A few hours later, after Anthony had gone to work and Bree was playing with Hannah in the yard, pretending the media wasn’t shadowing her house, Zachary had approached her again.

He’d hadn’t see her fist coming. It had slammed into his eye before he’d realized she’d thrown a punch. The second fist had landed on his nose, and the third in his stomach.

Apparently Bree had lied when she’d threatened to kill him slowly if he ever hurt Eve. There was nothing slow about the speed of her car or her punches.

Only he’d never meant to hurt Eve, hadn’t done it intentionally, and it had taken some fast talking to prove as much to Bree. “I had to convince your sister I wasn’t here to hurt you again. Had to swear on my brothers’ lives. She wouldn’t let me near you.” As the press had taken great delight in showing the world, over and over again.

Hannah giggled every time a news report showed Bree giving him a bloody nose.

“Where is my sister?” Eve asked. She sounded so…detached.

“She left. About thirty minutes ago. Took Hannah to a swimming lesson.” Christ, he wished Eve would turn around, acknowledge him.

“And left you alone with me? Interesting. Did she leave a bowl as well?”

“A bowl?”

“In case you throw up at the sight of me. I’d hate for you to dirty Bree’s floor.”

Her barb hurt worse then Bree’s punches. Way worse. “I guess I deserved that.”

Eve shrugged. “Whatever. Could you leave, please? Tell Delilah and Devine I’ll see them in Adelaide tomorrow night.”

“I can’t. They’re already in Adelaide.” Or they were on the plane at any rate.

“Then you’d better hurry up and go join the band. It won’t do for Jonah to be split up from Speed.”

Jesus, he couldn’t stand the iciness in her demeanor. It made him crazy. “Were you ever going to tell me, Eve? Ever going to show me your scars voluntarily? Or were you just going to let me go on believing the only part of you that had been injured was your chest?”

“Go away, Zachary. I don’t want to talk to you, I don’t want to discuss my scars, and let me be perfectly clear, I sure as hell do not want to discuss my scars with you.”

“Ah, so it’s fine for you to put me on the spot. Fine for you to ask the questions I don’t want to answer. But God forbid you should have to tackle the difficult ones.”

“Fuck you, Zachary.”

“No, Eve. Fuck you. For keeping that from me. For holding back such a vital piece of information about yourself. You fucking stripped me bare. Made me come clean with every sordid detail of my past.” His face burned, the anger and the rage erupting to the surface. “Oh, I’m sorry, Zachary,” he mimicked. “It’s none of my business seeing inside your head, Zachary. I shouldn’t have brought that up, Zachary. But damn it, you went there anyway. Wherever it was, you just zoned right in and fucking demanded answers. Demanded the truth.”

He was shouting and had to force himself to modulate his voice. Not for Eve though. There was no way was he sharing this with every fucking news reporter in Australia. “What gives you the right to look into my life, to expose my soul and then refuse to expose yours in return?”

“Oh, so it’s my fault? I’m the one to blame? That’s rich, Pace. Just fucking priceless. You profess to love me, profess to have waited your whole life to meet me, and when you finally do meet me, when you finally get to see the real me, the real Eve Andrews, not the mask I show the world, you can’t fucking handle it.” She grabbed the closest thing to her, a plastic container sitting on the drying rack by the sink and flung it at him, hard.

The Tupperware hurtled through the air, hit him on the head and dropped to the ground.

He winced. Fuck! How could plastic hurt so much?

“Pick it up, Zachary. Hold it in front of you, so the next time the sight of my face makes you want to be sick, you’ll be prepared.” She turned to glare at him, hands on her hips, eyes blazing.

The scars on her face stood out, pink against her red cheeks. He couldn’t stop staring, couldn’t tear his gaze away.

“I’m hideous. I know. Grotesque. Repulsive. A freak, a monster. An abomination.” She counted the words off on her fingers. “I’ve been called them all. Doesn’t matter how many treatments I’ve had to make the scars less obvious, I still can’t hide them. Can’t avoid them. So don’t be shy. Add your descriptions to the list. Believe me, the name-calling hurts a lot less than watching the man I love close his eyes so he won’t have to tolerate the sight of me.”

“You think I reacted like I did because I find you repulsive?” He moved on instinct, hadn’t even realized he’d left the support of the doorframe until his hands were wrapped around her arms. “You think I think you’re…a…monster?” The very description made him want to be sick.

“I don’t think. I know.” She pulled her arms back, tried to yank them from his grip, but he refused to let go. Hell, he was never letting go of her again.

