TWENTY-NINE
Cece
I smile blandly as I recall last night, my knuckles paling as I grip the steering wheel harder.
Our first fight.
It started off as yet another day I intended to spend in silence. There wasn’t much I could do whenever Levi’s pleadings would fall on my deaf ears.
I had no answers to give him. Especially after that disaster of a gala that he forced me to attend last week.
According to our PR consultants, it worked—albeit barely. The gossip outlets thought otherwise. Our curated charade was just that. A charade. And they didn’t miss our desperate attempt to sway public opinion.
I’m starting to actually believe that Levi wants to remove the clause for Iris. But then, she isn’t even here. He’d have to fly to LA to make his case, I guess.
??????
“Oh, don’t give me that lame explanation,” I snarled at him. My brain was muddled by what he’d told me. That he would step down and get voted back in so he could get rid of the clause.
“You and I both know you’re doing it to get out of this sham arrangement!”
He flinched violently at my words. His voice dulled when he spoke next, not meeting my eyes. “You… you really believe that?”
I laughed in his face. “What other reason is there? You expect me to believe you’re doing this to prove your love or something? Really?”
“I thought you understood that,” he hisses, eyes flaring with barely contained rage.
I do. But—
“I understand that I’ve told you I’d stick around. That I’ll fucking marry you so you can keep this damn presidency.”
I ended on a shout. But he simply grabbed the whiskey glass from my hand and chugged it in one massive gulp.
“I know the situation I’ve created. But you’re letting those gossip columns get to you, Cece,” he said softly. Always fucking softly. “If you’d just try to think logically, you’d see—”
“Logically?” I shrieked. “Logic failed me, Levi. You failed me. You blindsided me twice. Twice! Then proceeded to get caught during your little rendezvous, reminiscing about your days when you were in love with her. And I’m still here, aren’t I?”
I stepped closer to him, our breaths nearly mingling, but there was no affection there.
Not from me. “Tell me how I’m not logical when I’m offering you a wedding so you can remain the president?
Tell me how I’m being ridiculous when I’m obeying your plans for PR stunts?
All while… all while you’re hell bent on removing the reason I fucking exist in your life in the first place! ”
??????
75 km/hr.
87 km/hr.
I’m aware it’s a highway. And I’m not even one of the fastest vehicles on the road.
Irritation swells up rapidly when a fucking Ford zips past my car.
98 km/hr.
Fuck it. I slam the accelerator hard. The Ford is now visibly approaching me.
133 km/hr.
A maniacal squeal leaves me when I pass the guy in his slow-moving cage, which I doubt can remain stable on anything over a speed of one hundred and ten.
The car in front of me swerves left toward the fast lane, and I’m immediately greeted with another slow car.
For half a second, I imagine not hitting the brake. I picture myself careening left to join the fast lane myself—without looking.
Ramming into a car at this speed would crush the metal frame. Make me lose the little control I currently have of this machine.
Instead, I press the brake. My whole frame slumping at my thought process.
Is this it?
Is this hypomania?
I’ve never felt like this before. The most reckless I’ve been is when I hooked up with a guy in an alley behind the bar where I met him. That was in my early twenties.
I blink hard, knowing full well that I shouldn’t be closing my eyes for that long on a highway.
Nothing goes wrong.
My legs aren’t squeezed between my seat and the dashboard. The steering wheel isn’t lodged inside my chest. The windshield isn’t peppered across my skin, splitting it open with a thousand cuts.
A few minutes later, I’m exactly where I need to be—sitting numbly in a familiar leather chair with gilded armrests while Cynthia, my regular stylist, watches me through the mirror with open uncertainty.
She hadn’t taken my new instructions well.
For years, I’d come to her with the same request. The same maintenance cut. The same carefully managed version of myself.
Today, I changed all of it.
By the time she’s finished, she still looks unconvinced.
I don’t care.
The moment I step outside, I freeze.
Levi is standing across the small parking lot, leaning against his car. His gaze is already fixed on the salon entrance.
On me.
I immediately look away.
Even from this distance, I see his body lock up. His chest rises sharply before falling again, as though he’s forgotten how breathing works.
Shit.
