Alexander unshackles himself from my grip as my jaw sets in a firm line, and I shield my face halfway from him.
“I expected nothing else from you.”
I sway my head in his direction and he speaks again. “We decided to wait for her full recovery before we left for the States. I couldn’t wait to go back home, show her everything in my hometown. Every day, I felt more drawn to Bria. Then all my pretending started, and I lost myself a little more in her numbness.
“Everything went well until her parents and brother came to visit. They didn’t even attempt to acknowledge me. Later, I would discover why. It was because they couldn’t accept anyone who was not ‘their Damien.’ Bria chewed her lower lip and fidgeted with her blanket between her fingers. It was as if I was witness to a black and white soundless movie. So much unresolved and untold tension lurked behind the surface. They treated her as an already broken glass, too afraid to touch it for fear it would shatter. What they didn’t realize, though, is that she was above it as she treated them the same in return. Her family accomplished only one thing with their attitude . . . they strengthened my desire to be her protector. Small talk followed about her move to America with my father and me and enrolling at New York University. Her parents’ reaction was to nod incessantly as her brother balled his fists at his sides and pursed his lips. Then she introduced me. I was greeted with a frosty shake of my hand and looked down upon. I could tell they were not happy as they dismissed and turned their backs on me. I wasn’t bothered. I was there for Bria anyway. It would have taken more than a lack of approval from her folks to make me abandon my plan of being in her life.
“Family, a mess of contradictions that meet and decide to build a home together. Something nudged me, one of those instincts telling you something is about to happen, and yet you don’t take your inner voice seriously because you think it’s nothing. I left her sleeping in her hospital room while her family waited for her to wake up for another uncomfortable conversation. And I thought my relationship with my father was difficult. It was child’s play in comparison.” He pauses and massages his temples. “Even years later, that day affects me, and how could it not? It’s another reminder that whenever she made a positive step in her recovery, something smashed it—one step forward, hundreds backward. No wonder, in the end, we couldn’t save her.
“I have no proof, but something tells me she heard them talking, and it broke her all over again. In all this time, she wouldn’t say if I was right or wrong in my assumption that her parents’ words had caused it. I suppose this is a question better left unanswered. My ears picked up a part of their discussion, but it was so harsh that every word will forever be imprinted on my brain.
“They said things like . . .
‘How could she do something like this? The entire family is in mayhem. Who is that person in there?’
‘I don’t recognize her. My daughter would never do such a hideous thing to the ones she loves. Does she realize she destroyed herself and Damien?’
‘What pushed her to act like this? In one night, she damaged herself, our family, and Damien, and Rebecca doesn’t know how to keep it together. She’s terrified he will do something to himself.’
‘Are you letting her go? My sister is not well, and you let her move across the world with strangers?’
“They faced each other and formed a triangle. I watched all this from my seat in the waiting area and shook my head at them. They halted when a thump jolted Bria’s door. She laid motionless on the cold floor. The doctors had to put her in a coma so her body could recover.
“My world shifted in an instant. There was nothing else to do but wait. A long and agonizing day turned into three weeks. I couldn’t even look at them. They kept coming and going, and with time, I could tell they had lost their hope and wore pale masks of destitution. They didn’t even cry anymore. In those twenty-one days, I observed the life in Bria disintegrating before my eyes, deadly white paleness spreading itself on her frame, covering the life-ensuring veins, by day. I even prayed for a damn miracle because I saw nothing right in the situation.”
My heart hammers in my chest. Alexander catches me while I blink at him; hurt tearing me apart. Why is he even telling me all this, to punish me or to relieve himself? Whatever it is, he can’t seem to stop as he continues, “How do you fight a battle you can only lose? And still, knowing the outcome, something inside of you keeps you going.”
“And so, I prepared myself for the day when Bria would leave me for good because the only relevant question was when that day would come. Today is that day.”
He gulps the rest of his drink down and he cranes his neck. His words sink into my brain. I feel the color drain from my face with each passing second.
