With Every Breath (Slow Burn #4) - Maya Banks Page 0,89
would take hours to list them all? He should be running as fast and as far away as possible now that he knew the real Eliza, but he’d done none of those things.
He was still here. Watching over her with a careful, attentive eye. Taking her back, protecting her. Laying the law down about her having no part in a face-to-face meeting with Thomas. He didn’t want her within a mile of Thomas at any time.
Eliza had never been in love. She’d seen it, had experienced the beauty and selflessness of it through the eyes of others, but she had no personal experience with it at all.
But what were the feelings she had for Wade if not love? How could he make her feel so much and how could she be so overwhelmed by even the simplest tender gesture if it wasn’t love? Did she love Wade? Was this what love really felt like? How would she even know when nothing about her “love” for Thomas had been real. Not a single damn part of it.
As a result, she didn’t trust herself anymore when it came to her emotions. Never again did she want to willingly hand someone so much power over her. It scared her, but at the same time, there was a yearning so deep within her that had never been filled, a fanciful dream that she had resigned herself to never achieving, never living.
Those things were for other people. Deserving people. Good people. Like the people she worked with. They weren’t for the likes of her. This was her penance for her sins. To live her life without such beauty that it hurt to look at two people who loved each other with everything they had.
Did she love Wade? Did she experience that beauty when she was in his arms? She couldn’t answer that. Yet. She was too afraid to dig any deeper than she already had because she was terrified of what she might discover and she couldn’t afford any distractions at this stage of the endgame.
If she survived and if a second miracle occurred and she didn’t spend the rest of her life in jail, then she would try to solve the mystery of Wade Sterling and why she was so off balance with him. And why she had no defense against him when her defenses were impenetrable and no one got by them unless she allowed it.
Wade had stormed into her life as though concrete barriers didn’t even faze him. It was embarrassing just how easily he saw past her guard, how he slipped right by her and was there right in the heart of her before she even realized he was there.
Love. Beauty. Hope.
Three things she’d been denied and were forbidden to her. Three things that in a matter of a few days she’d finally experienced firsthand and not through the eyes of others. Three things that she now knew she could no longer live without, yet she very much feared that she would have no choice and it would devastate her to lose them now that she knew how very wonderful they were.
She would have rather never touched the sun and experienced the beauty that Wade had so unselfishly given her than to have been shown what she’d been missing all her life only to have it cruelly yanked away.
You don’t miss what you never had. But you mourn what you had and lost forever.
An old saying came to mind, one she’d never paid much attention to. Until now and she realized she didn’t at all agree with the sentiment.
It’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.
Because if she allowed herself to love Wade and lost him, it would destroy her in a way that Thomas never could.
NINETEEN
ELIZA winced when the door opened and slammed with enough force to shake the walls just seconds after she herself had entered the safe house. Slowly she turned to face a very furious Wade. His expression was black and ominous as he stalked toward her.
“What part of me telling you that you were to follow my instructions to the letter did you not understand?” he barked, fury blazing in his eyes.
Her eyes narrowed and she refused to be cowed or to back down even if he was a seething mass of pissed off alpha male.
“And what instructions did I supposedly not follow to the letter, oh lord and master,” she said sweetly, sarcasm dripping from every word.