Chapter 35
The drive to the hotel was silent.
Alex didn't ask where we were going, and I didn't offer to tell him. He just drove, his hands steady on the wheel, his eyes fixed on the road, and I sat in the back with my phone in my pocket and her voice still echoing in my head.
I had blocked her number, but I couldn't block the memory of how she had sounded when she said it, small and broken and so fucking real.
Alex pulled up in front of the hotel and put the car in park. He didn't turn around, but I could see him watching me in the rearview mirror, his brow furrowed, his jaw tight.
"Do you want me to accompany you, boss?" he asked.
I gave him a look. The kind of look that usually made people stop asking questions.
"It's a meeting," he said, like he was trying to convince himself. "It would be better if I came along."
I opened the door and stepped out into the cool evening air. "I'm not here for a meeting," I said, and I didn't look back at him. "I'm going to spend the night with a woman."
I closed the door and walked toward the entrance without waiting for a response. I didn't need to see his face to know what it looked like. I could feel his disappointment from here, heavy and familiar, pressing against my back like a weight I couldn't shake.
I didn't turn around.
Behind me, the car sat still for a long moment. Then the engine hummed, and the wheels turned, and Alex drove away in a direction that wasn't the estate.
I didn't think about what that meant. I couldn't afford to.
The hotel lobby was quiet, all marble floors and low lighting, the kind of place that catered to people who didn't want to be seen.
I checked in without speaking, took the key card, and rode the elevator up to the suite I had booked.
The room was large, impersonal, the bed made with crisp white sheets that smelled like bleach and nothing else.
I stood in the middle of the room for a moment, looking at the bed, and thought about how different this was from her apartment.
Her small, warm apartment with the trinket curtains and the stuffed animals on the couch and the bed that always smelled like her.
I shook my head, pushed the thought away, and walked into the bathroom.
I needed to empty my mind. I needed to stop thinking about her.
I needed to sleep, really sleep, the kind of sleep that came from exhaustion instead of the restless half-consciousness that had been haunting me for days.
And I knew, from years of experience, that the only thing that could shut off my brain was sex.
It hadn't been like this before her. I had never needed it the way I needed it now.
But with Elera, it had been impossible to resist, every night, every morning, every time she looked at me with those dark eyes and said my name like it meant something.
My body had gotten used to her, addicted to her, and now that she was gone, the hunger was unbearable.
I pushed the thought away before it could take root.
I took a long shower, standing under the hot water until my skin turned red and the steam filled the room and I couldn't think about anything except the pressure of the water against my shoulders.
When I stepped out, the bathroom was thick with steam and the mirror was fogged beyond recognition.
I pulled on a robe and walked to the living area, where the papers from Drago were waiting for me on the coffee table.
I ordered a bottle of whiskey and left it untouched on the counter. I didn't want to drink. I just wanted something to do with my hands.
I sat down and started reading.
The small thugs had become bold. They had invaded our bases, destroyed shipments, attempted to ally with our enemies.
The reports were worse than I had expected, worse than Drago had warned me about, worse than I had allowed myself to acknowledge.
I had been distracted. I had been focused on her. And I had let this fester.
My brows creased as I flipped through the pages, my jaw tightening with every new detail.
I should have handled this weeks ago. I should have crushed them before they got this bold.
But I had been too busy playing house with a woman who thought I was an unemployed escort, and now I was paying for it.
I set the papers down and rubbed my eyes.
That was when my phone rang.
I picked it up without looking at the screen, my mind still on the reports, still on the thugs, still on the mess I had let spiral out of control.
"Who?" I said.
There was a pause. A breath. And then a voice I would have recognized anywhere.
"If I saw it's me, will you block this number too?"
My heart stopped.
Her voice was broken. Raw. Sore, like she had been crying for hours, days, like her throat was made of glass and every word was cutting her from the inside.
But there was something else underneath it, something detached, something hollow, something that sounded less like the woman I knew and more like a ghost wearing her voice.
"Before you do" she said, "hear me out."
I couldn't move. I couldn't speak. I just sat there with the phone pressed against my ear and her voice cutting through me like a blade.