“Welcome to hell, Damien! I wished for a confrontation for so long, blaming you. Your name alone could fire my anger up, but it’s now I begin to realize she also holds the blame. Bria buried herself in lies and made all of us accomplices to her downfall. It has always been about her, the queen on the chess field making all the moves. She might have won all the games, but now she loses at reality. Sad, so damn sad, and the hole she will leave behind will never be stitched together.”
DAMIEN
His face sets in stone as he challenges me with his eyes to understand the implications of his last words. And like a curtain slips, my hand rushes to my heart as it splinters in my chest.
Pain.
An all-consuming agony swallows me. I keep asking myself where was I when Bria had the heart attacks and was suffering—swimming in a bottle of whisky? And even after the years we’ve spent apart, something in the corner of my heart yells “fraud” at the boy I used to be. A boy who made a sacred vow to his girl to always be at her side, particularly in moments of weakness. Bitterness fills my mouth. I have loved this woman since forever, and nothing destroyed my feelings for her.
Alexander’s lips quirk up in the right corner of his mouth. He glares at me like a hawk in the chase of a scared mouse. His goal is to scrape at my conscience. This is why he has told me so much. He believes when Bria heard about me, her brain was no longer capable of holding herself together. As always, I am the reason for her downfall. Nothing I can do will ever wash away my guilt. Can someone be a destroyer and savior at the same time? Alexander’s clear disgust shows in his now almost black eyes. I would give everything to return to a past where I was whole inside, when life seemed easy, and when all that mattered was making Bria happy. Now, we are empty shells with empty hearts dreaming of nothingness – this is what’s left of us.
Something he said earlier caught my attention. I have to know for sure as I try to rub away the chills at the incoming answer.
“What did you mean when you said ‘today is the day’?”
“In a few hours, Bria will leave, and she is not coming back.”
The finality of his words punches the air out of my lungs. I am not prepared for her departure or for the renewed sense of loss searing me from the inside out.
“What? No. She can’t. We are in this together,” I say, my whole body carved into a fighter pose.
“You were until she couldn’t take it any longer. Her pain has consumed her entirety over these years. She doesn’t have life in her anymore. Do you know when it faded? The day she received your wedding invitation.”
He surveys me. A forlorn expression etched on his face. Is he asking himself why it will always be me and never him when all I’ve ever done is cause her agony? I ask myself the same question. For the first time, Alexander and I agree—we both antagonize me.
“That day, I was in her office, eating lunch with her when her assistant, Emma, brought her an invitation. I knew it had something to do with you because her hands trembled as she opened it and winced. To witness how you were still the one to shake her walls a little and get a reaction . . . I cause no reaction in her, only you do.”
Is it something resembling hope rising inside me as I allow my strained body to relax slightly?
> “She shut her eyes for maybe half a second, and when she opened them, the light vanished.”
“‘Alex, I can’t do this anymore.’ She pushed herself off the chair and plodded to the window. Her eyes squinted as she sighed. I knew I had only a few months to prepare myself to lose her for good. I didn’t see the relief on her face, but her last naïve hope. It was when she let darkness overtake her. Bria’s survival mode shut off as if a switch had been flipped, chasing dim light to blackness with one tap of a finger as I stood there with bound hands incapable of changing a thing.”
I shoot up from my seat and punish the wooden floor with my pace while Alexander eyes me with furrowed eyebrows. Once my brain and heart and entire being align, I decide on two things: I can’t be the better person and let her go, and two, we have to talk, broken heart to numb heart. I don’t know if we still are capable of such a thing, but maybe it’s like riding a bike—you can’t unlearn something you once mastered. Her survival drives me, and even if my motive is noble, my way of going about it is wrong because I wouldn’t offer her a chance to say no.
I need a plan because Alexander is not standing in my way.
“What are you going to do?” I ask, feigning indifference.
“Find a way to live. I’ll go back to the States for starters.” He shrugs while my eyes probe his.
“You don’t strike me as a man who gives up easily.”
