Read Online Rhapsody (The Bellator Saga Book 5) by Cecilia London - Free Book Online Page A

me in . You’ve been here for months, avoiding me, yelling at me when I confronted you, telling me all the horrible things you possibly could in order to push me away. Every time I tried to get you to let me in you pushed me away again. What have I done to make you detest me as much as you do? Do you want to be completely alone? Is that it? Do you want everyone to let you collapse inside yourself, wasting away until there’s nothing left?”
    She wiped her face. “Why do you care?”
    Did she mean to imply that she didn’t deserve his affection, or that he wasn’t capable of giving it to her? “Because I love you. That has never changed.”
    Caroline rose to face him. “You want to know why I cared about Gabe? Because he helped me when no one else did. He risked his neck so I could live. He never gave up on me. He nursed my wounds and held my hand. He committed himself to me in a way that he never had to, because he knew it was what I needed and he’d seen what I’d gone through.”
    Jack glared at her. She couldn’t have made it any clearer. She thought he was a jackass. But he damn well wasn’t going to let her get away with implying he didn’t love her. “Say it, Caroline. Say what you mean. You’ve used all these euphemisms, made your snide little comments, but you’ve never said what you really wanted to say since you got here. Spit it out.”
    She scowled at him, fury in her eyes. “I knew Gabe would never leave me, unless it was involuntarily. But you wouldn’t know about that kind of commitment. Would you, Jack?”
    He expected the accusation but it still hit him harder than he anticipated. Every planned response he had laid out in his head flew out the window. For all her glaring, all her yelling, all her silent, seething wrath directed at him, he had never, ever expected to hear her voice come out the way it had. Her tone was filled with an unforgiving anger that was not easily repaired.
    Be careful when you ask for the truth. You just might get it.
    Jack backed away from her. “You told me to leave.”
    “I know what I did.”
    She sounded so cold. Like it didn’t matter. “That night in the woods, you were mad, you were insane, and I saw the fear in your eyes. I had never, ever seen you look at me like that before. And I had no inkling what to do when you told me to go on alone.”
    “You knew exactly what to do,” Caroline spat. “You ran .”
    He locked his eyes on the floor. Hell if he was going to look at her. “You told me to leave,” he repeated.
    “I remember.”
    Didn’t she realize what was happening? What she was saying? Did he sound as lame as he felt? “You told me to leave!”
    “Yeah, and I thought I was dying too,” she said. “Funny how that worked out. I spent a lovely few weeks being tortured and almost killed in a federal prison while you got to mosey on to Canada without me.”
    There was no going back now. They couldn’t put the genie back in the bottle. Jack paced in front of her, furiously jerking on his hair. “You told me you’d never forgive me if I didn’t go without you. And you meant it. You know you meant it.” He couldn’t keep himself from bellowing at her. “And it was the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do but I did it anyway .”
    “Yeah,” she said. “You did something all right.”
    *              *              *              *              *
    Caroline clenched her fists, resisting a very strong urge to hit Jack. His pretending to be clueless, his heated demeanor, his attempts to tear her apart by reminding her what it was like when he touched her.
    And that prison. That horrible, awful place. The Fed. The place she tried so hard to forget but could never block out. Those endless days and nights with nothing but her fear and despair. He had to know what he had done wrong. How could he not?
    “You can’t blame me,” he said, before she had a chance to speak. “I did what you