Chapter 42
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Isla
The knock is quiet, but the presence behind it is not. It’s weight. It’s intent. It’s him.
My heart thumps wildly.
After all this time, I wasn’t expecting him.
Maybe I should have been, but foolishly I wasn’t.
I know I don’t matter to him, that he doesn’t love me.
But still, I’m his wife. He married me to help save his tarnished reputation, and that reason is still valid, despite what a shit my father has turned out to be.
Dorian Vale is running for Senate, and he will still have expectations of the woman he married.
Yesterday, finally, I managed a few hours of sleep. At some point, exhaustion cures insomnia, I suppose. And the truth is, I’m not sure I have any more tears to shed.
I’ve taken my love for Dorian and Brennan and shoved it deep inside, locking it away where I hope against hope that it can’t hurt me anymore.
At the second knock, I twist the dish towel in my hands .
My apartment is too clean, too staged, like I can scrub my brain into order. The truth is, I haven’t been able to straighten out my thoughts since Brennan stopped by.
He made me remember everything that was good about what we shared, and the realities I can’t deny… The way his tone warms when he says my name. The way his hands know how to find the small of my back like they were made for it.
His I love you has been looping in my head ever since, stubborn as a song I can’t shake.
I haven’t been sleeping, haven’t been able to think about anyone but them.
And now Dorian’s in the hallway, and my world suddenly narrows to the door and the distance between my heartbeat and my throat.
I don’t move, don’t respond.
There’s a third knock. The exact same cadence. Controlled. I wait for the fourth, because of course there will be one—he’s a metronome who learned patience as a weapon.
It doesn’t come.
Is he giving me a choice?
The dish towel slides from my hand and flutters to the counter, a white flag I’m not offering. I stand there and breathe like I’ve forgotten how.
My body remembers him before my mind allows the thought. Heat builds where there’s only air. My palms tingle. I press them flat to the cool of the counter and try to drag myself back into my own skin.
Don’t respond, Isla.
I look around like the room can decide for me. Plant. Sofa. The cup I didn’t drink from. The shadow that my lamp casts against the wall. The yoga mat that’s in the corner like a scroll of good intentions .
Everything in me goes loud and small at once. I was fine earlier.
Before Brennan showed up, I was fine. Well, not fine-fine, but functional.
But now Dorian’s arrival has tilted the earth completely off kilter, and suddenly there’s no oxygen left in the apartment that I’ve finally settled into.
My phone pulses on the counter. I don’t check it. I already know who it would be if I did. There’s a second kind of knowing, the kind that sits under my sternum and whispers his name.
I take one step toward the door. Stop.
Don’t do it.
He doesn’t get to walk in and unmake me.
Then I take another step, my body being the ultimate traitor.
My feet are bare against the cheap flooring.
Then I reach the entryway, and my hands shake in a way I despise. I flatten my palm against the door, like I can feel him through it, like some part of him will seep into me if I give it a surface.
With a deep sigh, I close my eyes.
I see him anyway. The precise mouth I have memorized and refused to acknowledge. The way he watches, his attention more like ownership. The way he didn’t let himself love me because if he did it would undo him—and undoing is not what men like him survive.
The knob is cool and indifferent beneath my hand. Turn it or don’t.
I can’t.
I shouldn’t let him know I’m here. But who am I trying to fool? He knows I’m inside. My car is in the parking lot, and his minions tell him everything. “Why are you here?” The words emerge against my best intentions .
“Because I fucked up.” Then there’s a moment of silence. “Hard. You deserve better than the way I treated you.”
I’m trembling too hard to respond.
“There are truths that you deserve to hear. I respect the fact that I don’t deserve even five minutes of your time. But I’m here to…” His voice cracks. “To beg for the opportunity.”
My stomach drops at the pain in his words.
He could have said a thousand different things, but he chose the one most emotionally laden. Beg. Something Dorian Vale doesn’t do.
The doorknob warms beneath my touch.
Don’t do it.
“What truth?” My voice is thinner than I want. I clear my throat and try again. “What truth, Dorian?”
I picture him sliding a hand into his pocket. I hate that I know him well enough to predict it.