He raises his eyebrows at me and smirks. “Who said I am going to?”
“She’ll never be yours, Alexander.”
He taps his index finger on his chin and says, “True statement, but she’ll never be yours again, either. So, we are even.”
My jaw twitches.
When will this nightmare end?
I drop into the seat next to my tormentor as he reveals more. “After twenty-one days, Bria woke up. I could squeeze her neck when she rolled her eyes and crinkled her nose, but she put on a brave face and went on as if nothing had happened. She was alive and breathing and was facing another heart surgery. After her recovery, she told her parents she would leave London with us and return when she felt ready. I caught only a flicker of hope as if time apart would return their daughter to them. Her brother tried every conceivable way to change her mind from pleading to yelling at her, but he had to give up.
“They agreed on the story they would tell anyone who asked where Bria was . . . studying management in New York and staying with family friends for a few years. She won’t be visiting because she doesn’t like to fly much. Her sole focus will be on getting her degree. As the others concocted this story, she nodded.
“The surgery to repair her damaged heart tissue came and went. Her heart was still weak, but she was alive. After months in the hospital, we left to begin a new chapter of our lives. We traveled and prepared her college application. Nothing could entertain her or put a smile on her face, not until she saw a pair of barn owls. In one instant, she went from sparkling eyes to dropping on her knees, tears running down her cheeks, sobs rippling her chest. To witness her so confused and disconnected shocked us. We didn’t even have time to be glad about glimpsing a reaction in her. It left as quickly as it came, smashing our hopes once again.
“Tonight, I got my answer when I saw her necklace. I’m sure you know the reason for her reaction. After a moment, she scrambled up and apologized. No explanation. It was maybe the first and last physical reaction we detected in her. As if she wanted to prove how in control she was. From that day on, her every basic human reaction was moot . . . until you came back into the picture.”
He glares at me with disapproval, places his elbow on the table, and leans his face into his fist, and continues, “Bria became this phenomenal machine. She finished at the top of her class while also working with me for my father. She functioned sixteen to eighteen hours a day, every day, without a break, without a vacation, and with no complaint. I don’t know how she managed it, but she did. One day she came into the dining room where my father and I had our soup and informed us she was ready to fly back home and work toward her legacy. My father dropped his spoon. I choked on the slippery mushroom liquid. This was the beginning of the end. Neither my father nor I were ready to let her go, but we didn’t know how to stop her. It was inevitable.”
She came back, and what have I done since then? Tried to either punish or chase her away. My brave, broken-hearted woman, why didn’t you tell me the truth? But I know, don’t I? You wanted me to deliver the punishment for something you were never guilty of to begin with. How much have you loved me, and how much have I not deserved you? One day you might forgive me, but I won’t.
DAMIEN
I call to mind the day I overheard Bria was returning home.
Four years earlier . . .
My parents were talking in hushed tones with my sister in the open-spaced living room. I ended up eavesdropping because I couldn’t seem to make my legs function the moment her name was said. Although I knew the day would come, I was not prepared. No one overcomes a catastrophe like ours and forgets about the devastation it caused. The realization hits me—no amount of time can wash away the misery engraved on my heart, so what difference would it make if I see her again now or in another life. Either way, I would still bleed. She is so deeply-rooted in my veins as if I’d had her name inked on my blood vessels. Nothing could erase her.
In the minutes that followed, I put on my brave façade as if it were none of my concern. I have mastered the art of deceiving myself as well as others during her long absence. There were no baby steps to settle into my new life without her. I was propelled into shark-filled waters, bleeding. I’d had to learn how to swim and then how to survive among them trying to rip through me. I stride toward them, forcing myself to act my usual, indifferent self. I unbutton my jacket and take the seat beside Sophie on the vast creamy couch able to support ten people.
