Driven By Love

by Marian Tee

  “What do you want to talk about?” She was proud that her voice remained flat and toneless, but when she saw that same flicker of unspeakable pain in his eyes, she wanted to cry out. It was as if her voice alone had told Leandro she was indifferent to his pain.

  Inhale, exhale.

  You’re a strong woman, Bobby.

  You can do this.

  You don’t need him to live.

  Leandro searched her face desperately for any sign that she loved him, that it was only because she was hurting that Bobby was doing this. But there was none. Again, terror over losing her for good threatened to choke him but he shook himself free from its hold.

  He would fight for her till the very end. As long as there was a chance for her to love him back, he would not stop.

  “I want to talk about Erica Norwood.”

  Nothing on her face changed.

  He stiffened, the terror becoming stronger but still he continued doggedly. “I think you misunderstood. You might have seen her send me a message. Maybe you’ve seen the number of times I called her. I wasn’t cheating on you.”

  He paused.

  The old Bobby would have protested that last part, would have said something like he couldn’t have possibly cheated on her when they weren’t together.

  But the coldly silent Bobby in front of him didn’t even blink at the words.

  Her indifference made him draw a sharp breath, but still he forged on. “I managed to persuade her to tie up with your foundation to sponsor a similar program like our club did. She’s going to open her doors to deaf female students who would like to apply as summer interns.” When she still didn’t speak, he said fiercely, “That’s it. That’s completely it, Bobby. I didn’t cheat on you and I would never want to cheat on you.”

  It fucking killed him to speak the next words in front of an audience – and especially when that one-person audience was made up of Sabastian Gabris – but Leandro spoke anyway. “I love you. I will always love you, Bobby Granger, so can you please stop hurting me and come back to my side?”

  The pain in Leandro’s voice almost made Bobby break down, but she held on to her control ruthlessly, telling her that it didn’t matter if the business about Erica Norwood was nothing like she had feared. It didn’t matter either that Leandro had told Bobby he loved her in front of Sabastian, the man she was engaged to. It didn’t matter that he was practically begging her to come back to his life.

  Love just wouldn’t work between the two of them.

  He was not in her league, and she was too scarred, too frightened, too everything that he was not for her to take a chance on their love again.

  “I can’t.”

  Her rejection pierced him like a dagger to his heart, and he asked hoarsely, “Is it because he proposed to you first?” He took out the box from his pocket. He opened it, took the ring out – and his heart along with it – and offered both to her. “Marry me, Bobby.” Leandro took a step towards her, his hand outstretched, his life hers for the taking. “I know I messed up everything for us in the past, but I can make it right. I love you, Bobby, and you love me.”

  The diamond ring Leandro offered to her blazed brightly, promising a dazzling kind of hope that she so badly wanted to believe in. But fears from the past kept her from reaching for it. “No.”

  The way her voice shook gave him hope. He took another step forward. “Stop being scared, Bobby. Let me prove it to you – you’ll be happy with me.”

  In that moment, she knew that he would never stop coming after her, not for as long as he believed that there was a chance for the two of them to be together again. And she was tempted – God, she was so tempted to be with him again, but she knew it wasn’t right. He made her feel so desperately needy. For a year, she had steeled herself against him and yet in just one night, Leandro had managed to destroy all her defenses. She had gone crazy with the pain and jealousy that one text message from another girl had created.

  Blindly, she reached for Sabastian’s hand and after a second, Sabastian’s hand engulfed hers. “Sabastian was right to make me go to you. He thought I needed closure before I could accept his proposal. And he was right. The other day…it was a good way for us to be free of the pain and have a good ending to our relationship.”

  Leandro was pale by the time she finished speaking. “You don’t mean that.”

  She swallowed. Ignoring the pain in his eyes, she forced herself to say, “I mean it. I’m sorry, Leandro, but that’s all it can ever be. A beautiful goodbye.” She made herself step forward. Her hand covered his hand…

  Leandro inhaled.

  For one moment, he thought she would take the ring.

  Then her hands urged his fingers to close over the ring.

  And he knew it had been all planned. That she had wanted him to believe he had a chance just so she could take that chance away and crush his heart with it.

  He snatched his hand from her hold, and throwing the ring away, he slammed out of the room. He was done. He was just fucking done.

  The silence Leandro’s departure left behind him was heavy with tension. And guilt, Bobby thought numbly. She knew that what she had done was cruel and unforgivable, but it had to be done. Leandro had to accept that they were not for each other.

  She choked on a sob.

  “You’re free now,” Sabastian said flatly. “Does your freedom please you?”

  She couldn’t answer.

  He watched Bobby struggle to hold back her sobs, but every time she did, her shoulders would shake harder as more tears fell from her eyes. He had been completely against pretending they were engaged but he knew that if he had not agreed to it, Bobby would have been desperate enough to find someone else to play along with her. And that wouldn’t do. There were already too many fake roles in Bobby and Leandro’s love affair. One more player added to the mix might have ruined it for good.

  When Bobby started to cry, no longer trying to hold her sobs back, Sabastian said quietly, “You can’t eliminate fear by running away from it, moro mou. You’re just enlarging your cage when you do. If you want to get rid of your fears, you have to face it head on.”