Closing my eyes, I turn the knob just enough to ease the door open to the length of the security chain.
He’s standing there, close, the chain drawing a silver line that protects me from him.
As always, he’s in a black suit. But today his jacket is open, and he’s not wearing a tie.
His eyes are steady but not guarded—like he came here without his armor, and it’s costing him.
The afternoon light shows the sharp angles of his jaw. He smells like clean soap and dark heat, the private scent that lives in the back of my throat. My body betrays me again. My shoulders loosen, my pulse stutters, skin goes hot where there’s only air. I ache, stupidly, for his touch.
Calypso slides between my ankles with a happy purr. And when he crouches—damn him—she pushes her head into his knuckles through the gap.
With a soft “Hello, Calypso,” he rubs a spot on the top of her head .
This man… He’s terrible. Awful. Tender.
A belated self-preservation instinct kicks in and I try to move Calypso aside so I can close the door.
“I should’ve told you the truth about Lena,” he says quickly, as if realizing he only has seconds left. “And our relationship. All of it. You deserved that, and I kept it from you.”
“So why did you?”
“Because…” He plows a hand into his hair, tousling it. “I wanted to protect you.”
“I’m tired of your version of protection.” I remember the confusion and hurt when the reporter confronted me. “It wasn’t your decision to make.”
“You’re right.”
The admission drills another hole in my resistance.
His voice dips, lower, rawer. “And I’m sorry.”
Another word I never expected to hear from him. My knees threaten to buckle, and I grab hold of the doorframe for support.
“Tell me that you’ll hear me out, little one.”
I’m coming undone, beginning to spiral. Resolutely I square my shoulders. “Not if you call me that.”
He clears his throat. “Five minutes, Isla. And then I’ll walk away unless you ask me to stay.”
“That will never happen.”
“I accept that.”
I tighten my fingers on the chain. Five minutes isn’t mercy; it’s madness.
My mind screams, Don’t do this. But my body isn’t listening. I slide the chain free and take a step back. Scooping up Calypso on his way, he enters quickly, as if afraid I’ll change my mind. Which I would if my brain was functioning properly.
He seals the door closed and throws the lock, sealing us off from the rest of the world.
Only then do I realize he’s alone. “Where’s Brennan?”
There’s the smallest pause, like he wasn’t expecting the question. “This is mine to handle. I fucked it up.”
So Brennan really had meant he was done with Dorian. Forever?
But this means Dorian will have no buffer. No one to translate his silences or soften his edges. It’s us, only us, and the pain I’ve experienced.
“May I sit?”
“No.” I shake my head. “You won’t be here that long.” I cross to the far end of the room and perch on the arm of the chair, putting as much space between us as possible.
Calypso abandons the rug, springs onto the cushion, then into my lap with a satisfied grunt. She kneads once, twice, and collapses against me, a warm, vibrating weight. “Your time is ticking.”
His jaw works once, and he doesn’t look away. “Lena was…a good person.” The words sound inadequate in his mouth. “Maybe a little naive. She was too young and innocent to have learned how ugly men can be. And I failed her.”
He pauses, swallowing deeply.
I should offer water or something else to drink, but I can’t. Knowing the time is counting down is the only thing helping me to survive this.
“I saw her get shot. Trying to get away, she ran back outside. Into the alley. And…” He looks off into the far distance. Then back to me. “I was useless.” His voice is hoarse. “God help me. I couldn’t make my body move.”
He glances away.
When he looks back, his face is stark with unguarded pain and recrimination. “When I came out of the trance, I ran to her, stayed with her until they took her body. And I hated myself for not being able to do something—anything. For not getting to her before she collapsed.”
“Dorian…”
“I’ll never forgive myself for not being the last person she ever saw.”
His words hook into a tender part of myself, a part I didn’t even know was exposed. My breath goes shallow, my ribs tightening like they’re trying to keep it in, but it’s already in my throat, pressing for a way out.
I don’t want to ache for a man who’s hurt me this much. And yet—God help me—I do. “You loved her.” With a shrug, I admit, “I saw the picture.”
“Yes.” His admission is raw and jagged. “With everything I had to offer.”
