She looked at him. Her eyes were dry and fierce.
"I broke my own ankle to get loose, Bastian. I dragged myself out through the broken windshield. I swam to the bank. I crawled through the mud for a mile until I found a road."
Bastian stared at her in horror.
He imagined her—his fragile wife—crawling through the mud, pregnant, broken, and alone.
While he was at home, drinking whiskey, thinking she had left him for attention.
"There was no lover," Anaïs said coldly. "There was no Adrian. There was just me, and the baby, and the will to survive the family that tried to kill us."
Bastian felt sick. Physically sick.
He leaned forward and put his head in his hands.
"I am so sorry," he choked out. "God, Anaïs. I am so sorry."
"Sorry doesn't fix the bone," Anaïs said. "It healed wrong. That's why I need the cane when it rains."
She took a long sip of wine.
"But that's not what hurts the most," she said quietly.