  “I almost died back then. I wanted to die. I was in so much pain there were times I just wanted to end my life because I loved him so much.”

  “But you didn’t. If you could refuse the urge in the past, you can refuse it again.” He took her hand and gently pulled his ring from her finger. “You need to stop hiding, Bobby. Leandro hurt you in the past…and now you’ve hurt him back. It has to stop here if you really love him.” He paused, giving it time for the words to sink in. “Do you love him, Bobby? Do you have the courage to love him?”

  For a long moment, Bobby didn’t speak.

  And then she was pulling away to bend down, picking up Leandro’s ring from the floor.

  She started to run.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The race was about to start when Bobby finally managed to push her way past the throng of reporters and VIP fans that had formed in front of the dugout. The bleachers were filled to the rafters, and everyone was cheering wildly for their favorite biker. Behind each biker was his token girl, and Bobby bit her lip hard when she saw it was Erica Norwood standing behind Leandro, once again wearing a bikini even though there was no freaking beach around. Was the girl insane? Maybe she wore jeans to the beach?

  Erica was saying something to Leandro with a laugh, and when Leandro looked over his shoulder to answer her, Bobby watched in greater dismay as Erica deliberately bent forward, the new position revealing more of her breasts to Leandro.

  Leandro might not have a thing for Erica, but Erica did. And after being such a bitch to him, Bobby knew that she might as well have pushed him into the other girl’s arms.

  The thought of having Leandro entering a relationship with Erica – or any other girl for that matter, even if it was on rebound – was too frightening and painful to contemplate. She broke into a run and bumped into Erica from behind as she skidded
to a stop.

  “Ow!” The other girl whirled around, and upon seeing Bobby, Erica’s face took on an indignant expression. “You!”

  Unable to think of a proper way to answer that, Bobby lifted her chin and said, “Me.” Then she snatched the token girl’s sash from Erica.

  The sound of Erica’s shrill scream jerked Leandro out of his thoughts, and when he turned to look over his shoulder, he was stunned to see Bobby trying to wrestle the sash from Erica’s hold. What the fuck was she doing? Was this another one of her fucking games to make him pay over and over for hurting her in the past?

  Stalking towards the two girls, Leandro easily tore the sash from their hands. “What are you doing here, Bobby?” he snapped without looking at her. He smoothed the yellow silk sash and handed it back to Erica. “Sorry about that.” He wondered furiously what this was all about. Had Bobby forgotten there were cameras all around them?

  Erica sniffed. “It’s okay. It’s not your fault she’s a crazy bitch.” She arranged the sash on her body and fluttered her lashes at Leandro. “But I think she scratched me on my shoulder.”

  Leandro looked and Bobby, peeking over Leandro’s shoulder, realized with dismay that Erica wasn’t lying. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled.

  Neither Leandro nor Erica seemed to hear her. Erica was looking up at Leandro with fluttering lashes. “Maybe you can kiss it to make it all better?”

  Bobby gasped.

  Leandro started to move.

  Bobby pushed herself between the two. “I can kiss it better!”

  Erica immediately jumped away from her. “Eww!”

  Leandro’s hands settled over Bobby’s shoulders from behind so he could spin her around. She opened her mouth to explain, but the look of undisguised fury on his face killed whatever she had to say.

  “Are you playing another game, mégaira?”

  She paled. The way he said it didn’t make the word sound like an endearment.

  “You had your game. You made me look like a fool in front of your fiancé—” His gaze jerked towards her hand, and that was when he realized she wasn’t wearing a ring.

  “It was a sham,” she whispered. “You had it right from the beginning. I made him pretend we were engaged so I could push you away. I thought it was enough, but then you asked me to marry you still, and I…I was scared. I knew you would never stop and I knew I couldn’t always find the strength to say no to you…” Her voice shook as she made her last admission. “So I thought about what I could do to make you think I didn’t love you anymore…and I did it.”

  Her rambling explanation made sense, but it didn’t matter. It couldn’t fucking matter. He was done with this shit. He had paid for his sins, and he wasn’t about to allow her to put him through hoops over and over for something he had already bled a thousand times for.

  Leandro looked at Bobby. “You were a nice girl once, mégaira, but today, you were a bitch and I wish you luck in finding someone who could love you.”

  The words stung, but she said valiantly, “I already found him. I just need to find a way to convince him to love me again.” She brought her hand up, revealing the ring she had been clutching all this time. His ring. “Maybe you’d like to give it to me again?”

  She looked at him, this time openly offering herself to ridicule. She made no attempt to hide the love shining in her eyes even knowing that the cameras of practically every tabloid in the country was trained on them. “I love you, Leandro Christopoulos. You had me so terrified of loving you again that I hurt you needlessly and…and I’m s-sorry.” She wiped the tears away. “I’m willing to do whatever it is to make you forgive me and make you love me again.”

  Bobby waited for him to answer, her eyes squeezed shut as she prayed that Leandro would give her another chance. A part of her feared that he would do the same thing she had done to him – make her believe that he was going to give her the ring only to do something else.