She howled in frustration, yanked harder and then gave up, panting. “When the man who’s just fucked you senseless reels at the sight of you, it’s a dead giveaway.”

Zachary saw red. “Okay, we are going to get one thing straight. You’re going to stop fighting me, stop yelling at me, and you’re going to listen.”

She didn’t stop, just kept thrashing her arms, trying to get free.

In sheer desperation, Zachary marched her backward to the fridge, pinned her against it and held her in place with his own body, his flush against hers.

“I don’t think you’re a freak, a monster, an abomination or any of those other…foul words you used to describe yourself. I don’t think it now, and I didn’t think it last night. You are not grotesque and you are not repulsive. But if you think I could have seen your real face for the first time and not reacted, then you badly misjudged me.”

“I did not misj—”

He pushed his body against her harder, squashing her chest. She needed only enough air to breathe, not to talk. Because if she spoke, if she argued, she wouldn’t hear him, and damn it, he needed her to hear him.

“I did not close my eyes because I found you…grotesque. Not even close. I closed them because I was shocked. I had no fucking idea. And no fucking preparation for what I saw. I thought I knew you, Eve. Thought I knew what you looked like—as you and as her.” The redhead. “I had no fucking clue that window had damaged your face. No idea the explosion wounded more of you than the one scar you did reveal.”

Eve gasped as if she couldn’t breathe, and Zachary backed off, took a step away, leaving her standing against the fridge. He shoved a hand through his hair. “When you first told me about…about the bomb, I’d never felt so powerless, never been less able to protect the woman I loved. I wanted to hurt someone. Wanted to injure the people who’d done this to you. But then last night… Last night when I realized just how…how extensive your injuries were, I was gutted. For you, Tiny. I couldn’t comprehend how you’d endured such…violence, such hatred. Such pain. How you’d borne those scars and lived with them.”

His chest heaved, filled with pain and impotence and desperation. “The part that knocked me flat was how fucking much you must have hurt. How fucking long it must have taken you to recover, and how fucking unfair life could be. And I was mad too. Mad that anyone could do that to you. It hurt…me.” And if it had hurt him, he could only imagine what it had done to her. “Felt like someone was poking my stomach with a burning stake. The impotence, the anger, the injustice. All of it. Except you, Eve. You don’t… You could never repulse me.”


The fight fizzled out of her. How could Eve possibly remain angry with him after that?

She wanted to walk over to him. Wanted to lean into him, have him wrap his arms around her and assure her everything would be okay.

But she couldn’t, and it wouldn’t.

Zachary might not have been repulsed by her, but he had pitied her. And every time he saw her face, he’d pity her all over again.

Eve didn’t want his sympathy. She didn’t want anyone’s sympathy. She just wanted to lead a regular life with a regular guy, and that, she’d learned once again, would never happen. Not for her.

Her sigh was long and jagged, kind of like the glass that had cut through the muscles in her chest. “I believe you,” she said simply.

The breath whooshed from his chest. “Oh, Jesus. Thank you.”

“But I’d still like you to leave now.”

He went white all over again. “What? Why?”

“Because I don’t want your pity.”

“Pity?”

“I couldn’t bear to see that look in your eyes every time I removed my makeup.”

He gritted his teeth. “That look in my eyes was not pity. It was shock. There’s a difference.”

“If you say so.”

“Fuck, Eve. I don’t pity you. I admire you. Admire your strength and your backbone. Admire your ability to pick up the pieces of your life and move on. Admire that you took the worst thing that could happen to a person and made the most of it. You turned the instinct to hide your scars into a profession. A successful profession. You made a name for yourself. Pity is the last thing on my mind.”

“I don’t want to be admired either. I just want a normal, day-to-day relationship with a man.”

“And you think I don’t want that? You think I haven’t been waiting for it all my life? Waiting for you all my life? You think it’s easy to fall in love when you’re a fucking rock star? Think there’s anything normal about that? Yeah…uh. No! Being with you was the most normal I’ve been in the last three years.” He held up his hand. “No, scratch that. There is nothing normal about the way I feel about you. Nothing normal about the intensity of my emotions. I fucking love you. I’m crazy mad about you. I…I feel things I’ve never felt before” He pounded his chest. “Feel them deep inside, like your emotions are mine. I hurt when you hurt, laugh when you laugh. It’s like we’re connected somehow. Like we… Like you’re my fate. You are, Eve. You’re my fate. You’re mine. You’re a part of me.”