Page 263 of The Grand Duel
My world comes to a stop.
He flicks his gaze over his shoulder, probably wondering why I’ve not answered. He double takes. “Lis?” he asks, stopping and turning fully. “What’s wrong?”
The distance between us feels colossal. Even as he starts to close it.
He lied to me.
He lied to me as if it was nothing.
“What’s the?—”
I shake my head, turning. I run back through the entrance of the woods, hearing his feet follow, hearing him shouting my name. Hearing him shout for the dogs who are running in the other direction.
I manage to reach the front gate of our home before his arms come around me. “Stop!”
Tears fill my eyes, the feeling inside of me making me want to run a million miles away from him.
He turns me in his arms, looking down at me whilst keeping me in his grasp. His face is pale—terrified. “I knew it was too much. God, Lis, you don’t deserve this. It’s not fair what this is doing to you.”
I push out of his hold, my anger igniting. “It’s not that. It’s not the situation, it’s you.”
His face falls as if I’ve slapped him. “Lissie.”
I shake my head, wanting to go back to this morning. Wanting to start this day all over again.
“I can see you’re hurting, Lis. I heard you crying last night. Do you think I don’t know that you’re struggling?”
“You lied to me,” I say, my voice breaking. I pull the scan photo from my pocket. “It’s not that you may or may not be having another woman’s child. It’s the fact you’re a liar. That you want to hide this and everything else relating to it from me.”
He stares at the scan photo, his eyes shooting wide. “Lissie?—”
“This is dated weeks ago.Weeks. Were you ever going to show me?”
His eyes grow glassy.
“What happens when the baby comes? Have you thought about that, Charles? Are you planning on living two lives, keeping me separate from it all?”
He shakes his head. “No!”
“One where you’re daddy, and the other where you come home and fuck me.”
“I just wanted to protect you! I didn’t want to hurt you with this. With everything you told me about your?—”
“You’re hurting me now! You’re hurting me by keeping this from me!” I turn and walk towards the house, my breath growing short the more worked up I get.
“Wait.”
“Leave me alone!”
“No,” he says, voice rising, panic making it unsteady. “No, stop.” He reaches for me, grasping my arm, but I snatch it away. “Lissie.”
“Don’t touch me. I don’t want to be near you right now,” I tell him, my tears not waiting and falling freely.
“You can’t keep doing this. You hide away from me every time you get upset and then wonder why I keep things from you.Jesus Christ, Lis, I’m literally only thinking about you in all of this. About how I keep this from hurting you.”
I turn on him at the door. “I don’t want you to keep it from me! Yes, it’s hard. Yes, maybe I get upset sometimes. But I’m human. I’m human, and I’mhere. I’m here because I chose to do this with you no matter the outcome.” I shake my head as tears continue to flow down my cheeks, hating that he can see them. “I asked you to tell me, and you didn’t, and then you lied to me about it.”
He locks his jaw.