Her answer gives my heart a lifting flutter, but now I wonder what the final part is about. “Don’t you want to have them or something? Aren’t you happy?”
We tread in dangerous territory, but we have never bolted in the face of danger before, so why should we begin now? It’s not that the years have made me much wiser, just unhappy and older. My question hasn’t come just from curiosity, I am both concerned and interested in her answers. A tormented side of me craves to connect, to get its fill of her.
“I won’t have children for the same reason you still keep the photos and this room intact. To pay homage to something that will never be again.”
Her answer shocks the hell out of me. She doesn’t want children because of the memory of us. Then she is as crazy as I am.
“I don’t know how happiness feels anymore. I am only existing, nothing more, nothing less.”
“Is it because of us?” I tilt her chin up and ask.
She nods and bites the inside of her cheek.
“Why, Bria? Why did you destroy us, then?” My voice cracks as pain squeezes my heart in its claws.
A few tears run down her cheek. With my thumb, I pick one up, and the salty taste lingers on my tongue.
“I don’t know, and nothing I can say or do will ever change it, nor give us anything back.”
“You left me in pieces, not even knowing why you did what you did, which is a thousand times worse than knowing there was a motive behind your action. You took everything from me, and now you expect me just to forget. What do you still want from me? Because I swear, I would give it to you because everything of worth in me was always for you.” I expel a heavy breath and rest my head against the bed frame, my arms crossed behind my neck, and shut my eyes. The bed shifts, and when I open my eyes, she cradles my face in her hands.
“I want you to be happy.”
It’s not my eyes rolling, but my brain at hearing the obnoxious notion. That ship sailed a long, long time ago.
“Happy! Give me a damn good reason to be happy,” I demand and push her hands away.
“So, life is worth living.” She makes a gesture with her hand before dropping it on her lap.
“Yes, right, because you exude happiness. How do you make it bearable?”
“I made a promise, and this is my motivation for going on.”
Something in the back of my mind nudges me to dissect her words, but it is impossible with her this near.
“Why do you feel so right, Bria? Why do you still fit in this room, here with me, after we both know what you did?”
She places her hand on my heart, and with reassurance-filled eyes, she answers, “I was made to feel right in your arms and to fit you.”
“And you gave it all away for one night.”
The hurt in our voices is thick in the air. It envelops us and creates a dark, impervious veil around us.
“I know, but I have to live with the repercussions of it all, not you. I never intended for you to share the same path as mine but to find happiness again.”
“You should have thought before betraying me. Have you any idea what you truly caused?” I glare at her, trying to shake some sense into her. Does she hear the nonsense she babbles? I peel her hand off me.
She sighs, tilts her head to the side, tears shimmering in her eyes. “I can’t change it. I would give my life for a different outcome.”
I cup her face in my hands and deadpan. “You were my happiness. I’ve lived and breathed for you, and you sliced me open. Look at me, dammit, buried inside you’ll find your face as my last memory of living my happiness.”
She wraps her arms around my torso and weeps as my chest expands with my loaded groan. “I loved you, Damien, with all I had in me. You have to believe me. You were my past and present and future, my everything. So many nights, I fantasized about another version of us. A version who made it through, who are growing old together and are still in love. How crazy is that?”
“One where they somehow found their happy ending?” Irony coats every word I say.
She peeks at me through wet lashes and asks, “Don’t you believe in happy endings anymore?”
“I’ve lost mine because, without you, there are no more happy endings for me, just an end without the happy part.”
Bria shakes her head. “I know it’s too late for us, but sometimes I can’t control the images in my head. The pain makes it feel real.”
“Yes, it is too late for us, and as it seems, we’re both masochists. Why didn’t we ever try BDSM?”
“It’s not funny.”
“You’re right. There can’t be any fun in such a pathetic fate.”
“Do you somehow think of us? What do you see?” I could lie, but I decide against it. For as long as we are inside this room, I’ll give her myself because I am so damn tired of pretending, I don’t miss having her near me with every beat in my chest.
“You first.”
She glances at me with her elbows resting on her knees and her face in her palm. “I see a lasting future for two kids who grew up together, fell in love, and grew old together.”
My fingers scrape the spot where my heart breaks in my chest. I find her eyes and keep them locked on mine before answering, “I see a boy loving the girl with so much passion and need. She was everything he ever noticed. I watch him proposing to her on her eighteenth birthday in the place where they would build their home together—so much laughter and love and babies. I envision our children who will never experience a day of life because they will never be ours to have, Bria. Just thinking about it makes me want to put a bullet through my heart.”
“Let me buy the land from you. I’ll pay as much as you want. I’ll do anything, but please allow me to have it.”
I slam my eyes shut. I need a reprieve from the visual of her reclining next to me. It plays havoc with my mind. I am resolute in my decision but hand her an impossible loophole. “Never. That piece of ground was intended to be a gift for my future wife, who should have been you, but you never will be. In honor of the girl who would have said yes on the first of May six years ago, I will keep the land. If you can bring her back, it’s yours.”
