“I couldn’t tell you about the baby because I was sure you would ask me if it was yours, and it would have crushed me further. Somehow, I got dressed and reached home. I told my parents through sobs how you found me.”
Damien caresses my belly while our eyes lock on each other, and I keep confessing. “The next few days, I felt worse and worse. I shivered, my body burned with fever, and I couldn’t eat a thing. I threw up constantly and drenched the sheets in sweat. I felt a constant pressure in the center of my chest. My parents thought my sickness had to do with the breakup, and even when they said it’s time to go see a doctor, I refused.
“Maybe I could have prevented the miscarriage. There are so many things I did wrong! The guilt, though, knowing I should at least have done some damage control . . . Instead, I waited until I collapsed with pain in my chest, and I had my first heart attack. They got my heart beating again, but I couldn’t ask about the baby since I was mostly unconscious.”
Damien shuts his eyes, a lone tear leaking from the corner. I crane my neck and kiss his eyelids. The pain reflected in his open eyes twists my insides.
“I woke up in a hospital bed in London, alone and frightened, with a doctor who said I needed surgery because my heart had been damaged when I had the attack. I thought surgery wouldn’t be good for the baby and informed him I was pregnant. He looked at me with so much sympathy. I hugged myself while he told me I lost the baby, but his priority was to repair my heart. It was then with his lips curled into a warm smile, everything in me switched.”
The sobs rock my body, Damien squeezes me to him and kisses my temple.
“When he left, I broke down into ugly crying. I screamed your name, and the next thing I knew, nothingness enveloped me. My therapist later explained I had developed an emotional numbness because of the trauma. With time and therapy, I would feel again. I went for a while but stopped.”
Damien strokes my back, and it helps to alleviate the pain caused by remembering. His arms and chest shield me. “The thing is, I enjoyed not feeling. I knew there was no way I could outlive the pain. In the span of a few weeks, I’d lost you, our baby, our love, a future, and had disappointed everyone. So, yes, I was selfish, but it’s how I stayed alive, Damien, and . . . with the help of Quinn.” His name alone spreads warmth through me. “In that hospital, torn between fighting and giving up, dying a little more each day, I found him. Not my mother’s cries or my father’s pleas to come back. Or my brother’s suffering while losing me, or the best doctors in the world trying to make me function again. Quinn Hope gave me a purpose and said something I will never forget, and it has become my mantra ever since. I realized not being alone and having someone’s support is ultimately the best help to keep crawling forward.
“He said as he pointed to my chest, ‘Bria, as long as your heart still beats inside your chest, the fight goes on. What will your legacy be? Will it be a memory of a woman who gave up or of someone who defeated the odds and rewrote her path? Nothing will bring back what you lost, but you can choose to leave something better behind. You’re a survivor, and no one is stronger than a survivor. I will be right here for you for the entire time this adventure lasts.’
“When everyone gave up on me, myself included, it was Quinn who got through the walls with his promise of making me someone worth remembering. In exchange, I promised him the only thing I could— a few more years.
“My psychotherapist warned me of the dangers of my condition. There is a risk one day I would feel everything at once, and it would be agonizing, but I didn’t care. I had nothing left to care about. Everything that has happened over the last years and especially tonight has somehow brought my walls crashing down. I feel too much, and I don’t know how to protect myself anymore. For the rest of the time I have left, I want to feel everything. The irony of it all is that I denied my feelings for years, and now, I embrace them with an open heart. Maybe it’s because I have nothing left to lose.”
I should have paid attention to how my words would affect him. If his grip on my body is any indicator, he doesn’t take my confession with ease.
DAMIEN
Breathe in and out, Damien, count to fucking one hundred thousand, loosen your damn grip, and be patient with her, I keep repeating in my head. Fuck, I have no time to walk on eggshells. And what do I do next? I unleash my frustration on her. To my excuse, I am desperate not to lose her.
“So, you have made your decision then, Bria? Is it easy for you to know you’ll die at twenty-five but could have prevented it? Aren’t you the embodiment of selfishness, then? Do you realize there are people out there who would sell their souls for one more day of life while you toss it away like it’s nothing? Is your life this worthless to you?”
She gasps, stomps off the bed, and paces, seething. Well, I am fuming. She talks about it so casually, and not like she is sealing a pact with death.
Bria halts, eyes piercing me, her hands wavering in the air. “Don’t be ludicrous. Why do you have to torment me like this? That decision was taken away from me seven years ago. Yes, it is easy to talk about it. It’s the easiest thing I’ve had to deal with in the last few years.
She puts her hands on her waist, bending slightly in my direction, eyes full of challenge. “And I have a real big problem with your sudden change of heart. Why? For four years, you have treated me like a disease you couldn’t eradicate. My departure sets you free. Join me rather than fight me, and we’ll get something both of us wanted . . . some kind of freedom.”
I can’t stand it anymore, hearing her spew all this nonsense. I know I made her feel this way, but the guilt has already been eating me alive, and she’s not helping. I pounce on her, her eyes round and wide. Does she detect the furious look in my eyes? I clench her upper arms.
