"Let me do it," I murmured softly, gently taking the cotton from the young woman's hands.
She looked relieved almost immediately.
With a small nod, she placed the rest of the medical supplies down on the vanity table before quietly excusing herself, leaving me alone in the guest room once more.
I had spent enough years working in hospitals to manage a shallow wound on my own, and right now, solitude felt easier than enduring another pair of sympathetic eyes watching me unravel.
I dipped the cotton into antiseptic, trying not to flinch as it touched the cut along my neck.
It still stung. The pain burned. But I let it remind me of how close everything had come to falling apart downstairs.
Would I truly have slit my own throat open right there, bled out on the floor just to save Marcus? Probably.
The terrifying part was that I knew, without hesitation, I would do it again.
Suddenly, the bedroom door opened.
I looked up immediately.
Garrick strode into the room without hesitation, still dressed in the same clothes from earlier. The same dark trousers, black shirt rolled slightly at the sleeves. A brown hunting jacket thrown over his broad shoulders.
With the beard lining his jaw and the shorter blond hair falling slightly over his forehead, he looked less like an English aristocrat and more like one of those sheriffs from old Hollywood western films. All he was missing was just a gold badge pinned to his chest.
I poured more iodine onto the cotton pad, watching the dark brown liquid slowly stain through the white fibers just as Garrick stopped behind me.
"Elena," he began quietly, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket.
I didn't look at him.
"If you're here to gloat," I said flatly, dabbing the cotton carefully against the cut on my neck, "you can leave."
"No," he said after a pause. "I came to apologize."
"Which part?" I asked quietly. "The part where you spent months practically harassing me after we ended things? Or when you practically chased Marcus and I across the country, abusing your power to accuse him of crimes you know he never committed?"
I shook my head slowly, disbelief still burning through me. "Or is this apology meant for the part where you kidnapped and tortured him?"
Garrick swallowed hard.
"For my part in your pain," he admitted.
That finally made me turn fully toward him.
I rose slowly from the chair, the cotton still clutched in my hand as I faced him properly for the first time since arriving at the estate.
"Was any of it real?" I asked.
His eyes flickered briefly toward the cut along my neck before returning to mine again.
For the first time in a long time, Garrick finally seemed human. Not the arrogant heir to an old aristocratic family. Not the man who had spent months cornering me back into his orbit. Just...a man standing there realizing too late how badly he had destroyed something.
"We had a good run, didn't we?" he said quietly. "For two years, I loved you unlike anyone else."
A bitter laugh nearly escaped me.
"Did you?" I asked softly. "Because suddenly, I feel ridiculous." My grip tightened around the bloodstained cotton in my hand. "You knew about Marcus all along. Your family knew who I was all along. Everything was foretold, wasn't it?"
Garrick's jaw tightened visibly.
For a moment, he said nothing.
"At first," he admitted quietly, "I was instructed to make you fall in love with me."
The words hit hard enough that I could feel my stomach drop.
I could only stare at him, trying to reconcile the pathetic man standing in front of me now with every memory I had built around him over the past two years.
All the late-night phone calls. The flowers. Those sweet words. The weekends together. Not to mention, the sudden proposal.
All of it suddenly felt...stained.
Like someone had carefully written a script for my life while I stood there foolishly believing any of it was real.
A sharp laugh escaped me then, though there was nothing amused about it.
"Of course," I whispered.
The wealthy Cavendish heir, stumbling into my life despite us running in entirely different social circles. His parents, accepting a simple nurse from St.Albans too readily with open arms despite the differences between our worlds. The way everything somehow kept pushing us back toward one another no matter how many times I pulled away.
I had foolishly once thought it was fate.
Now it felt more like a carefully constructed trap.
For a long moment, neither of us spoke.
Then slowly, I set the stained cotton down onto the vanity table and walked toward him.
Garrick stiffened slightly as I stopped right in front of him, close enough that I could see the exhaustion beneath his eyes now. The guilt, the conflict.
But it did not soften me anymore, not after what him and his family had done to us.
"You want to marry me this badly?" I asked quietly.
His throat bobbed once.
"If it means ending this—"
"Fine," I cut in coldly. "I'll marry your sorry ass."
Something flickered across his face then.
But before he could speak, I stepped even closer.
Close enough that only he could hear the next words.
"But I'm doing this for Marcus," I whispered. "Not for you and especially not your family. Never for you."
His expression faltered.
"And I hope you understand something very clearly, Garrick." My voice remained calm, which somehow made it crueler. "If this wedding happens, I promise you this right now—"
I looked him directly in those blue eyes.
"—I will make your life a living hell."
Silence filled the room afterward, heavy and tense.
But Garrick still did not step away from me.
Instead, something shifted in his expression.
His jaw tightened as his eyes slowly lost whatever softness had been there just moments ago, replaced by something colder, hungrier. Like my words had finally scraped against the part of him that he had spent years restraining around me.
Then suddenly, his hand shot out.
My breath caught sharply as his fingers wrapped around my throat, forcing me backward until the back of my hips hit against the edge of the vanity.
I struggled against his hold as his grip tightened just enough to hurt.
"You promise to make my life hell?" he asked softly, though there was nothing gentle about the look in his eyes now.
I clawed at his wrist instinctively, nails digging into his skin. The movement pulled at the cut on my neck, my blood smearing across his fingers almost immediately.
He merely grinned.
"Then do it," he murmured. "Bring me hell, Elena."
My chest heaved violently.
His thumb dragged slowly across the blood at my throat before his gaze lifted back to mine. "I never cared much for the meek version of you anyway."
Just as abruptly, he released me.
I stumbled backward with a gasp before he shoved me hard enough that I crashed onto the floor beside the chair.
Pain flared through my shoulder instantly.
By the time I found the strength to look back up again, Garrick was already heading toward the door.
Cold and composed, pretending like he was fixing his jacket. The brutal man who had just grabbed me by the throat, vanishing completely.
I turned back toward the ground, watching as my blood dropped against the carpet as I heard the door opened, then shut behind him with a heavy click.
Only once I knew I was finally alone, that the tears begin slipping down my face.