The first shy rays of light infiltrate the room and my Adam’s apple bobs. Soon it will all be over. I need to gather strength to be the person I have to be for my own good.
“I loved you with a fiery passion, Bria.
“I scooped you onto my lap. As you straddled me, you kept chewing on your bottom lip until I kissed you to keep you from hurting yourself. Your shoulders relaxed, and you kissed me back, but the kiss went deeper than usual, and your fingers slid under my shirt.
“You kept babbling about our first time being on your birthday and how you had started the pill so we could do it. I also remember you squirmed, and I asked what was wrong.”
My thumb follows the lines of her arched-shaped brows, down her cheeks, contouring her lips, getting lost in her.
“I was nervous. The whole first-time part made me all itchy. I just wanted you to do something and shut off my brain.”
I press her body to mine and succumb to the sensation of her enveloping all my senses. “I was nervous too. It would be the first time for both of us.”
That superlative moment when her mouth formed the perfect O against my lips as I entered her, stretched her tightness, and filled her. Claiming and marking her caused a primal instinct to develop and settle in my core as I drank in her cries and coaxed her moans. I kissed her temple as she tilted her head and gave herself to me.
“Afterward, I crashed on top of you and kissed you, assuring you of my everlasting love. I would never forget my eighteenth birthday. The sun peered through the leaves as we held each other, wiping the sweat off our foreheads, grinning. Long minutes passed before we got dressed, and I plucked a necklace with two barn owls forming a heart and sitting on a branch out of my pocket. One with hazel eyes like yours and one with blue eyes like mine.”
The dreamy expression on her face rocks me from within.
“It was the ideal present to complete a perfect day full of meaning . . . your birthday, our second anniversary as a couple, and losing our virginity. Celebrating life and love, the past and the future.”
Her shoulders sag, and a groan flees my body as I fist the sheet. In our case, love has been shoved in the past when the present tears us apart. Whatever still bonds us is a mix of pain, regret, love, and hate—a poisonous life form sucking on our delusion.
Neither of us dares to say a thing as we lay together, an eerily quiet surrounding us, and miles beginning to yank us apart. Our erratic breaths pierce the tense silence cloaking us. I don’t regret what happened last night and early this morning, but I know later today would be a different story with a different outcome. It has ruptured something inside me, but as the sun rises, it also lifts me out of my clouded desires. I am myself, and Bria is still my tormentor. Nothing has changed. The pretense is about to start again with renewed force. I let myself have one more thought before I allow darkness to chain me once again.
Nothing will ever have the power to stop me from loving you, but I am half a man, and I can’t expect you to make me whole again. I can’t let control slip again through your fragile fingers. You are incapable of holding us together because you too are broken, and I am not the one to put you back together. You didn’t choose me. I love you, Bria du Mont, my beloved stranger . . . my enemy.
I stir first. But it is she who looks away and puts some physical distance between us. Her face cranes toward the wall of photos as her meek voice acknowledges, “Our time is up.”
We emerged from our trip down memory lane, so why are we lying in bed, a few inches apart, motionless once again but still with our fingers intertwined? Neither of us attempts to move, either to stay or to leave the other to misery.
“Was it good for you, Bria? Was it worth your time to reminisce about all of it and have nothing left of it in the end?”
“I’m used to nothing these days, but I felt it . . . every memory, every touch, every kiss.”
I recognize in her the desire to remain civil and for a clear breakup, to part ways like grown-ups, but I am done letting her have her way. Remembering everything has been too much. The angry side in me growls in pain and rage, realizing we’ll never again have what we once had.
It’s her fault.
She’s doomed us and ruined the chance of having the future we dreamed of.
There’s no excuse for what I say next, but I can’t rein myself in.
I’m fully aware of how she’ll receive my words as the ones of someone succumbed to hate.
In all these years, I’ve never felt so small and unsteady as I do now, a puppet on the strings of my charade of strength and control. My words cut us both, but we can now drift apart, breaking a seven-year cycle or initiating a more painful one.
