Modern Romance November 2015 Books 5-8. Кейт Хьюит

she said. “You, Rafael. Of course, you. I figured I’d leave him on your doorstep or something. It seemed like a miracle that women hadn’t already done that a hundred times, when I thought about it.”

      He absorbed that for a moment.

      “But in no version of this story were you planning to come back,” he said, when the silence began to feel much too thick between them. “Is that what I’m hearing?”

      Lily hadn’t expected that. She tried to read that closed-off look on his face, or the oddly stiff way he sat there at the foot of the bed. But either she’d lost her ability to see through him, or he was doing a far better job of hiding himself. She felt both possibilities as a loss.

      “No, Rafael,” she said quietly. “I wasn’t coming back. Why would I?”

      He met her gaze then, and she caught her breath. He looked haunted. Wrecked. She didn’t understand why that made everything inside her seem to shatter like so much glass.

      Lily wanted to go to him. She wanted to hold him, touch him—anything to make that terrible look on his face go away. Anything to make it better.

      But she didn’t move. She didn’t dare.

      “I can’t think why you would,” Rafael said into the dark, into what was left of the night. Straight into that heart of hers that Lily thought should have been healed by now, but was, she understood, still broken. “Not one single reason.”