The bluntness of his admission knocks the strength out of me. Calypso shifts in my lap, kneading once before curling up, purring as if this moment isn’t unmaking me.
My ears are ringing so loud it’s like they’re trying to drown him out, but the words keep threading back in. And his face—paler now, drawn tight around the edges—makes me wonder if telling me this has stripped something out of him.
“It’s my fault she died.”
The way he says it—it isn’t dramatics. It’s a sentence he’s carved into himself so deep I can hear the echo.
I scowl. “How?”
“My lifestyle. The danger.”
He swallows hard, his gaze locked on mine, and I feel it—the moment he decides to hand me the one thing he’s never given anyone else.
“I vowed never to fall in love again.”
My pulse stutters, a sharp, traitorous hitch, but he’s still talking, still laying brick after brick on the wall he thinks will keep him safe .
“And when I married you,” he goes on quietly, “I swore I’d do anything, everything to protect my new, innocent, beautiful wife.”
There’s reverence in his tone, warped into something that stings. My skin goes hot, my chest aching, because I can hear what he’s not saying. That I’m some sacred thing he has to shelter.
“I knew who you were before I walked down the aisle.” Because of my emotion, my voice comes out softer than I intend. “Maybe not the whole extent of it, but I was under no illusions. That’s why my sister ran.”
“I won’t risk you.”
“Again, not your decision.”
His jaw flexes, but he doesn’t argue. And under the heat of my defiance is this awful hollow space—because now I know. He loved Lena with every part of him. And he vowed never again to risk his heart. So where does that leave me?
The silence between us gets heavy, pressing down like the air before a storm.
Finally I find the courage to shatter the tension. “I guess we have nothing more to say.”
Raw emotion flickers across his face—quick, sharp, gone—but it feels like I just slammed a door on something fragile.
He glances at his watch, and the movement is all precision, but his pulse is jumping in his throat.
“I have thirty seconds left.” And then his gaze comes back to me, and I feel it—that click inside him, the one that says he’s about to throw something dangerous on the table.
For a split moment I think he’ll hold the line and walk out. But then?—
“And then there’s you. With your fire, your determination from the very first moment when I realized your father’s deception.” He looks at me, and I see the intensity in his eyes.
I know what he’s thinking about—that scene right after we said I do. The memory makes me blush .
“And I fell in love with you.”
“You…?” The air vanishes from my room, leaving the sound of his words vibrating in the space between us.
“I love you, Isla.”
For a heartbeat I can’t even be sure I heard him right. My pulse is loud in my ears, drowning out everything except the echo: I love you .
Until Brennan, no man had ever told me that, not even my father.
But this… This is different. This is Dorian Vale, who swore he’d never give those words to anyone again, handing them to me like they’re the most dangerous weapon in his arsenal.
I want to grab hold of the words and press them into my skin until they’re part of me. “You…?” My throat won’t cooperate, so I can’t finish the sentence on the first try. “You love me?”
“I do.” He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t glance away. “I tried not to. God, Isla, I fought hard. Harder than I’ve ever fought anything. But I lost the battle. I love you so damn much that it hurts. Without you, I can’t breathe. I can’t think…” He lifts a hand, then drops it back at his side.
The ache inside me is so sharp it almost feels like heat. Calypso shifts in my lap, head butting under my chin, and I clutch her a little too tightly, like she’s the only anchor I have.
My mind flickers to Brennan—his voice, his steadiness—and then back to Dorian, standing here stripped bare in a way I didn’t think he was capable of.
“Don’t,” I say, the word shaky and low. “Don’t say that to me unless you mean it.”
He looks at me, unflinchingly, emotion in his eyes. “Isla, I’ve never meant anything more.”
The truth—or the possibility of it—makes my hands tremble. I’ve wanted this for so long, wanted to be loved and chosen without condition, without an agenda. And now that it’s here, I don’t know whether to run from it or fall into it.
“You’re my everything.”
Then—without warning—he takes a step back. Another. The distance feels like a tear in the air between us. He turns toward the door, slow, deliberate, like he’s leaving this choice in my hands.
When his fingers close over the doorknob, my own truth hits me. I’m terrified. And I don’t know that I have the courage I need.
“Dorian.”