“Good for you. I, on the other hand, feel only disgust toward this night and you.”
She winces next to me, but it’s too late to back off. I tear my hand from hers as if burned. I’ve already lost her. She was preparing herself to leave me anyway, so better to end it my way. Anything else would be foolish of me, so I keep it up.
Hasn’t this been my plan from the start anyway? Why did I allow myself to forget who she is to and for me?
“Your presence alone sickens me, and I hate you more than ever, Bria, more than I ever could have loved you. It consumes me, and I welcome it.” I toss my head back and laugh. “This night, you showed me again your true face. You are a cheater, a selfish, cold person. Now, get the hell out. You are my greatest enemy, and I take my enemies apart. Don’t forget it again.”
Witnessing her eyes turn lifeless is when I stab my own heart. As she plods from the bed, my chest splinters into a thousand pieces, all scattered at her feet. I want to shout at her to pick them up because they are all for her. I have nothing left for myself as I crumble inside but keep spitting poison. “Thank you for the nice fuck.” I’m such a lying bastard.
With a false cheer, I add, “But your wish has been granted. Tonight, even though it was a mistake, it needed to happen. It’s made me realize I love your cousin. I’ll marry Monica, the right woman between you two.” I pause only to deliver the final blow. “I hope you don’t mind. I took the liberty to indulge with you this night as an early bachelor party. But even if you mind, it’s not that I care.”
With quivering lips and a face drained of color, she mouths, “Congratulations.”
It takes all of me to restrain myself to the bed and not crawl to her. She dresses and shrieks when she can’t hook her lace bra the first time. Her dabbing her wayward hair is almost laughable if it hadn’t had a certain tragic note on her chaotic moves. She stumbles on her heels, gasping. I hear the desperate desire of her lungs to grasp some air as she places one hand against her chest. Bria yanks the door with the other while I plead for her not to look at me, but just to spite me, her now hollow eyes clash with mine and freeze me on the spot. I’m left with the wrenching echoes of her steps as she bolts down the stairs.
Like an out-of-body experience, after ending another heart-gutting goodbye session with her, I get dressed. My hands ball into fists, and I holler.
Out of the window, I watch as Alexander rushes toward her.
What fucking perfect timing.
He gathers and carries her to his black Range Rover. The sound of the engine roaring to life invades my body, intoxicating me with jealousy, and clouding my vision. I slump to the floor with my hands gripping my hair and keep repeating as I rock myself, “I am sorry, my love.”
When I regain a little control, I put my clothes on, drag my feet down the stairway toward the living room. I find my parents blinking at me in disbelief. I’m sure it has everything to do with Bria storming out and my disheveled appearance—open shirt, unbuttoned slacks, and ruffled rolled-up sleeves. I raise my hands in front of me as a barrier. “Don’t. This night never happened, and you saw nothing.”
I trudge to the bar and grab a bottle of Macallan. I don’t ask my father’s permission but make a mental note to replace it for him when I feel less rammed by a train. My pain deserves a treat wit
h a refined taste. As I’m about to withdraw, I mumble, “I’ll be indisposed for the day.”
I haul myself back to my room, which still smells of her. I pick up her pillow and groan in it. Afterward, I jerk the bottle to my mouth and gulp it down. The distinctive taste of smoky, nutty alcohol burns my throat, and my head thrashes back and forth while I think, “You’ve done it once again, Bria. You made me a desperate and devastated fool living in the past. Even after everything, I still can’t find it in me to remove you. It’s an overwhelming burden I have to carry, not having you but wanting you, and not in the present but the past. To you, my beautiful destruction. To another round of you slicing me through.”
DAMIEN
In the year following the night Bria and I spent together, I set myself for one thing—work. I work every day until exhaustion overtakes me, sleeping more nights in my office than in my condo. I haven’t even attended social events that required my presence any longer, just family dinners. I seek her out every time, but she is never there—not even when I summon the Board for a meeting to coerce her out of her lockdown does she show. I tighten my jaw and accept her lack of presence and decision to stay away even though it whacks me every time.
