to lead you on. I really didn’t.”
Annnnnnnnd cue her not being able to breathe again. Which was what happened when you swerved off course into a tree. Him missing his shellan and being triggered by her mahmen and her father’s tearful reunion at the bedside? That was tragic, but she could work with it. Talk to him. Help him in some way. “I didn’t mean to lead you on,” though? That was an exit sign over a doorway she was not going to be allowed to go through.
Trez shook his head slowly, regret tightening his features. But before he could go any further, she cut him off.
“It’s okay. I know it’s got to be… too soon,” she heard herself say. “I understand.”
Even though she didn’t. Well, she did in the sense that a loss like that would make it impossible to fall in love with someone else for a while. A very long while. And who was she kidding? Love was what she wanted from him. Because it was what she had… for him.
Shit, she thought. She was in so much deeper than she’d been aware of.
How had she fallen in love with him over such a short time?
Trez came across and put his hands on her shoulders. His voice was low and intense, his black eyes grave, his muscular body still. “I don’t want to hurt you. You have to know that. You have to believe it. I never meant… I don’t want to hurt you.”
So this is really happening, she thought. They were breaking up. Even though she wasn’t sure exactly what they had to break up.
“I know you didn’t do this on purpose, Trez.” You wanted to be independent, right? she said to herself. “And… I’ll be fine.” She forced herself to smile tightly at him. “I’m totally going to be fine. I mean, I’ll make sure of it. I have my family and—”
“I’m so sorry,” he said as he brushed her face with his fingertip. “And I didn’t want to do this here or now. I didn’t.”
She thought back to him weeping the night before and knew this made so much sense. All of that pain was still inside of him—locked down at the moment, but never far below the surface. It was going to be a long, long while before he was in any condition to love anybody, and she didn’t question that he cared for her. He’d taken her hand as they’d rushed in to see her mahmen. And he had only ever tried to take care of her, with the house rental, with the financial arrangements, with… well, sexually, of course.
“I know you must still be in love with her,” Therese whispered. “And I know she must have taken part of you with her unto the Fade. So this isn’t… it’s not about me. I mean…”
“No,” he said. “It’s not you. I swear to it.”
* * *
This is the right thing to do, Trez told himself.
In spite of the pain in Therese’s eyes, the tension in her body, and the determined way she was keeping herself together… it was the right thing to do.
This was what iAm had warned him about. Therese was bearing the pain of something that should never have been started.
“You deserve,” Trez said roughly, “to be loved for you, and you alone. Not because you’re taking the place of someone else. Not because you’re a tool for someone to try to save themselves with. This is all on me. Just because you looked like her, I should never—”
Therese frowned. “What?”
He tried to replay what had been coming out of his mouth, but he was caught up in his own emotions, so it was hard to recall. Instead, he just wanted to repair some of the damage he’d done—even though that was like trying to put a burned room back together with duct tape and twist ties.
“You’re amazing,” he said. “You’re an incredible female who’s beautiful and smart and funny—”
She stepped back. “No. About what I look like. What did you say?”
As he traced her face, her hair, her body, with his eyes, all he saw was Selena, and he allowed himself to linger on the comparison one last time. After this, it was unlikely he and Therese were going to see each other again because he knew, without asking, that she was going to go back with her family.
“You said I look like her,” Therese repeated slowly. “But I don’t just resemble her, do I.”
When he didn’t immediately answer,