Without giving him a chance to speak, I fish my keys from my bag and head straight for my car.
I hear his door open behind me, then the loudness of the door shutting.
By the time he starts his engine, I’m already pulling out. And he follows.
Of course he does.
And I almost laugh when I realize he’s struggling to keep up. I’m not doing one-thirty-three on the highway anymore.
But a cool seventy in a forty is apparently enough to send my fiancé into cardiac arrest.
The entire drive, I can practically feel his panic through my rearview mirror.
Good.
Maybe that makes me a terrible person. Maybe I’m just tired. Maybe I’m angry.
Whatever the reason, I don’t slow down.
When we finally pull into the private underground parking of Levi’s building, I jump out before he’s even fully parked.
The elevator ride feels too slow.
I unlock the penthouse door and make it halfway inside before I hear hurried footsteps behind me.
A thrill races down my spine.
God. Maybe there really is something wrong with me.
The door slams shut behind us, and I turn around.
Levi is furious.
Not his usual polished, controlled irritation. Not the composed expression he wears for investors and boardrooms. This is something raw. Something dangerously close to panic.
His eyes immediately find my hair. “Why did you cut it so short?”
I shrug, tossing my purse onto the counter. “It made sense.”
His jaw flexes. “Made sense?”
“Now I don’t have to worry about it for another two months.”
The exasperation that leaves him is almost comical.
I smile. “You look angry.”
His eyes widen. “Of course, I’m fucking angry.”
I blink. “In my defense—”
“There is no defense for what you just did.”
I grin wider.
His nostrils flare.
“Why?” I ask innocently.
The look he gives me makes me want to curl away. “You were doing eighty-five in a fifty, Cece.”
“Seventy-two,” I correct.
“What the fuck does it matter?” His voice echoes through the penthouse.
For a second, neither of us speaks. Then his shoulders drop. The anger cracks.
And what’s underneath hurts infinitely more. “It’s dangerous, Cece.” The fight drains from his voice. “You can’t…” He swallows. His eyes shine with something desperate. “Please, you just can’t.”
I know exactly how terrified he is. I know his heart is probably trying to claw its way out of his chest.
But instead of comforting him, I laugh. And the glare he pins me with nearly makes me choke on it.
“You can’t keep doing this to me, baby,” he says hoarsely. His voice is unraveling. “First, it was the balcony. Then you stopped caring about your portfolio crashing. Now this.”
His concern needles under my skin. Makes something soft and embarrassed twist painfully in my chest. Makes me want to retreat into the version of myself that used to lean into him instead of pushing him away.
But that version feels far away now. Seroquel is long gone from my bloodstream. The filters are gone with it.
So instead, I spread my arms wide. A sneer curls across my lips.
“This is me,” I say, smiling without humor. “In all my bipolar glory.” I tilt my head. “Still love me, Levi?”
The answer comes so fast it almost startles me. “Every. Fucking. Version.”
The force of it rattles my heart. And for a moment, I forget how to breathe.
I laugh again, but the sound scrapes painfully against my throat because it’s unnaturally forced.
His expression twists into grief. “You’re not making it easy to be with you right now,” he says.
His hands clamp around my shoulders when he nears me.
His grip is hard enough to hurt. Hard enough that I know he’s barely holding himself together.
“And I know it’s my own damn fault that you’re pushing me away like this.
” His breathing grows uneven. “I know I earned every bit of it.”
The anger disappears entirely. All that’s left is the raw fear.
“But don’t think for a second that I don’t love you.
” His voice cracks. “I can love you from afar, Cece. I can love you while you’re angry.
I can love you while you’re spiraling. I can love you when you get back up.
” His fingers tighten enough to bruise. “But I can’t breathe—” His words splinter entirely.
He looks away for a second before forcing himself to meet my eyes again. “I can’t fucking live if you wrap your car around a pole one of these days. Do you understand?”
The question hangs between us. But I genuinely don’t have a smart answer waiting on my tongue. I don’t even want to think about the effect my recklessness has on him.
So I simply mumble a response I don’t fully trust. “Yeah, I understand.”
He seems to accept that little token of relief.
He absolutely shouldn’t have.