Meanwhile, I continue planning my so-called engagement and wedding to Monica. I can’t bail, anyway.
Katherine always makes excuses for why her daughter isn’t present. There is a new excuse every time, ranging from previously-made plans of going on a trip with Alexander, or she’s in New York to visit Quinn, to an overdue project I’m not aware of that wasn’t done yet. How could I since it is a big, fucking lie? This charade lasts until no one questions why she isn’t coming anymore. It’s not the first time. We take it as it is and do what we know best—pretend. Still, I fly to Zürich, more often than it’s good for my sanity, hoping to catch a glimpse of her or even hear her voice. I snap and snarl most of the time. They either rush out of my sight or put it to nervousness due to the impending wedding—my so-called doom night on the fifth of November.
Only Sophia sees right through my moods. One evening at another family gathering where Bria isn’t present, she grips my arm and leads me to a quiet corner. With every passing day, it gets harder to suppress my anger. Her distance, the fact I don’t know how much longer I can continue wanting to reach her, needing to see her. This battle raging inside me will end up ripping me apart.
“You’re not right, brother, and it has nothing to do with your wedding, which I think is the dumbest thing you’ve ever done, and I’ve seen you do some pretty dumb things. You have to quit it.”
Her eyes fill with worry. I gulp the rest of my drink as her forehead creases.
It’s too late. “Is this why you dragged me here, Soph? To berate me about my wedding?”
“Actually, no. Another issue is more pressing right now. Something’s not right, and you know it too.”
“What are you talking about?”
She raises her eyebrows, well aware I am playing dumb. Sophia purses her lips and sucks in a breath. “I am talking about your so-called archenemy who stopped seeing us after her birthday eight months ago. Something is wrong. She locks herself in her office, becoming paler and weaker but working harder. Bria acts like a robot, Damien, lifeless, the same numb facial expression for days in a row plastered on her face. If you would see her, you’d understand why I worry.”
“I don’t care. She’s none of my business.”
She pinches me on my stomach, and I pierce her with a look.
“I am your sister. You can’t fool me. But when everything goes to hell, don’t say I didn’t warn you. At least, in the beginning, she was trying. Now, it seems like she estranges herself on purpose. Call the sham of your wedding off. I know you’ve loved only one woman, and I don’t recognize either the look in your eyes or the signs of a lovestruck man.”
I scratch the nape of my neck and ask, “Why do you still care?”
My sister rolls her eyes and says, “One of us has to. She made a mistake, a great one, seven years ago, and I don’t deny it. But she shouldn’t be treated in some ways like she’s still a member of this family but in other ways like an outcast. No one can hold her above her mistake, and to make things worse, you support their behavior as if you think you are entitled. Enough is enough, Damien. Not even her parents can do it, and Filip acts like he lost his sister long ago. Worse, I talk to him about things your brain would screech at, and he’s fine, but the moment Bria pops up, he freezes and changes the subject.”
My sister tilts her head, and her penetrating stare scans me. I answer her in what I hope to be my most unfazed voice possible. “She found her replacement family. Let them worry. Or do you think it’s easy for Katherine and George to live with the fact two strangers have replaced them? Like everyone else here, they’ve found a way to cope with it. Don’t accuse any of us because she made her choices long ago.”
Sophia shakes her head and then snatches a strand of her raven black hair stuck to her glossy lips. My sister and her theatrics as her eyes bore into me. In her last attempt to goad me, she adds, “This is not the time to be stubborn. I can’t get through to her, but you might. She works herself practically to death, and in her little spare time, she is either with that Alexander or his father. Bria uses them as a shield to keep us out, and you are too blind to see it.”
A long breath flees her. Sophia blinks at me as she clings to my arm. “Have it your way. I’m out of this charade.” Irony drips from her tongue. “And say hello to your intended one for me.”