“Listen to me, and listen to me good. You weren’t the only one in pain. I have suffered from your loss, too, every damn day. Afterward, I buried myself in work because those were the only moments when I would have a break from my pain and from missing you like crazy. In the meantime, I had to find a way to survive without you, and not even for one fucking day have I succeeded. I dreamed of you and hated myself even more for not being able to wrench you out of my heart. I fucked just to erase you from my body, and all I could see was your face if I opened my eyes.”
I cup her face in my palms and admit, “And do you know what I felt? Guilt and regret because it should have been only with you, but I didn’t know then what a complete idiot I was. Missing you tore me apart until I couldn’t take it anymore, and I had to protect myself too. I supported myself by not allowing my stupid heart to control me, and instead, I let anger and hatred rule me. With them, I built walls around myself.”
Her penetrating stare bores into me, but with every word, she softens in my hands. I call it progress.
“But nothing could have prepared me to see you again. When you returned to Zürich after three years with Alexander at your side, it wrecked me. I shut every emotion off. This is how I survived that day, and every other day I watched you with him. But it was the first time that severed me.”
I release her face as my palms curl into fists hanging at my sides at the misery brought by the memory, and I snarl, “How would you have acted if the roles were reversed? If you thought the love of your life had cheated on you and left with no apology as if it had never happened, and then returned with someone else? To me, it appeared you spat in my face. Rage and jealousy blinded me, so pardon me if I let cruelty command me and not my heart, which you stomped over every time we met.”
Not even to my ears do my words sound remotely like an apology. There is no wonder her nostrils flare as her jaw twitches, and she snarls, “I told you I never had a romantic involvement with Alex, and to be exact, with no other man.”
My hands cling to her upper arms as I crook my head. “You just let me believe it, then. Why?”
She raises her shoulders, chews on that tempting lip, and shrugs. “You had your hatred, and I had Alex as support. No
one ever asked me about our relationship, and I let anyone believe what they wished. It was irrelevant to me how we would be perceived. I didn’t care.”
She pokes her finger in my chest and continues, “But you protected yourself better than I ever did, Damien. You won the war you initiated. However, I won my freedom.”
Yes, right, Bria, keep on dreaming, baby, and I rant, “I had nothing left in me! I lived to get a reaction out of you. I couldn’t stand to be near you and not have you. I would have done everything to catch even a small glimpse of caring in your eyes. What did I win, huh? Your death sentence? Is this what you wish? To make me crazy because I am right there on the brink of it. One push more.”
I sink to my knees and raise my eyes to her. “Deliver it, then. Why are you waiting? I will say it to you until you’ll finally hear me and believe my words. I don’t have it in me to fight with you anymore. I am done. Are you that naïve to think I’ll survive realizing you are ill and dying because of me? Will my lunacy set you free? I’ll give you everything but not my approval to die.”
Bria drops to the floor, her lips quivering, her eyes filling with tears, and places her hands on my thighs. Forehead to forehead, heart to heart, she says, “Baby, I am ill . . . and I want what I’ve always wanted . . . for you to be happy. I am sorry I caused your pain, but let me go, my love. We can’t continue chained together like this. Look at us, at what has become of us.”
I shake my head, and my words ring with determination. “Ask me anything else, but not this because I can’t. It’s not in me to let you go. You’re asking for the impossible. If it is true that you value my happiness, then don’t leave me. I’ll never be able to find it again. I forgot long ago how it feels to be happy. Never could without you.”
“Damien, baby.” She lifts her hand to my face and brushes some strands of hair hanging on my brow. “You did it once. You can do it again.”
Those hazel eyes of hers shine with belief. They deflate me as I clutch her hands and admit, “Bria you are my life. I survived knowing you were living your life far from me, but you were still there. How can you ask me to survive your death? That would be impossible.”
She slumps on her bottom, staring at our linked hands resting on my lap. “Why did you have to complicate things? My plan was organized in detail. I didn’t even invite you to the party tonight as if I knew you would come and somehow alter something in me again. I’ve avoided you for one full year straight, and here you are, ruining me again. Just why?” Her head and shoulders sag, and she cries.
I wish to feel guilty, but I can’t. Bria has to live, and I dare everyone to fight me on that.
I lift her chin and caress her cheeks. Her fiery eyes find mine, burning me from the inside out.
“It’s too late, and you are wasting your time.” She snatches her fingers away and crosses her hands over her chest, nose stuck in the air.
I grit my teeth and state, “The second I take my final breath, it will be too late, then and only then. So, you decided. Good, then, you haven’t left me another solution. I’ll call the families and inform them of your decision. It is only fair they hear about it. Or do you expect me to lie to their faces about your so-called plane crash? Do you think I’ll be able to live with the fact I knew damn well it wasn’t some accident?”
I can feel her fright rise, hands trembling in her lap. I hit a soft spot. Her reaction shows she didn’t even think of the major difference my knowing would make to her well-structured plan. Something like victory surfaces. I cup her face, and only when our eyes lock do I add, “I am a winner, Bria. It’s in my blood, and now I had better win because our lives are at stake. I may not care too much about mine, but I care about yours.”
She squeezes my hands and pleads, “Don’t get our parents and siblings involved. You’ll survive.”
