“I miss you,” he said simply.
“I miss you, too. So much. I can’t wait until I can fly back and see you and Nala again.”
“I don’t think I can wait that long.”
“Oh.” Mairi was instantly worried. What exactly did her husband mean by that? Was he saying he was going to leave her if she didn’t come home right this minute? Was he saying—
“I’m saying…” Damen’s voice was rich with amusement. “You should stay up and wait for your daughter and me.”
Her eyes widened.
“We’ll be there in a few hours—”
“Yay! Oh my God, I’m so excited! I can’t….ah!”
Damen winced when he heard the sound of something…a lot of things…crashing to the floor.
“I’m okay!”
“Do I even want to know what happened, sweetheart?”
“I kinda…um…accidentally…bumped…” Mairi’s voice kept getting smaller. “Ming vases…might…pay…”
Classic Mairi, Damen thought, and he wouldn’t have her any other way.
Ioniko found himself running for his life. It wasn’t that he think he’d find her gone. It wasn’t that at all. He knew his Schuyler, knew exactly where he’d find her, and it was because he knew her that he also knew how much she’d be hurting, and goddammit, he would never hurt her again.
I’m sorry, koukla mou.
He knew so much now. Knew how he had been so fucking blind, so foolishly messed up by the past, that he had missed all the signs he should have seen miles away.
So fucking sorry.
He took the stairs to her apartment, unable to wait for the elevator, and he found her exactly where he had seen her in his mind: curled up in her couch, crying her heart out.
She looked up the moment the door crashed open, and the endless flow of tears became a silent rush of pain as she watched him come to her. Kneel before her. And take her trembling hands in his.
“The reason you were attracted to me…”
“Yes.”
Schuyler felt like collapsing under the devastating weight of the billionaire’s admission.
“I didn’t realize then, but yes. I saw you because there was something about you reminded me of her—” He saw her whiten, and he said fiercely, “But it’s not why I kept looking at you.” He tightened his hold on her hands. “I can’t change the way things started between us. I wish I could, I’d give everything to give you the perfect beginning you deserve…but I can’t. All I can do is make you see that the reason I fell in love with you—”
A sob escaped her. “You don’t love me—”
“Because I didn’t say anything last night?”
She stared at him, stricken.
“I didn’t know it then, but now…it’s all fucking clear. The way I hurt you last night by not saying anything. The way I didn’t know how I was still hurting you this morning…because I was no longer able to see your pain.” His voice became hollow. “I don’t even know where or how to start to make it up to you. I’m not sure if it’s even possible for me to ever deserve you. But all I know is that I can never let you go. Even if you keep pushing me away…I won’t ever let go.”
One of these days, he would tell her everything. The way she was so vastly different from Mairi, and how it was those differences, and not her similarities, that had made him fall in love with her and realize that things would never have worked out between him and Mairi.
One of these days, he would tell her of how her insistence on dating other men had unconsciously reminded him of the past – of how Mairi had once chosen another man over him – and why he had reacted with such irrational rage and jealousy. Because he had been terrified the past would repeat itself, terrified that she, too, would choose someone else over him. He had been terrified, and he hadn’t even known it.
One of these days, he would tell her all those things.
But for now, all he could do was say the words that had been hers, had always been hers, from the very start.
“I love you, Schuyler.”
And when she threw herself in his arms—
Ah, koukla mou.
Her soul had once again reached out to his, and this time it was her heart that whispered, and his heart that listened. Her heart telling him that even if the day he would tell her everything had yet to come…her heart already knew.
“I thought you’d never see me again,” Schuyler whispered brokenly.
“Not fucking possible, even if I were to go blind.”
“I wanted to run away.”
“I know.”
“But I didn’t.”
“I know that, too.”
She pulled away, asking unsteadily, “Did you really?”
“It was something Mairi would’ve done.” And the billionaire’s own voice was unsteady as well. “But not something my Schuyler would have. My Schuyler would rather slap me—”
SLAP!
It just happened, and a teary laugh escaped her when this didn’t even cause the billionaire to miss a beat as he went on talking.