"Only someone as impossibly naive as you could miss it."
"Three years you sat here waiting for me. Three years you kept begging me to save you." A cold smile tugged at his lips. "What a joke."
His eyes narrowed as they traveled over my face, and disgust crept into his expression.
"Look at you. Sun-scorched. Rough as sandpaper." He tilted his head, appraising me like damaged goods. "You can't hold a candle to Rebecca now. Not even close."
"Then again, maybe this is what you deserve. You always did lord that pretty face over everyone else."
I kept my head down. I couldn't even manage a bitter smile.
Three years of wind and sun. Three years of relentless abuse.
When I caught my reflection in a mirror now, I barely recognized the woman staring back.
Is that really me?
Every winter, my fingers cracked and swelled until they looked like raw sausages. And the face I'd once spent a fortune maintaining? It was mapped with fine lines and dark spots, weathered beyond recognition.
I looked no different from any village farmwife.
Jacob stroked Rebecca's smooth cheek with sickening tenderness.