She doesn’t fool me with her sweet attitude. I plan to reveal it’s just an act.
“You doom me either way. Live with the guilt of your death and pretend I don’t know what happened or live with the guilt of telling the truth and facing the consequences.”
She cages my face in her hands and insists, “Accept my decision.”
I could smash my head against the wall. Urging some patience from the pits of myself, I counter, “Never, I will never accept losing you. I can’t let you have your way.” I pause, breathing in. “Out of nowhere, you’re throwing a party on your birthday. You told me once you would have a birthday party when there was something worth celebrating. Stupid of me not to realize death would be a good reason for celebrating.”
She digs her fingers in my chest, her eyes blazing. “You can’t stop me.”
I knew it, her sweet play, just a façade. It takes more than illness and numbness to extinguish the fire within her.
“Really, now? Challenging me won’t help your plan. If I have to chain you up, you won’t leave this room without me by your side.”
She jabs at my shoulders and screams, “You are so stubborn. How hard can it be for you to understand and accept I am ill? Do you want me to spell it out for you? My heart keeps getting weaker, and it’s not even fixable. You have no idea what you’re talking about. But I know, and I don’t want to put our families through the process. I’ve been in hospitals more often than I want. The patient slowly dies, and his family suffers with him as he struggles for a breath that won’t come anymore.”
Her reply roots me to the spot while I try to gauge her next reaction.
“It should be our decision, not just yours to make. I won’t lie for you.”
“After everything, this is what you can’t do? Lie for me and grant me some final peace?”
She huffs and scrambles to her knees, leaning toward me as she places her palm on my chest. It might have been a sweet gesture if it wasn’t for the fire glowing in her eyes when I don’t answer. “Goddammit, allow me to have this! I’ve never asked anything of you but to comply with this one thing.”
I glance up to the ceiling. Desperation crawls inside me, but I need to calm down and find the words to get through to her. As if in slow-motion, I dip my chin and answer, “If I knew it would be what you need, then I would give it to you . . . freely, may I point out? Without exception, but you don’t need this. You just want it like some spoiled brat who wants a Birkin bag for the heck of it.”
Her eyes go wide, incredulity transforming her features as she points to herself. “Are you comparing me wishing for peace with wanting a designer purse? This has to be the most stupid comparison in history.”
“Semantics, Bria. You’ll never be free of me. It’s our curse. It was also our blessing, and you won’t find peace, not now when I know about everything.”
She leaves me kneeling on the floor, hands outstretched as she rises to her feet. Bria turns her back to me as she places her hands on the window frame, her gaze miles away. My arms drop.
“Why won’t you understand and accept my decision?”
“Because I can’t and won’t. That simple. If I have to give you my own heart, you’ll die of old age surrounded by a loving family.”
A shiver rocks her as she shakes her head in a frenzy. Seeing her like this causes me physical pain. I dart toward her and wrap my hands around her slim waist. She sighs but softens around me. “I had my chance for a family. I wished you to be my husband and give you babies and grow old together. Even if by some miracle they repair my heart, and I am well again, what happens afterward? Because it seems you have all the answers.”
In my wanton ears, it sounds like a basis to start negotiations. It is my playground, and I am prolific in it as experience has taught me well. I bury my head in her silky hair, my lips curving into a small smile. My grip on her tightens at the prospect of a win.
“Whatever you choose and desire. You just have to point at it, and I’ll give it all to you, anything, just don’t leave me.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about. What I want ceased to exist seven years ago. Can you give me all of it back? If s
o, I swear you can take me to the nearest hospital, and we’ll face whatever comes.”
I shift her in my arms. Our chests brush, falling and rising as in perfect synchrony. Her breaths tickle my neck. My lips find her forehead, and I whisper against it, “I can’t go back in time. I would do anything to change and erase everything that happened that night and afterward, but I can’t. It kills me to know I can’t offer you the one thing you want the most. But you’ll find love again, and you’ll have another baby.”
The moment the last word leaves my mouth, she shoves me off and slaps me. My head reels. She rises to her tiptoes, shouting, “How dare you! Did it work for you? No, because then you wouldn’t be here trying to stop me. Why do you assume it will work for me? I loved you until I snapped, literally. My heart and mind split simultaneously, Damien, and something more broke in me, the remnants of our unborn baby. Glad to know I have your support when another man fucks me. Sound good enough to you? Maybe I’ll try it tonight just for kicks.”
Fury clouds my vision—so much for self-control and trying to be the better person here. In an instant, I cage her shoulders between my flexing arms. She is right; I can’t. I don’t deserve her, but I am too weak. She is my drug of preference, and I have denied my addiction for too long.
“Never say something like that. You are mine!”
She puts her hands on her waist and jerks her chin to me, her eyes glowing with an unspoken dare. “Oh, so now I’m yours. Who gave you the right, ha?” I cup her face, my eyes boring into hers.
“You just did, and now I’ll show you how it feels to be mine, baby, and only mine. You will take everything I have to give you. I may be yours, but you are also mine. And now, shut up and feel me.”
Shattered Love : A Billionaire Romance (Forever Us Book 1) Page 21