5. Zola #3
"I told him Stellan can have the title." He keeps talking, words coming faster like he needs to get them all out.
"We'll run things together anyway. The business doesn't need me to be officially in charge.
My brother's smart enough, strategic enough.
He'll handle the politics and I'll handle—" He gestures vaguely.
"Whatever needs handling. It changes nothing between us. "
But it changes everything. I can hear it in what he's not saying—all the years of preparation, the grooming, the expectation that he'd step into his uncle's role. And now he's willing to give it up. For me. Because of me.
"You'd give up everything you've been working toward." My throat constricts. "Your entire future."
"My future is with you." He says it like it's simple, like there's no weight to that decision. "Everything else is just details."
I should feel relieved. Grateful. This man is choosing me over power, over legacy, over everything he's been building since before we met. Instead, I feel like I'm drowning. Like the walls are closing in and I can't breathe properly.
Because this is what I was afraid of. This is exactly what I've spent three years trying to avoid—becoming someone's burden, someone's sacrifice, the reason they give up their dreams. I watched my mother waste away asking for nothing, accepting nothing, terrified of being dependent.
And now I'm the person Declan's restructuring his entire life around.
I'm costing him everything.
"Zola." His hand finds my chin, tilting my face up. "I can see what you're thinking and you need to stop."
"You don't know what I'm thinking."
"You're thinking this is your fault somehow. That you're taking something from me." His thumb strokes along my jaw. "But you're not. This is my choice. My decision. Nobody's making me do anything."
"But your uncle—"
"Can accept it or not. I don't care." There's steel in his voice now, the same edge I've heard him use with people who cross him. "I'm not marrying some stranger for business purposes. I'm not giving you up because it would be convenient for succession planning. That's not happening."
I want to argue. Want to tell him he's being stupid, that he should take what's his, that I'm not worth this. But the words stick in my throat because part of me—the selfish, desperate part—wants exactly what he's offering. Wants him to choose me. Wants to believe I matter more than anything else.
"What if you regret it?" The question comes out small. "What if ten years from now you look back and wish you'd made a different choice?"
"I won't." No hesitation. "The only thing I'd regret is losing you."
He pulls me closer, careful of my incision, until I'm tucked against his chest with his chin resting on top of my head. His heart beats steady under my ear, solid and certain in ways I've never been.
"It's all going to be okay, love." His voice rumbles through me. "I promise. The school situation, the bills, all of it—we'll figure it out. Together. You're not doing this alone."
I nod against his chest because I don't trust my voice.
Don't trust myself not to start crying again or saying something I can't take back.
He's offering me everything and it terrifies me because everything can be lost. I learned that when Mom died.
Learned that depending on someone, needing them, makes their absence unbearable.
But I don't say any of that. Don't voice the fear that's coiling in my stomach, the certainty that I'm going to cost him more than he realizes.
Instead, I let him hold me in the dark bedroom with the soft sheets and the careful touches.
Let him whisper promises about futures I can't quite picture anymore.
His fingers trace slow patterns on my back, soothing and possessive at once. "We're going to be fine," he murmurs. "I've got you. I'll always have you."
The words should comfort me. Maybe they do, somewhere underneath the exhaustion and medication and grief.
But mostly they make me aware of how much I'm taking from him—his future, his certainty, his carefully laid plans.
All of it disrupted because I got hit by a car and now I'm broken in ways that matter.
I close my eyes and try to match my breathing to his, try to find some measure of peace in the steady rhythm. His arms stay locked around me like he's afraid I'll disappear if he lets go. Like I'm the precious thing worth protecting.
And maybe that should be enough. Maybe I should just accept what he's offering and stop questioning it. But I can't shake the feeling that I'm drowning us both—that eventually the weight of all these sacrifices will pull us under.
"I love you," I whisper against his chest. Because that much is true, even if everything else is complicated.
"I love you too." His lips press to my hair. "More than anything."
We lie there in the darkness, wrapped around each other, both of us carrying fears we're not voicing.
Outside, the city hums with its usual nighttime symphony—distant sirens, car horns, the occasional shout.
Normal sounds from a normal world where people aren't having conversations about lost futures and strategic marriages.
But we're not normal. We never have been. And now we're both pretending that everything's going to work out when neither of us actually believes it.