  It was only when she heard the sound of the whistle – of the flag-waver shouting the countdown and the cheers of the crowd – that she realized he had done something worse because Bobby had not expected it at all.

  He had simply left her standing there.

  The roar of motorcycle engines coming to life drowned the sound of the dying beat of her heart, and the wet trail of the tears on her cheeks disappeared in the ephemeral fog of engine smoke as the bikers raced away.

  He couldn’t have said it better.

  He was done with her, and he couldn’t get away from her fast enough.

  Chapter Fourteen

  As Leandro raced to the front, easily beating the competition, he couldn’t help glancing at his bike’s mirror to see what Bobby was doing.

  What he saw almost caused him to lose control, his heart squeezing at the sight of Bobby still standing there when all the other token girls had left. She was alone, and she was showing no signs of leaving.

  He forced himself to look back at the course, telling himself his life would be less of a mess with Bobby gone from his life. It wouldn’t exactly be happy, wouldn’t exactly be exciting, but at least it wouldn’t be filled with goddamn hurt, no more nights when he couldn’t sleep because his mind was filled with thoughts of Bobby, wondering if his greatest fear would happen.

  That Bobby would stop loving him for good.

  He tightened his hold on the grips of his bike, telling himself that although he was making his worst fear come true, it was meant to be.

  Leandro made a sharp turn to the left, staying at the innermost track. His bike leaned dangerously close to the ground, but he held his balance easily. When the curve ended, he slowly inched his bike back to an upright position.

  Leandro was already halfway done with the course when he found the time to look back.

  She was still there.

  With a curse, Leandro made a swift 180 degree turn so he could race back to the starting line. The closer he got to Bobby, the louder and faster his heartbeat became, and by the time he parked the bike a few feet away from Bobby, his heartbeat was so loud it had completely drowned out the sound of his motorcycle’s engine.

  The crunch of footsteps heading towards her took some time to penetrate the cloud of misery that had enveloped Bobby. Someone was going to ask her to walk away, Bobby thought, and her grand gesture of true and undying love would be lost.

  A shadow fell over her.

  “Bobby.”

  Her head shot up.

  “L-Leandro?” Was it really him?

  Slowly, he removed his helmet and it was indeed Leandro’s gorgeous face staring back at her. He loomed over her, so tall and powerful that she had to crane her neck to meet his eyes. “Where’s the ring, mégaira?”

  She began to cry. Dear God, today proved to be the most embarrassing day of her life. She must have cried an ocean of tears already, she – Bobby Granger, who had always prided herself for being a tough chick.

  Bobby raised her hand and showed Leandro his ring.

  “Were you waiting for me all this time, mégaira?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I love you.” She lifted her tear-stained gaze to his. “And because you love me.”

  Slowly, he took the ring from her hand. “You believe I love you then?”

  “So much,” she told him shakily. “I believe you love me so much that I can take another risk.”

  And before he knew what she was doing, she had gone down on both knees.

  Leandro swore. “Bobby—”

  “Will you marry me, Leandro Christopoulos?”

  Ah, dammit.

  His Bobby was just like no other. When she had wanted to prove to him she loved him, she had gone to his room naked even though she was a virgin. And now, to prove that she indeed trusted him and his love, she was now publicly proposing marriage to him.

  He bent down, slid the ring on her finger, and swooped her in his arms. “Yes, mégaira. I will marry you, and I’ll make sure we marry in a country where there�
�s no fucking divorce.” As she cried, he kissed her hard. “You won’t get away from me now.”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck tightly. “I love you so much.”

  He dropped a kiss on her forehead. “I love you so much, mégaira, but don’t think that I will so easily let you get away with the stunt you pulled a while ago.”

  ****

  Reporters jostled against each other as they battled for the best spot to enjoy a clear shot of Leandro Christopoulos and his future wife as they held a press conference to announce their engagement.

  Leandro spotted a familiar face. “Tyler Jenkins?”

  Tyler paled. Oh no. What had he done again? He remembered the last time Leandro had looked at him, with a look of such cold rage on his face that Tyler still had nightmares over it. “Y-yes, s-sir?”

  “You want to start the round of questions again?”

  The crowd grumbled in protest, most of them muttering their complaints about how unfair it was that Leandro was playing favorites.

  Leandro’s cold gaze slowly swept the crowd. The message in his gaze was clear. Complain and feel free to be escorted out of the room by my security.

  Everyone shut up.

  Leandro returned his attention to Tyler. “You were saying, Mr. Jenkins?”

  Tyler cleared his throat. “I’d first like to congratulate you and Ms. Granger on your engagement, sir.”

  Leandro looked at Bobby.

  The look made Bobby want to die. Payback was hell, she thought. She took a deep breath. And then she fluttered her lashes at Leandro before looking at the reporter, cooing, “I’m sooooo thrilled to be engaged to Leandro Christopoulos.”

  Leandro’s method of making her pay for pretending to be engaged to Sabastian and that little stunt this morning was deviously simple: she had to pretend to be his blushing, bubbly, and empty-headed fiancée – the exact opposite of her real self in other words.