I raise my hand in a gesture to go on, and my parents suggest we organize a welcome-back party at our family home, which used to be her favorite place. I force myself not to correct them that they have it all wrong. Her favorite place was in my arms. Only my sister’s sunken expression and patting my hand in encouragement gives away she knows what I am thinking. My parents chat away while I ball my hands at my sides. I have a major problem with throwing a party for the same person who tore apart my heart, wrecked my life, and forced me to choose another country to be alone with my pain. Far away from our shadowy memory so I could breathe. But I say nothing. I nod with gritted teeth and prepare myself for the inevitable.
In the three years of absence, Bria became a woman, and I have missed the entire process. Melancholy washes over me and a renewed sense of loss hits me hard. In my old room, I peer at her through the window, fisting the curtains, trying to conceal myself behind dark matte blinds. I take my time studying her feminine curves, soft features, and the slight sway of her hips. Bria didn’t transform per se, it is more a subtle change, a ripening of her features, and to my amazement, she looks even more refined and beautiful, if it were fucking possible. She must have sensed me gawking, and for just a moment, time stands still as Bria tilts her head, her light golden-brown hair falling down her back, almost caressing her waist. A light tremor crosses her features when our eyes collide.
For just a second, our eyes lock and bind our hearts again, only this time in agony and misery. After the moment passes, my exhale rushes from my lungs. Her posture changes and I find a sophisticated woman on the arm of another man who looks at her with love shining in his eyes. The mixture of feelings assaulting me speeds up my heartbeat, and I collapse under the weight of this event—fury, anger, jealousy, love, and hatred battle for a place in my heart. At the end of the fight, hatred wins the last round and becomes my companion for the next few years. I backtrack until my back hits the door as I twirl and slam it behind me.
As I descend the stairs, I notice the thick tension filling the family’s majestic living room, sparring for a prime spot with the sunrays infiltrating the floor-to-cei
ling windows. Family members stare from one to the other of us. An impenetrable shield surrounds her straight back, high shoulders, hands glued to her silky, toned legs covered in navy fabric. With her nose stuck in the air and her delicate neck craned to the side, she faces us all. The once-adored girl has become a stranger, and a sick pleasure settles in my core because she deserves it.
I swear to make her pay for everything she has stolen from me. In one afternoon, Bria becomes my sworn enemy, the person on whom I want to inflict pain until the end. She introduces her companion to everyone with a plastic smile on her face while my stomach churns. He gets a rather cold but polite welcome. We scan each other, and I know we won’t become friends. Well, at least the feeling is mutual. I have only one curiosity, though. Why do his eyes flash with hatred toward me? I want to punch him in his arrogant face and say, You have it all wrong. She’s the ruin masked under unearthly beauty. But I believe he’d discover it all by himself eventually.
I swagger over to them, and he wraps his arms around her. I smirk as if to state I don’t want her anyway—been there, done that, overcame it. It is a big fat lie, but the pain inside inflates my arrogance into a giant. And since I am the host, I initiate the conversation. We are grownups, so why so much kindergarten attitude, then?
“Damien du Sky.” I extend my hand to him. For someone as shaken up as I am, my confident voice startles me. I am glad at least one organ in my body doesn’t feel the need to betray me and reveal the war going on inside me. And all the while, she—her name is not something I say pleasantly—eyes me, and tingles spread themselves from head to toe as I shake the unpleasant feeling away. I squint trying to decode the meaning of her gaze.
My whole core crumbles at the torture of her nearness. How long until I could begin living again? Whatever my sins, it’s long overdue.
Alexander Hope—whatever he is to her—answers and squishes my hand into a handshake. Interesting. I have never swerved from a challenge before, and I won’t start now. Meanwhile, Bria stares at me as if seeking something she can’t find. And me? I don’t know how to behave around her. What is someone supposed to do in my place? An embrace seems too personal, and even a peck on the cheek is too much considering our past. I grab her hand and shake it when the force of our hands brushing jolts me from within. I lean forward, maybe just a few inches, to feel her warmth and catch a whiff of her floral scent, which I’m hooked on immediately.
Shattered Love : A Billionaire Romance (Forever Us Book 1) Page 7