“That’s impossible,” she whimpers, and even though the sounds tear something in me, I can’t give her what she wants, not anymore.
“And since you know your attempt is futile, you’ll never have the land. Or maybe after I’m gone.”
Whatever warped connection we have makes us shift toward the other. Just another moment of weakness as she leans in my direction, and she places her head on my shoulder.
She asks me with a trembling voice, “What are we, Damien?”
“I can tell you what we aren’t, not friends, not lovers, and not family.”
Her fingers draw circles on my chest as she goes on. “Why don’t you say what we are then, or are you afraid to say it out loud?”
This infuriating woman—she knows all my weaknesses and plays her cards like a pro. Just like that, her mood shifts. She gives me whiplash. My mouth finds her ear. “You know the answer, but if you want it to hear it from me, then here you go. We are nothing. We plummeted from everything to nothing, and we are at the end of our forever.”
“The end . . . so final, so everything I didn’t wish for.” Her words, her presence unbalance me. Maybe this is why I can’t stop myself from letting her peer into how broken I truly am.
“Are you happy with the answer now? I’m holding you because I know the moment I let you go, what I will see in you is the woman who tore my heart apart, my nemesis.”
And with a sweet and pleading voice, she whispers, “Then hold me for a little while longer.”
I hold her to my chest, and she lets a small cry out, burrowing herself further in my arms. “I don’t have it in me not to. At least not for now, because in this moment, I have everything I never dreamed of having again.” And it’s wrong, but I am still incapable of not holding her. She fucked me up. This is what I say to myself as I admit, “For the fi
rst time in years, I can breathe without a giant stepping on my bruised chest. Do you regret it?”
“Every second of my life with every fiber of my being.”
“That image of you in bed with him . . . it trails after me, even now. I wish I had it in me to forget, but I can’t. With all the love I had for you, this is what stayed.”
She caresses my cheek, melting the restraints surrounding my heart. “You hold onto the anger, but what we had is worth remembering too.”
“I do, and whenever I remember, it wrecks me even more.” Why the need to confess? Oh, weakness, right, she’s my weakness.
“I want you to be happy, to love again. Try, please, you have to try.” Madness, this is what this is, and what she asks of me is a challenge I will lose. I hate losing, and this is why I won’t even try.
“You lost the right to demand anything from me a while ago.”
“Still stubborn.”
I shrug. Why can’t she quit stroking me? I feel her crawling into my senses.
“Still the same man and at the same time different. You are fascinating and lovable, Damien. Stop trying to prove me wrong. I can’t and won’t ever believe the opposite.”
Her chaste kisses on my neck undo me as my fingers dig into her waist.
“But you, Bria, you’ve changed. The only familiar things are the way you still fit in my arms and your flowery spring scent, but everything else . . . The love of my life is a stranger.”
“Would it have been different if I were still the old me?”
No, definitely no! I shake my head.
“No, because she was mine, not someone else’s.”
“That Bria was yours. Only yours.”
The sincerity shining in her eyes makes the pain inside me stretch my rib cage.
“Even so, why doesn’t it seem true or right?”
“Because of one night, one mistake, and one unhappy ending.” I scoot upright and bend her over, the veins in her neck pumping under my fingers.
“I want you so bad right now, to erase everything from my mind for a little while, so I can love and kiss you. Even now, you have all the power, and I’m still a puppet in your hands.” My verbal vomit would have bothered me if I wasn’t this taken with the desire to flip an ounce of the burden from my heart.
“Leave us in the past, Damien, when I was yours, and you were still mine. When we made love for love’s sake and not to chase after something for a while in the land of absentmindedness. Let us be beautiful, like we are in our memories. If you take this away from us, what will remain?”
“Don’t you owe it to me to let me have my way because of everything you deprived me of?”
I lift her chin, but she keeps her eyes shut. “Then take me, and destroy us for good. Maybe you’re right.”
I pin her under me and nudge her to peel her eyes open. If I did it, I would have nothing left, so instead, I pause and settle myself on top of her.
“Why do you torture yourself like this?”
“Because I am a fucking masochist. Does my answer suit you, my soulless queen?”
I don’t know what I expected her to do, but her hands move to my back and caress me.
“What are you doing?”
“Feeling you.” At her words, I groan.
“What are you after? Do you want to calm the storm inside me? Let me warn you that you’ll only drown yourself in it.”
She places her warm lips on my chest, and heat rushes through me, and then Bria whispers, “I could misunderstand it and take it as if you are concerned with my wellbeing.”
My eyes tunnel into hers. “All the love is locked away, but I swear if anything happened to you, I would not survive it.”
Her fingers massage my scalp as she kisses me on my jaw, and feelings long gone threaten to resurface as I shake them off.
“Do you think we’ll get another chance in another life to make things different?”
I cup her face and shelter her as if she is the most precious thing I will hold. To me, she is, and my heart contorts into an unpleasant twitch as I force my fingers to stay still.
