Chapter 2 #4
His eyes widened in panic. “Alessia—”
I turned away. Seeing his face had become unbearable, especially with that panic written across it now, when all I could think about was the hesitation that had come before it. “My lawyer will contact you.”
I walked to my car with my suitcase dragging behind me, each step taking me farther from the home I had once believed would be mine for the rest of my life.
My hands shook so badly that getting the trunk open took two attempts.
I shoved the suitcase inside, closed it, and climbed into the driver’s seat.
He appeared beside the window almost immediately. “Alessia!” His hands pressed against the glass, tapping frantically against the window, desperate to make me open the door.
I stared through the windshield, keeping my eyes fixed on the driveway ahead. His face appeared in my peripheral vision, frantic and desperate, but I refused to turn toward him.
He called my name again.
I pressed the accelerator.
The car jolted forward, carrying me away while tears poured down my face. I gripped the steering wheel and forced myself to keep driving, swallowing sob after sob until my whole body ached from trying to contain them.
I glanced into the rearview mirror once.
He was running after me.
Running.
The sight tore through whatever strength I had left. He kept coming until the distance became too great, until his body grew smaller and smaller in the mirror, until he was reduced to a lonely figure standing beneath the darkness.
I looked away.
By the time I reached the open road, I was sobbing so violently that every breath came broken. Tears poured down my face, gathering beneath my chin, soaking into my clothes. My whole body shook with each sob, and I had to blink repeatedly just to keep the road visible.
I drove through a blur of headlights and darkness, barely aware of where I was going.
All I could see was him.
His widened eyes.
The panic on his face.
That terrible hesitation when I had asked the question that had cost me everything.
And he hadn’t answered.
The memory replayed again.
Then again.
Every time, it hurt worse.
What had I been doing all this time?
My sob caught painfully.
When did I become this person?
My tears came harder.
Why did I ever walk into that cafe?
If I had decided to go home instead, none of this would have happened.
I might still be living an ordinary life, carrying an ordinary loneliness that had never known his touch, never learned the warmth of his arms, never discovered how devastating it could be to lose a person who had once felt so deeply woven into every part of me.
Instead, I had met him.
I had loved him.
I had built a life around him.
I had given him years of my life, pieces of myself, memories I would carry long after everything else was gone.
And now I was driving away from all of it with a suitcase with me and enough pain inside me to drown in.
Why did I have to be the one to fall so completely?
Why couldn’t he?
I wished I had never met him. I wished I had never learned what it felt to love someone so deeply that losing them could leave me feeling hollow. I wished he were still a stranger whose name meant nothing to me, whose face I could pass on the street without feeling every wound he had left behind.
A loud honk tore through my thoughts.
I glanced into the rearview mirror and saw headlights closing the distance behind me. I wiped desperately at my tears, trying to clear my vision, then looked again.
Cassian’s car.
Of course he’s following me.
The horn sounded again, demanding that I stop.
He wanted me to pull over.
He wanted to talk.
After all the pain he had caused, he was still chasing after me, still demanding my attention when I had nothing left to give him.
My jaw tightened.
Fuck him.
When I looked back at the road, a blinding white light flooded the windshield. A car had swerved into my lane, its headlights bearing down on me before my mind could fully comprehend what I was seeing. Instinct took over as I wrenched the wheel to the side.
The next thing I knew, metal slammed into the pole with a violent force that jolted through my entire body.
Glass exploded around me, fragments striking my skin as the windshield shattered beneath the impact.
The sound was deafening, followed by a vicious wave of pain that tore through every part of me at once.
My vision flashed white.
The world spun.
I tried to breathe, tried to move, tried to understand what had happened, but the pain swallowed every thought before it could form. Somewhere beyond the wreckage, I could hear shouting, distant and distorted, but I couldn’t make out the words.
My eyelids grew heavier.
I fought to keep them open, clinging to the fading sounds around me, but everything was slipping farther away. The headlights smeared into pale streaks. The shouting became a distant murmur. Even the pain began to fade beneath a growing numbness.
The last thing I saw was a shadow rushing toward the wreckage.
Then the world slipped away.