Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 77295 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77295 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
He made it to the top of the stairs and then looked at me, like he hadn’t anticipated my presence. His eyes shifted back and forth between mine, and he stared me down.
It was not a warm greeting. There was no kiss. No hug. Nothing. It was as if he’d forgotten I lived there.
“Everything okay?” I asked, even though I knew nothing was okay.
“Air traffic control delayed my flight. I was stuck on the tarmac for three hours.” He walked past me and headed to the bedroom.
“Why don’t I believe you?”
He kept walking, acting like he didn’t hear me when I knew full well that he did.
Shit.
He took a shower then pulled on a pair of sweatpants. His chest was bare, a drop or two of water still on his skin. His hair was still a little damp even though he scrubbed it with the towel he tossed on the floor.
I sat on the couch in the living room, waiting for him to acknowledge me.
He moved to the bedside and grabbed his phone off the nightstand. He sat up in bed, going over emails and texts.
I continued to wait.
He couldn’t ignore me forever, right?
Nope, that seemed to be exactly what he was doing.
“Are we going to talk or what?” I didn’t mean to yell, but it came out as quite the outburst.
His eyes flicked up from his phone.
We stared at each other.
“Let’s talk in the morning.”
“In the morning?” I asked incredulously. “You expect me to sleep tonight with this hanging over my head?”
“I’m tired—”
“I don’t give a fuck if you’re tired. You’ve been weird since before you left, and we’re going to talk about it. So get your ass over here.”
His eyebrows slowly rose up his face.
“You heard me.” I slammed my hand onto the cushion beside me.
After a long stare, he obeyed. He took the seat across from me, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. He looked at the coffee table between us for a while before he lifted his gaze and met my look.
“Can we just forget what I said? It just slipped out.”
His eyes narrowed.
“It’s not like you didn’t already know I felt that way. Literally nothing has changed.”
“Everything has changed, Camille.”
Camille. Slap in the face. “I don’t expect you to say it back. I don’t expect anything from you at all. I’m happy with the way things are.” I wanted things to change someday, but I wasn’t in a hurry right this second. He already moved me into his bedroom, and that gesture was plenty.
His angry look told me that wasn’t enough. “This isn’t working.”
“What? You want me to go back to my old bedroom?” All the progress we’d made just gone?
He lowered his head and looked at the table for a while. “This relationship isn’t working.”
It was like a baseball bat to the heart. “What…?”
After a sigh, he lifted his gaze and looked at me again. “This is why I wanted to talk in the morning—”
“Because dumping someone in daylight is easier?” I asked incredulously.
“Camille—”
“You got pissed off at me when I thought you were throwing me out for no reason, and not a month later, that’s exactly what you’re doing.”
“I’m not throwing you out—”
“You’re dumping me because I love you. But you knew I loved you when you showed off those letters to Grave. Didn’t seem to bother you then, asshole.”
He gave another sigh.
“This makes no sense, Cauldron. You’re this much of a coward?”
The look he gave me turned sinister. “On the contrary.”
“Really? You’ve been a major asshole since I said those words at dinner. They’re just words, Cauldron. They scare you that bad?”
Now he raised his voice. “They scare me because the past is becoming the present, and soon the present will be the future.”
What? “I’m sorry?”
“My mother loved my father, and look where she ended up.”
I still wasn’t following.
“I’ve got a lot of enemies. I’ve got even more because Grave keeps getting into more shit. The solution is to walk away and end this way of life, but I’m not willing to do that. I’m not willing to give up my empire for anyone—even you.”
I was so shocked that I couldn’t form words on my tongue.
“I’m doing what my father should have done—because I’m not a coward.”
“Cauldron, I know the risks—”
“I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to you.”
“Then don’t let anything happen to me. You don’t need the diamond business. You already have more money than you could ever spend—”
“And do what with my life?” he countered. “I’m too young to sit around and do nothing.”
“You wouldn’t do nothing. You’d have me. We could have a family—”
“No.”
“Cauldron—”
“I’m not interested in cleaning up shit all day and staying up all night.”
“Having a family is a lot more than that—”
“I said no.” His eyes were like concrete, not letting anything in or out. “If you stay with me, something’s going to happen. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not this year. But eventually. I’m not willing to stop my criminal enterprise for you, which means I’m not good enough for you. I can’t give you all the things you want. We’ve just been playing house up until this point. It was never going to work, but we lied to ourselves and pretended it would. We pretended because of this heat between us, but that’s all it is—heat.”