With her message delivered, she turns on her heel and leaves me standing there with my heart in the gutter as the two halves of me fight with each other over the same woman once again. Pain throbs behind my eyelids as I massage my temples. What if my sister is right, that I had buried my head in the sand pretending everything is as usual.
I will never have in me the power or desire to forgive myself for not listening.
DAMIEN
Present day . . .
Alexander strides behind the bar and grabs a bottle of water. He groans with satisfaction as the cold liquid erases the alcohol’s traces away, and he places a large bill on the bar to compensate the bartender. He hasn’t shown his boyish face for a while now, leaving me alone in the same room with the one person I would risk my freedom to destroy. Egging him on, I give him a lopsided grin and raise an eyebrow at the bottle of water in his hand.
“Get your own.”
“I thought you were nicer, Alexander.”
He props his elbow on the cold surface of the bar as I shift to regale him with my full attention. Face to face, I wonder if he can detect my attempt to keep the pretense up—how I force my shoulders to stay straight or the flexing muscles in my jaw every time I observe my leg bouncing.
It irks me the way he studies me even though I do the same.
Alexander’s fist slams on the bar and says, “Shall we continue?”
“Be my guest.”
“You will bleed.”
“If you say so.”
He tsks and says, “I blame myself for falling asleep. I didn’t realize I was spent until I woke up in the morning with my head sprawled on my laptop and a stiff neck. I jumped up and peeked into Bria’s room, but she wasn’t there. I searched for her everywhere. I dialled her number repeatedly, but my calls went straight to her voicemail. By then, alarms went off in my head. I grabbed my car keys and speed to your parents’ house.
“She would never talk about what happened on the night of her twenty-fourth birthday, not with my father or me. But afterward, she turned completely numb. Every hope I’d had to save her vanished. With every month, I had to acknowledge she was no longer salvageable. Her presence was the only reminder she was still among us. It was maddening watching her roaming around the flat. The exhaustion over the fact she had to compute in her the will to wake up in the mornings and go to work to maintain the illusion she is not an ill woman worsened her state. I even instigated a fight with her because I couldn’t
understand why she wasn’t already gone, why she continued to stay here when she was adamant about keeping away from you anyway? She waved me off and shut the door behind her. It killed me to observe her draining herself . . . her maddening stubbornness.”
I nod more to myself, her stubbornness a known trait.
“I couldn’t even pick my father up at the airport. He came straight to the hospital. The doctor confirmed what we were guessing; her heart was failing. All we could do was wait for the end. I have no idea how she pulled through the last year with her weakened heart, a few hours of sleep a day, eating when her stomach growled in a fit, and working like she found her damn catharsis. She infuriated me to the point I extended my stays in New York as my father switched places with me. But even being mad at her, I could never stay away from her for long. Every time I returned, I hoped she would allow me to help her. She never did, and my pleas of moving back to the States were met by deaf ears every time.
“I still believe if we had remained in New York, Bria would have found a way to live again. But you succeeded in smashing every one of Dad’s and my accomplishments with her wellbeing.”
He pauses as if to enjoy the anguish transforming my features.
“You’re in pain, good.” He points a finger at my face and adds, “You can’t hide it well, at least not from me. I am good at reading that particular emotion. I see it in the mirror every day.”
We battle with our stares, and he goes on, “But I didn’t promise you pain when our little session began, Damien. I promised you the same thing you pledged her . . . complete devastation.
“Although I can’t be certain you caused it, my experience says you did because you were the only one who ever got her to react. Are you aware of what they say to patients who suffer from heart problems? They tell them to avoid situations that may put them through emotional pain or stress, for there is the risk of future attacks.
“But with Bria not capable of feelings, it was a damn small relief. I was not factoring you into the problem because I believed you would never cross the line. I was wrong. So tell me what happened between the time I left and the next day when Bria collapsed in my arms.”
Shattered Love : A Billionaire Romance (Forever Us Book 1) Page 17
