my birth parents or my adoptive ones—and promised to make a better life, a better family with me, when all along you were no better than any of them.’ The shame of the secrets and feelings he’d admitted to this woman burned. Maybe she hadn’t been laughing at him all along, but she’d still let him spill his guts while she gave up nothing at all.

      She’d still lied to him about the person she was.

      ‘I thought I knew you. Thought we knew each other,’ he said. ‘But the woman I bought that ring for could never give away her own child.’

      Helena’s face paled, spots of bright red blazing on her cheekbones in contrast. Tearing her engagement ring from her finger, she threw it across the bed towards him. It clattered off the edge and on to the floorboards, but he made no move to retrieve it. What would he do with such a thing now, anyway?

      ‘You thought you knew me? All because you could pick out a ring I liked?’ Helena hurled the words at him as if he were in the wrong. As if she had any grounds to argue at all.

      ‘Because I thought we’d been open and honest with each other!’ Gripping the end of the bed frame, Flynn tried not to remember how close he’d felt to her, here in this very room.

      Helena shook her head, her blonde hair curling wildly in the air. ‘No. You thought you’d found someone who fitted your plan, your schedule. You thought you could make me the wife you needed. You married me for my name, remember, nothing more. I was just your convenient stand-in bride.’

      ‘You know that’s not all you were.’ If that were so, why would it hurt so much now to know the truth?

      ‘Wasn’t I? Then why were you so desperate for me to sign my life away to you?’

      ‘I wanted a future with you! A family!’ He was shouting, he knew it, knew everyone in the house must be able to hear them. He didn’t care. Not any more.

      ‘But you never asked me if that

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