Chapter 25
Laurel
Laurel,
I don’t know if I’ll send this.
Maybe I’m writing it because Wilder told me to, and for once in his life, the little bastard may have been right. Maybe I’m writing it because there are things I should have said to you before the world had to hear pieces of them first.
Maybe I’m writing it because I miss you so badly I don’t know what to do with my hands.
I’ve started this letter six times. Every version begins with I’m sorry. None of them feel like enough.
I am sorry, Laurel.
Not in the easy way. Not in the way men say it when they want the words to become a shortcut to forgiveness. Not in the way I used to say it when I was trying to smooth over something I had no intention of truly facing.
I’m sorry in the way that sits in the bones.
I should have ended my marriage before I ever touched you.
I should have been honest with Jenna before there was anyone else.
I should have been honest with myself before I let wanting you become the only honest thing about me.
You deserved better than stolen rooms, locked doors, and excuses dressed up as business trips. You deserved a man who came to you clean. A man who could stand beside you in daylight without making you carry the weight of his unfinished life.
I was not that man.
I wanted you, and I let that wanting become bigger than what was right.
Then I fell in love with you, and somehow that made me both better and worse.
Better because loving you made me want to tell the truth. Worse because by the time I admitted the truth, you were already standing inside the wreckage with me.
I hate that.
I hate that your name was dragged into my failures.
I hate that strangers decided they had the right to judge you, insult you, threaten you, and reduce you to the worst thing they thought they knew about you.
I hate that you had to move because your home no longer felt safe.
I hate that you had to sit in a lawyer’s office while the internet learned your name.
I hate that I couldn’t come to you. I hate that staying away was the responsible thing.
I have never hated responsibility more.
But I stayed away because you asked for distance.
Because your attorney was right.
Because Owen was right.
Because for once, loving you could not mean reaching for you just because I was in pain.
That’s been the hardest lesson of my life and I’m learning it late.
I know that.
I am trying to learn it anyway.
The divorce is moving forward. Jenna will be taken care of.
Fairly. Privately. Without revenge. She hurt me too; in ways I did not know until recently.
I found out she had someone else years ago.
I expected to feel rage. I didn’t. That was how I knew, maybe more clearly than anything else, that our marriage had been over for a long time.
That doesn’t excuse what I did. Her betrayal does not erase mine.
Pain is not a ledger, and I am not interested in balancing accounts with cruelty.
I didn’t expose her affair and I won’t. I know what it feels like to have private shame made public, and I will not become the kind of man who uses pain as a weapon simply because someone else aimed first.
The settlement is fair. She wanted blood.
Half the company. More money than I could calculate without laughing or breaking something.
My attorney did his job. Hers did hers. Eventually, everyone remembered that a marriage ending does not need to become a public execution.
SINsual Adult Toys is still mine. The house is no longer ours. I suppose it hasn’t been for years.
I moved into an apartment near the office. It is expensive, sterile, and completely without personality. Wilder says it looks like a place where feelings go to be audited. He’s not wrong.
I sleep badly there when I sleep at all.
I keep thinking about your apartment. Not the old one. The one I don’t know. The one you had to find because of me. I think about whether you feel safe there. Whether you have enough locks. Whether you sleep with the window open. Whether you’re eating.
I wonder if you hate me.
Some days, I think you should. Then I hate myself for hoping you don’t.
I heard about Sex Activity Pro. I want to say I hope you don’t take it. That would be honest.
It would also be selfish.
So here’s the better truth, the one I am trying to be strong enough to give you:
You should do what is right for you. Not for me. Not for SINsual Adult Toys. Not because staying proves anything. Not because leaving proves anything.
You earned that offer. Every part of it. Your brilliance earned it. Your work earned it. Your vision earned it.
I’ve watched rooms full of powerful people stop and listen when you speak.
I’ve watched you take an idea and shape it into something bold, beautiful, and commercially dangerous in the best possible way.
I’ve watched you defend your designs with clarity, humor, and a complete inability to tolerate stupidity.
You are extraordinary.
You were extraordinary before I touched you.
You will be extraordinary whether you stay or go.
I need you to know that.
I need you to know I don’t think I made you. Or discovered you. And I don’t think loving you gives me any claim over your future.
If Sex Activity Pro is the right move, take it. If staying at SINsual is the right move, stay. If neither feels safe yet, take time.
I won’t interfere.
I won’t pressure you.
I won’t ask Tate for information about you like a starving man begging at a locked door. At least, I’ll try not to. I’m still human.
I love you.
There it is.
The thing I should have told you when you were awake and in front of me. The thing I shouldn’t have sent through Opal on the worst day of your life.
I love you, Laurel Cross.
I love your mind first, though your body would call me a liar for pretending it’s not also on the list. I love the way you see things other people miss.
I love your terrible jokes. I love your stubbornness, even when it is pointed directly at me.
I love that you are brave and frightened at the same time.
I love that you have survived more than you should have had to and still somehow know how to be kind.
I love the way you fill a room without asking permission.
I love the way you look at me when I am being arrogant, like you are mentally deciding which heavy object would be most satisfying to throw.
I love that you make me want to be honest.
That may be the most terrifying part.
I spent most of my life confusing control with safety.
My father controlled everything he touched until he destroyed it.
I swore I would never become him, and then I spent decades building a life where no one could reach the parts of me I was afraid of.
Jenna got the closed doors. My brothers got the temper.
The company got the obsession. You got the worst timing imaginable.
And somehow, you still saw me.
I don’t know if I deserve that. I know I don’t deserve you. But I’m trying very hard to become a man who does not insult what you gave me by staying exactly who I was.
If you decide this cost too much, I’ll understand.
I need you to know that.
If you decide you can’t love me after everything, I won’t blame you.
If you decide that peace matters more than me, I won’t argue.
If you decide the best thing I can do for you is stay away, I’ll hate every second of it.
But I’ll do it.
Because loving you cannot mean taking more from you when I’ve taken enough.
But if there is any part of you that still wants this—wants me—then I will wait until you are ready to tell me what that means. What you want…
I’m done making decisions in the dark and asking you to live with the consequences.
I want to stand in daylight with you. I want to take you to dinner without a lie attached to it.
I want to hold your hand where people can see.
I want to hear you laugh in a room that doesn’t require a locked door.
I want mornings that don’t end with me leaving before I hurt someone.
I want ordinary things with you, which may be the most impossible confession of all.
I don’t know if we get that or if too much has happened. I don’t know if love can survive when it began with so much damage around it.
But I know this:
I love you.
I’m sorry.
I’m trying.
And whether you come back to me or not, I will spend the rest of my life grateful that, for a little while, you made me feel like a man worth saving.
Yours if you want me,
Sin