“I would curse the universe if it didn’t allow us to see where all the love between us would have led.” Her lips curve up into a small smile, undoing me further. This woman strips me of everything else and covers me with her instead. “Our souls are old companions, and they will find a way to be together. They will search for each other, and when we meet again, I will love you every day a bit more. But I don’t know. I loved you with everything in me. There was no more left to give, and still . . .” I pause. “If this is my curse, I’ll take it, Bria, every time as long as you love me back.”
I tear my hands from her face as I stretch my neck toward the window. I ask myself where this confession comes from and keeps pouring out of me. I show her the deepest corners of my damaged soul.
With her trembling thumb, she caresses my chin as she redirects my attention to her. Bria cups my clenched jaw in her small, silky hands, rasping, “I promise you, in another life and another time, I’ll make it right for you.”
Why are we making promises for another life when here we are in flesh and blood incapable of holding onto the other or letting go? I press my lips against her knuckles, sucking in the vibration of her quivering body. I drop her hands as she leans on the bed and pats the mattress on the spot beside her. I take it as an invitation as I lay my head over her heart and ask her, “For whom does your heart beat now?”
She plays with a strand of my hair, “For no one, but it used to beat only for you.”
“Do you love him, like you used to love me?” Why can’t I make my damn mouth shut up?
“I could love no one more than I have loved you.” Her answer may be a blatant lie, but it soothes me. And yet, I can’t get past the fact she avoids answering whether she loves Alexander. But, of course, she does. What a fool I am, and my body tenses up.
“No. My answer is no, not in the way you think and never in the way you imagine.”
Something erupts from my heart, and I let myself go limp in her arms, enjoying the closeness we share. Is this how you feel at peace, I muse, lost in her sweet smell and soft touch? While I rest in her arms, everything else can go to hell. I deserve a small break.
Her next question slices my chest open like a scalpel does in the dexterous fingers of a surgeon because I am not prepared. I believed I would never have to answer such a question and to her of all people.
“How many women?” In her embrace and in the room surrounded by our past, guilt strikes me. My voice cracks, “Too many to recall.”
My insides burn with shame. I don’t know what I expected. I would have coped well with every other physical reaction than her kissing my forehead, and it guts me.
“You never were the superficial type, so why?”
“I wanted to erase you from me, to forget you . . . it was what I had to offer and all I wanted to get . . . a quick release, a little pleasure, a warm body.”
Why is she still holding me, and why am I incapable of darting away? Only this woman snaps my brain shut.
“You mean sex?”
“Yes, I mean sex or fucking. You know, when a guy sticks his cock in a pussy without feelings but seeking a release. I thought you knew all about it. You were the first of the two of us to experience it.”
Her hand in my hair stalls, but then she continues, another blow to my core. Her gentleness to my harshness is not something I can deal well with. Where did her fire disappear to?
“If it helps you.”
“I’m so damn exhausted.”
“Sleep then, baby.” Her soft voice lulls my body into relaxation.
“Will you still be here when I wake up?”
“In this particular position, it would be hard for me to move.”
“Good, then. And, Bria, I made love only to you, and the others were just fucking around. I hope you understand the difference. It is not an apology, though, so don’t misinterpret.”
I lif
t my chin as she dips her head and places a soft kiss on my brow, and her quivering lips pierce my chest. “Okay. Sleep well and dream of something beautiful.”
A confession escapes my mouth as I hold her gaze prisoner. “Everything I ever dream about is you with me, sharing a bed and a life. Why should I torment myself with fantasies when I’ll wake up to a nightmare, to a life where you are not mine day in and day out.”
“I’ll carry you.”
I seal my eyes and lock my arms around her waist. “I won’t fall. I learned a long time ago how to keep myself afloat. Don’t be my rescuer after being the reason for my destruction.”
With my head plopped in her lap as she keeps caressing me and her touch undoing me, I admit, “Your body reminds me of the only home I wished for, but everything else about you is cold. Why?”
“There is no warmth in numbness. You have to make sacrifices to survive.”
“What did you sacrifice?”
“My heart, Damien. My heart and myself.”
I wish to continue and demand her to stop talking in riddles, but my eyelids grow heavy, and sleep overtakes me. In her warm arms and soft body, I allow myself to rest, and my world is whole again.
Just for now, I repeat to myself in case some parts of me need clarification.
DAMIEN
I wake up to her fingers threading through my hair, my scalp prickling with goose bumps, and my hands gripping around her waist. Is my subconscious making a statement? I shake it off and weaken my hold on her. The room is submerged in darkness, illuminated only by the dim light provided by the lamp on the black bedside table and the moon trying to peek in. For a while, privacy and seclusion veil us in. Nothing from the outside can reach us. My chest expands with the realization she stayed. I crane my head and get lost in her hazel eyes.
“Did you at least get some sleep?”
My voice is heavy with sleep, but I am rested. I toss the thought that it’s due to her, right away.
“No, I was too busy watching you sleep.”
Shattered Love : A Billionaire Romance (Forever Us Book 1) Page 11
