A few hours later, she was ready to leave. She put the last box into the car and paused on her way back to look around her. She had lived here for several years, mostly painful ones. Leaving it was a peculiar wrench yet at the same time she couldn't wait to get away, she couldn't bear to be here. Her eyes dwelt on the trees in the garden, already there were a few golden leaves among the green. She had only been in the hospital for two weeks, yet autumn was inexorably approaching. Melancholy invaded her. Nothing lasted, did it? Not summer, no happiness, not life itself.
She shook herself free and ran back to lock up the flat, then went back to her car. Before she reached it, another car pulled up behind it and with a blinding shock she saw Ritchie leap out. Linzi ran towards her own car but he was in her path, forcing her to stop. She couldn't look at him for a second then she threw back her head, her silvery hair flying back from her pale face as an autumn wind suddenly blew, and met his hard eyes with a convulsion of emotions, fear and bitter anger, guilt and pain.
"I thought the police had arrested you!"
"I'm out on bail." His voice was curt, the sound of it sent a shudder down her spine. From the first moment she met him she had felt this instinctive physical response and been frightened, ashamed of it, now it made her sick to be forced to admit he still got to her like that. She hated herself for feeling her stomach churn, her blood run faster, just because he was close to her. Did she really have to remind herself that he had killed Barry? Guilt ate into her like a corrosive acid, her soul withered.
"I don't ever want to see you again!" She whispered. He put a hand out to her in an almost pleading gesture, and she struck it away.
"Don't touch me!"
His eyes darkened, glittering pupils, black, obsidian, volcanic, flashed down at her.
"Everything I did was for you! Don't walk away from me now, Linzi!"
Her body flinched as if he'd hit her.
"For me? You killed Barry for me? Do you really think I wanted him dead? I loved him!"
Ritchie's face whitened and stiffened. "You may have done, once, but he had been hurting you for a long time, sooner or later he was going to kill you, you knew that, didn't you? I know you did Linzi. A blind man would have noticed how scared you were. I'd been worried sick about you for weeks...., the bruises, the look in your eyes, the way you jumped when anyone came near you."
She didn't want to remember the fear that had been her constant companion during the last year, but she couldn't let him talk about Barty that way. He would go into court and say these things and the whole world would believe that Barty had been crazy, or vicious, or cruel, and it wasn't true.
"Nothing is that simple! You make it sound so horibble!"
"Well, isn't it? When a man hits a woman like that.....,"
"You just don't understand!" She burst out. "Barty loved me! He was unhappy, and sick, he never meant to hurt me. Sometimes things got too much for him and he lost control. It was like an electrical storm breaking out inside him. You could see it in his eyes, the violence, the rage, exploding in his head. We were going to be so happy until he had that accident and we lost everything.. Our lives just blew up in our faces and Barty had no hope, not any more. There was never going to be a baby, he hated his job, he was in constant pain, and I......" She broke off and Ritchie watched her intently, his face sombre, eyes quick and alert to pick up every nuance in her voice, her quivering features.
"And you, Linzi?" he whispered. "He knew you didn't love him any more, didn't he? That was why he was so violent." Her skin filled with scalding colour, then blanched again. Her breath hurt in her lungs. "No," she said hoarsely. "That's a lie, I did love him. I loved Barty, I always loved him."
"Do you have to say it three times to make yourself believe it?" Ritchie asked drily.
Guilt and rage rushed through her. Her hand came up to hit him and Ritchie caught it, drew it down against him, pressing it to his chest, so that she felt the heat of his body through his white shirt, through her own skin and began to shake wildly.
"Let go of me!"
He didn't. He just moved closer, speaking very quitely. "You may have loved him once, but as you just said your lives had blown up in your faces. He wasn't the man you married. He frightened you. You can't love someone who terrifies you like that. Love and that sort of fear don't co-exist, Linzi. I used to hear you talking to him on the phone, you sounded like a scared child, trying to placate him, hoping against hope that he wasn't going to turn nasty. And he must have known how you felt. You lived with him, he must have seen your eyes, heard your voice. He knew, didn't he?"
She couldn't get a word out. It was true, and yet not true, like seeing yourself in a distorting mirror and knowing it was you although the image was so fractured that you couldn't recognise yourself. Still holding her hand against him, Ritchie said softly, "And he knew about me too, didn't he?"
Her body jerked as if a knife had been plunged into it, she staggered backwards, pulling her hand free. "G...get out of my w...w...way," she stammered, then on a rush of anger, "Let me go or I'll start to scream, and you can explain to the police why you're harassing me in the street! You're only on bail, they could still take you back into custody."
"Sooner or later you're going to have to face it, Linzi!" He said in a low, hurried, husky voice. "Don't you know how dangerous it is to lock anything this explosive away in some corner of your mind? You can't just pretend it hasn't happened."
"I don't even know what you're talking about!" She muttered, but she did, of course, and her heart was lanced with pain and guilt. He stood there looking at her, not touching her, and her body ached and burned, she was trembling so much that she could barely stand. She hated him for trying to make her admit to feelings she wished she had never felt, had tried to suppress as soon as they started, had tried to pull out like weeds, appalled to realise how deep the roots ran, how tenacious of life they were. She hated herself, even more. Barty might be alive today if she hadn't let herself start to feel..
"One day it will blow up and send you sky-high." Ritchie whispered.
"I want to get into my car. Please move out of my way," Linzi said in a dry whisper, looking away from him, away from the piercing insistence of his eyes. He wasn't forcing any admissions out of her, she was armed against him now.
"These things happen, you can't keep on blaming yourself! You're a human being, not a plaster saint," he said with leashed impatience. "Linzi, for God's sake, don't walk away from me now, I need you."
She tensed again, head bent in a movement of vulnerability, uncertainty. Did he have to say that? Need...., the word clutched at her, held her there, listening. Ritchie watched her pale face, the colourless line of her curved, full mouth, the helpless bend of her neck. Quietly he said,
"The next year is going to be a terrible strain, waiting for the trial, waiting to find out what's going to happen to me. They're only charging me with manslaughter, we hope. The murder charge will probably be dropped before we come to court. I'll plead guilty and take whatever sentence they give me. My lawyers tell me that in these circumstances it could be five or six years, but that I won't have to serve that long, I should get out sooner, with good behavior." His face was dark, shadowed. "Even so, it's a grim prospect. Don't make it harder for me by walking away."
Her blue eyes we're glazed with unshed tears as she looked up at him. "I'm sorry, I know you did it for me, and that you never meant to kill Barry, but you did..., you did...., I can't forgive you."
White-faced, his eyes fixed on her as if he couldn't believe what she had said, he took a step back, in a reflex movement, breathing thickly, roughly. "Don't do this to me, Linzi!" It was a cry of anguish, and hurt her too, piercing her to the heart. He no longer blocked her access to the car. She couldn't bear any more, she leapt to open the door and locked it before Ritchie could get it open again.
"Linzi!" He groaned, hammering on the closed window, wrenching at the door-handle. "Don't go, don't...."
YOU ARE READING
Guilty Love (Completed)
Romansa"Everything I did was for you!" "For me? You killed my husband for me? Do you really think I wanted him dead? I loved him!" It was an obsessive passion. It had gone too far, and Linzi's husband had died as a result of it. Ritchie Calhoun was sexy an...
