Page 122 of Perfect Liar
Not saying a word, he gripped my waist and kissed me again.
“Will, you don’t have to explain to me. Take time to work through this. Feel your anger. Be furious. But please come back to me at the end of each day.”
He nodded. As he turned to go, the softness in his eyes receded, and the same anger I’d seen when I walked in consumed him again.
Crossing the length of the gym floor, I licked my lips, tasting the salt he’d left behind.
A grunt and a thud shot through the rafters. Another thump, a little softer.
I counted to three before looking over my shoulder to find Thomas and John both getting up. Will toweled sweat from his neck, and his gaze followed the movement of my hips as he watched me leave.
I swore his eyes were glowing.
From that moment on, Will distanced himself from me, from everyone, spending his time in the gym or on the phone with his lawyers.
We didn’t make love when he came to my bed that night.
It didn’t matter how hard I pushed him—he didn’t give in. In fact, he threatened to leave the room and sleep on his own.
When I stopped pushing, he locked me in his arms and kissed my temple just as he’d done the night I was attacked, and I understood his rejection had nothing to do with us as a couple.
Will literally fought against the intense anger surging through him by exhausting himself in the gym and by denying sexual intimacy between us—to protect me.
I saw in his eyes how he searched his soul for a way to purge the anger burning him from the inside out.
But it was more than anger. It was rage.
CHAPTER 34
The police never recovered Ethan’s body. They believed–or so they’d said—terrorists often kept them. Another way to hurt their victims and gain more notoriety.
Thomas had told Ben on the phone that day that he and Will watched Ethan go down from a distance but couldn’t get to him. They watched him lay there, dying, and couldn’t get close enough to touch him or talk to him.
Mary, Mrs. Bates, and I had quickly pulled together a memorial service at the community church and a luncheon afterward at Eastridge for family and friends.
Will stayed quiet the whole time. What little he did say was brief and emotionless. He didn’t eat or sit. He lurked in a dark corner of the great hall and kept an eye on me while working on his bottle of whisky.
Done with it all, he jerked his head at the staircase and waited for me to walk in front of him, guiding me to my room with his hand on the small of my back. He gripped me outside my bedroom door, his fingers digging into my arms.
“Stay here until you’re told the estate is clear.”
Then he put a hard, distant, cold kiss on my mouth. But before he managed to slip away from me, I grabbed his face between my hands.
“Let me help you,” I whispered.
He pulled away from me.
“Go inside, Elle. Leave me alone.”
His behavior had become so dark, and it scared me.
Tears burned my eyelids. I shook my head.
“No, I won’t leave you…I won’t go.”
He shrugged as if to say suit yourself.
So I followed him. Like a stupid little girl, I followed him.