Not because I didn’t care about him, but because I cared about him too much to hold him back or have him resent me down the road. One day, he would wake up and realize I was so much less than who he thought I was, and it would crush me. I was saving us both from inevitable heartbreak before we got too deep.
You’re already in too deep, a voice whispered before I pushed it aside.
“Yes.” I forced my response past stiff lips. “The holidays, the secret room, the private island…they were incredible experiences, and I don’t regret them. But they’re not sustainable. They were—” The sentence broke, flooded with tears. “They were never meant to be forever.”
Something hot and wet slipped down my cheek, but I didn’t bother brushing it off. My eyes were too full, my chest too tight. I couldn’t breathe fast or deep enough, and I was certain I was going to die here, at this table, with my soul empty and my heart in pieces.
A muscle jerked in Kai’s cheek, his first visible reaction since I broached the subject. “Don’t do this, Isabella.”
Steel hands crushed my lungs at the raw, aching sound of name.
“You’re better off with someone like Clarissa,” I continued, hating myself more with each passing second. My voice was so thick and watery it sounded unrecognizable to my own ears. “She’s what you need. Not me.”
Another tear dripped off my chin and into my lap. Then another, and another, until there were too many to account and they blended into one ceaseless, unending river of grief.
“Stop.” Kai’s fingers curled into white-knuckled fists. “If I wanted someone like Clarissa, I would be with Clarissa, but I’m not. I want you. Your laugh, your sarcasm, your inappropriate jokes and strange love for dinosaur erotica…”
A tiny laugh bloomed in the desert of my grief. Only Kai could make me laugh at a time like this. To think I once said he was boring.
His fleeting smile matched mine before it slipped. “We’re so close, Isa. Valhalla, the National Star, the CEO vote…there’s nothing stopping us from being together. Don’t give up on us. Not now.
Not like this.”
My brief moment of lightness died.
The pain in his voice matched the one consuming me. It was worse than the times I broke my arm or accidentally sliced my hand because it wasn’t physical. It was emotional, and it stole so deep into my soul that I was sure I could never dig it out.
Gut-wrenching, soul-stealing, breath-defying pain.
I wanted to believe Kai. I wanted to sink into his confidence and let it carry me away because I did understand the irony of breaking up when the things that’d kept us apart were no longer applicable.
But this wasn’t about external obstacles. It was about who were as people, and we were fundamentally incompatible.
An invisible band cinched around my torso, crushing my chest.
He was successful and driven; I was flaky and unreliable.
He achieved every goal he set his mind to; I couldn’t keep a job for more than a year and change.
Our lives had intertwined for a brief, glorious moment, but we were ultimately on different paths.
Eventually, we would stray too far apart to stay together without one or both of us breaking.
I hugged my arms around my waist, trying to hold myself together when I was slowly shattering to pieces. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
My love.
I’m sorry.
Two pairs of words. Two settings. Both devastating in entirely different ways.
I felt more than I heard the latter’s impact on Kai. A shock-wave rippled through the air and outlined his face with bright, blazing agony. It was gut-wrenching in its silence and all-consuming in its potency, its effects clearly etched in the ragged rise of his chest and the glossy brightness of his eyes.
He reached for me, but I hugged myself tighter and shook my head. “Don’t make this any harder than it has to be.” Tears scalded my skin. “Please, Kai. Please just leave.”
My sobs broke free. Waves of pain unfurled inside me, slamming against my defenses and dragging me beneath their terrible, ferocious fury until I drowned in anguish.
Kai wasn’t the type to stay when he wasn’t wanted. He was too proud, too well bred.
Nevertheless, he lingered, his anguish a tangible mirror of my own, before he finally left and the air grew cold.
I didn’t hear the door shut. I didn’t feel the hard wood bruising my skin when I sank to the floor or hear the hiccupping gasps of my breaths.
The only thing that existed in Kai’s absence was nothing.
CHAPTER 38
Kai
The CEO transition ceremony took place at a hotel ballroom in London. Every Young Corporation executive was in attendance along with a smattering of local employees and VIP “friends of the company.”
It was the perfect occasion for a takedown, but I couldn’t savor the moment as much as I would’ve liked.
Please just leave.
The memory of Isabella’s anguished voice and face ate at me like acid. I hadn’t talked to her since I left her apartment last week, but she haunted me every second of every day.
Everything reminded me of her—books, alcohol, even the color purple. It was particularly unbearable tonight, when the company’s purple peacock logo adorned everything from the podium to the gift bags at every seat.
I set my jaw and focused on the stage, trying to ignore the agonizing cramp in my chest.
The evening had progressed smoothly so far. Dinner went off without a hitch, and my mother was finishing her speech with remarkable composure. If Leonora Young was upset about ceding control of her family’s company to an outsider, one couldn’t tell by looking at her. Her voice sounded genuinely sincere as she thanked the board and employees for their support during her tenure and introduced Russell onstage.
I knew the truth. Inside, she was incandescent with rage.
My ears were still bleeding from our post-vote call. She didn’t know about Russell’s manipulations and had blamed my loss on Isabella.
I told you she was a distraction…If you had listened to me, you would’ve never lost…Our family name will never recover…
We hadn’t spoken since.
The room greeted her speech with thunderous applause. My mother shook hands with Russell, her face a canvas of carefully constructed professionalism, before walking back to her table.
My hand closed around the stem of my wineglass as Russell took the podium after her to a more muted reception.
Average height, average build, average brown hair and brown eyes. He was the type of person who blended into the background so seamlessly he practically disappeared. I’d dismissed him as a non-threat, but I finally saw his unmemorable facade for what it was: a masterful disguise, honed and perfected over years of operating under the radar.
My skin prickled.
Russell was the one talking, but all eyes were on me, waiting for a reaction I’d never give.
If people wanted a show, they’d get one soon enough. Just not from me.
Across the table, Vivian’s concern—over Isabella, the CEO vote, or both—burned a hole in my cheek. The Russo Group accounted for over fifty percent of our company’s print advertising, so Dante received invites to every important function. He normally declined, but he’d showed up tonight for “the entertainment,” as he called it.