She paused. I could hear her breathing, slow and deliberate, like she was trying to steady herself.
"You came with a motive, didn't you?"
My chest tightened. How did she know? She wasn't supposed to know. I had been careful. Alex had been careful. The manager at the bar had been paid to keep his mouth shut. She wasn't supposed to find out.
"You got what you wanted and you left."
I couldn't speak. I couldn't breathe. The papers slipped from my hand and scattered across the floor, but I didn't look at them.
"But did you ever, even for once, consider asking me about it?" Her voice cracked, just slightly, and I heard her take a shaky breath. "I would have given it to you in a blink. I would have given you anything. You didn't have to-"
She stopped. I could hear her breathing, quick and shallow, like she was holding back tears. When she spoke again, her voice was smooth and detached, like she had put on a mask I couldn't see through.
"You didn't have to play with my feelings to get what you wanted."
I wanted to tell her she was wrong. I wanted to tell her it hadn't been like that, that I had stayed because I wanted to, that the chain had stopped mattering after the first week.
But the words wouldn't come. Because what would be the point?
She was right. I had lied. I had let her believe I was someone I wasn't.
I had taken her trust and her home and her heart, and I had given her nothing but a note and three hundred dollars in return.
"I don't know if that's even your real name," she said. "Caspian. I don't know anything about you. I never did."
A dry, bitter laugh escaped her, and the sound of it made something crack inside my chest.
"Was it fun? Playing with me? Watching me beg for you like an idiot? Confessing my feelings to a voicemail while you listened and then blocked me?"
I closed my eyes. I could picture her standing somewhere, a phone booth, maybe, or a street corner, somewhere cold and public where she could fall apart without anyone noticing. I could picture her face, tear-streaked and pale, her hand pressed against her mouth to hold back the sobs.
"You knew what hurt me the most," she continued, her voice steadier now, harder. "You knew about Oliver and Anne. You knew I had been betrayed by the people I trusted. And you still did this. You still used it against me."
She paused.
"Well played, Caspian. Well played. You're worse than him, you know that? Oliver took three years to show his true colors. At least he gave me that much."
I wanted to tell her she was wrong. I wanted to tell her I wasn't like Oliver, that I had never pretended to love her, that everything I had felt for her was real.
But the words wouldn't come. Because what right did I have to say any of it?
I had blocked her number. I had walked out of her life without looking back.
I had done exactly what Oliver had done, just faster.
"I regret it," she said, and her voice was quieter now, tired in a way that made my chest ache. "Telling you to come with me that night. Falling for you. Going to the bar. Meeting you."
I heard her take a breath, slow and shaky.
"I regret all of it. It wouldn't have hurt this much if none of it had ever happened."
"Ele-"
The line went dead.
She had hung up. She hadn't waited for me to explain, to apologize, to tell her that I regretted it too, that I regretted everything except her. She had said what she needed to say, and then she had left.
I sat there in the darkening hotel room with the phone still pressed against my ear and her voice still echoing in my head. I regret all of it. Meeting you. Falling for you. All of it.
She regretted meeting me.
The words sat in my chest like stones, heavy and cold and impossible to swallow. She regretted it. She regretted the bar, the night we met, the whole stupid misunderstanding that had brought her into my life. She wished it had never happened.
And I couldn't even blame her.
I looked down at the papers scattered across the floor, the reports about the thugs, the invasions, the alliances I had let form while I was distracted by a woman who now wished she had never met me.
I should have been focused on this. I should have been handling the business, protecting my territory, being the man my father had raised me to be.
Instead, I had been playing house. And now I had nothing to show for it except a chain around my neck and a hole in my chest where she used to be.
I set the phone down and stared at the wall.
The woman I had paid for the night would be here soon. A stranger. Someone I didn't know and wouldn't remember. Someone who would touch me and leave and never think of me again.
It was what I wanted. It was what I had asked for.
But sitting there in the quiet of the hotel room, with her voice still ringing in my ears and her words still burning in my chest, I realized that I didn't want it at all.
I wanted her.
And she regretted ever meeting me.