Married By Christmas: His Pregnant Christmas Bride / Carter Bravo's Christmas Bride. Christine Rimmer

sheer pain that came into his eyes made her hate herself for causing it. His next words, forlorn and agonized, hit her even harder.

      “I thought you needed me.”

      “I do. Oh, God, I do. But needing them, too, wouldn’t make me need you any less, wouldn’t interfere in our relationship.”

      His whole face twisted as if unbearable bitterness had just flooded his mouth. “It will. And I can’t abide something coming between us.”

      Dreading his answer, she knew she could no longer dance around the subject, had to ask him pointblank.

      “What will you do if—when—I go back to my life, the life that includes my family? Will you disappear again?”

      This time he said nothing, his silent rejection far harsher than if he’d spoken it. A dozen emotions seethed in his eyes as they fixed on hers. It felt as if he was trying to bend her to his will, to make her relinquish this intention. And she had to face what she’d long avoided facing.

      Ivan was incapable of leading a life among others. He was the wolf she’d once jokingly accused him of being. A lone wolf. If she wanted to be his mate, it would be either him or the rest of the world.

      But though it would have been a terrible choice, knowing the nature of his scars, she would have chosen him over anything. If she didn’t fear his inexplicable moods, what stemmed from his unknown and not-to-be-known past. If she didn’t dread his future abandonment.

      But there was so much she didn’t know about him, and about the reasons he’d left her in the past. With so many things she couldn’t understand about him, so much he hid from her, she couldn’t bet her heart, her life and future on him.

      It felt as if her heart broke for real, and, her chest was tightening over its jagged pieces, until she couldn’t stop herself from crying out with the pain.

      Her desperation released some shackle that had been holding him back and he caught her in a fierce embrace.

      “Don’t leave, moya dusha. Don’t leave me.”

      She sobbed her desolation. “I never want to leave you. But I can’t remain here where I have no life outside of you.”

      “Then I’ll make you a life. Anything you want.”

      “I only ever wanted you. Going back doesn’t make this any less true. It’s you who’s putting an impossible condition on being with you. You don’t have to be involved with my family in any way if you don’t want, but you can’t expect me to just cut them off, too. You don’t have to come back with me. Just say you will be back for me.”

      Again, his oppressive, horrible silence in the face of her entreaty, where all doubts mushroomed, shrieked for her to cut her losses. To go now, before leaving him became impossible, or even worse, before nothing much of her survived leaving him.

      Feeling like she was reaching inside her chest and ripping her shattered heart out, her shaking hands undid his grip on her arms. “I want to go back to the States now, please, Ivan. You are free, as always, to do what’s best for yourself.”

      * * *

      Ivan had done what Anastasia had asked him.

      He’d taken her back to the States. He’d insisted he’d be the one to drive her to her parents’ doorstep, even when she’d tried to convince him Fyodor had better do it.

      She hadn’t wanted him to come with her in the first place. Extending the goodbye for all these hours, and up until these last moments, had been brutal, for both of them.

      But he couldn’t let her out of his sight before he saw her safe inside her family home. Only his overpowering reluctance now let her walk to their door on her own, rolling the single suitcase she’d packed from the innumerable things he’d bought her.

      He sat in the car watching her go, paralyzed, unable to move a muscle or make a sound to stop her.

      Knowing he shouldn’t stop her.

      All he could do was cling to her every nuance as she rummaged shakily for her house keys. She hadn’t told her parents she was coming home, didn’t even ring the bell. She probably didn’t want to hurt him with the sight of her family receiving her in tearful welcome, when she thought his hang-ups stemmed from having no family of his own.

      Her consideration tore at him all over again, her every move as she fumbled to open the door more slashes to his bleeding psyche. Then without a last look, she stumbled in and closed the door.

      The moment she did, Ivan felt his heart being crushed. Literally. What else explained that stab that sank into his heart, making him lurch forward, his head shaking on the steering wheel and his lungs tightening on what felt like broken glass?

      Giving in to the agony, he almost wished that it was a real heart attack, and that it wouldn’t spare him. Almost. He couldn’t wish for his life to end as long as Anastasia existed. As long as she needed him. As he knew she did.

      But she needed more than him to complete her healing. She needed to resume her life. He’d tried to put that moment off for as long as he could, plying all his diversion tactics to postpone it. But even before she’d confronted him yesterday he’d already known. If he loved her, he should let her go.

      And how he loved her.

      He’d long admitted to himself that the all-consuming feeling that had blossomed into life from their first meeting and had only intensified as he’d gotten to know her, was love.

      No. Far more than love. He now fully knew what his brothers, Antonio, Rafael, Raiden and Numair, even Richard, felt for their soul mates. This absolute admiration and allegiance, this endless desire and devotion. And he wanted with her what they had with them.

      Union, children, permanence. Everything.

      But that also meant being in extreme proximity with his own family, since they were a close and constant part of her life.

      In her efforts to convince him that going back home, reentering her family’s life wouldn’t impact him or their relationship, she’d as good as pledged he didn’t have to see any of them. But he knew this was impossible. How could he make her live in this abnormal state, torn between him and those who’d raised her? How could he force her to split herself in two, part for him and part for them, keeping the two halves separate, with her contentment lost in the middle?

      He couldn’t. He’d taken her away knowing it was best for her. He shouldn’t have pressured her to remain in isolation with him the moment he’d realized it was no longer the case.