CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
ELISE
THE HOTEL SUITE smelled like comfort bottled into air freshener. It should’ve soothed me, but it didn’t.
I dropped my purse onto the entry table and walked further into the room, my whole body trembling like I’d run a marathon. Except I hadn’t. I’d just walked out of Edge Records with my heart split open, and somehow that was worse.
Nathan’s face kept flashing in my mind. The way his jaw had tightened. The way his eyes had searched mine like he was begging me not to believe what I’d read. The way he hadn’t moved fast enough to stop me before I walked away.
Kelsey’s hand pressed gently to the small of my back, guiding me inside. “You’re safe here. He won’t find you. I promise.” Her voice was soft but firm.
I nodded, but I knew better. Nathan wasn’t a man you could hide from.
He knew me too well. Home and Alessia’s place was out of the question since he would’ve gone to both in a heartbeat.
This suite, tucked inside my favorite hotel in the city, was the only place I could think of.
And yet, even here, I didn’t feel safe. Not from him. Not from myself.
Taylor shut the door behind us with more force than necessary, her jaw tight and her eyes flashing. She cared about me like a sister, and she wore her anger like armor. She hated that I was hurting.
Kelsey guided me towards the sofa and sat down beside me, her arm sliding around my shoulders. “He’s a bastard, Elise. Don’t waste another second on him.”
“Bastard’s too kind,” Taylor muttered, pacing like she was working up to a fight. She spun on her heel, pinning me with a look. “Say the word, and I’ll handle him. I know a guy who can make Nathan suffer unimaginable pain. Just one call, and it’s done.”
Despite the heaviness in my chest, a weak laugh escaped me. “You do not know a guy like that.”
“Sure I do,” Taylor said without missing a beat. Her mouth curved into a dangerous little smile. “He’s my old commanding officer. Big guy. Scary as hell. Terrible Uno player, though. One call, and he’ll make Mr. CEO cry like a newborn baby.”
Kelsey shuddered, her nose wrinkling. “I don’t think I want to know a guy who can make Nathan Edge cry.”
“Suit yourself,” Taylor said with a shrug, clearly unbothered.
For a second, their banter almost tugged a smile out of me. But it faded just as quickly, crushed under the weight pressing against my chest.
“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted to make him hurt the way he hurt me.” I whispered, picking at the hem of my sleeve.
The words hung there, heavy and ugly. Kelsey’s arm tightened around me.
“Elise,” she said softly, like my name itself was a comfort.
I shook my head, tears burning again. “I feel stupid for not seeing it sooner. All the signs were there, weren’t they?
Him acting hot and cold after that meeting with Dalton.
Inviting me to dinner in his office one night and actually opening up?
God, I thought it meant something. And then his indifference about his thirtieth birthday.
” My voice broke. “I should’ve known something was wrong. ”
“Stop.” Kelsey’s tone sharpened, her hand catching mine before I could dig my nails into my palm. “You are not stupid. Nathan fooled everyone, Elise. Everyone. If anyone should be ashamed, it’s him, not you.”
I sat there in silence, staring at the city lights flickering through the wide glass windows, as the weight of everything caved in. Nathan’s lies. Our relationship. The stipulation. The humiliation of every soft, secret moment we’d shared being reduced to business.
The pressure in my chest became unbearable.
“I need a minute.”
Kelsey exchanged a look with Taylor before squeezing my hand. “Okay. Taylor already snagged us a room on the same floor. We’re just a few doors down or a call away if you need me.” Kelsey assured me.
“Or me.” Taylor added.
“Thank you.”
“I love you.” Kelsey pulled me into her and held me for a second before she pulled away and stood up from the couch.
I stumbled toward the bathroom like I was walking through fog once they let themselves out. The lights were too bright, the marble tiles too cold, and when I turned the faucet, the sound of rushing water filled the room until it drowned out everything else.
I slid into the tub, clothes and all, the water climbing up my body until it swallowed me in its warmth. Only then did the dam break.
It wasn’t quiet.
It wasn’t pretty.
It was the sound of my whole world splintering. Harsh, broken sobs tore out of my throat as I curled forward, pressing my face into my trembling hands. The water clung to my lashes, my hair plastered to my cheeks, and I choked on air like it was too sharp to swallow.
How could he?
How could the man who looked at me like I was his entire universe, who kissed me slow, who touched me like I was sacred, reduce us to a fucking stipulation?
Every memory twisted, every tender word curdled until I couldn’t tell what was real anymore. Was any of it real?
I clutched my chest like I could hold the pieces together, but they just slipped through my fingers. My sobs echoed against the bathroom walls, raw and hollow, as if the sound itself might split me in two.
And underneath the grief, underneath the rage, was something even more unbearable. Love. Still there, stubborn and reckless. Still his. Even after everything.
That was what hurt most of all.
My phone buzzed over and over on the counter with calls, texts, his name lighting up the screen like a ghost I couldn’t escape.
Nathan. Nathan. Nathan.
I wanted to answer. God, I wanted to answer. To hear him say he loved me. That it was real. But every time my hand reached for the phone, the stipulation echoed in my head. One-point-two billion dollars. And my hand dropped back, shaking.
Finally, I turned the phone off. The silence was louder than the buzzing had been.
I let myself slide lower in the water until it closed over my ears, muffling the world. My tears kept coming, sharp and endless, until my body ached with it.I stayed there until the water went cold. Until my skin wrinkled. Until I had nothing left to give.
When I finally dragged myself out, wrapped in a towel, my eyes were raw and swollen. I padded barefoot into the suite, exhausted.
A knock at the door startled me.
I padded over, tying the sash tighter around my waist. “Kelsey?” I called softly as I turned the handle.
But when the door opened, it wasn’t my friend’s face I saw.
It was his.
“Elise,” Nathan said, his voice low and rough, like gravel dragged across glass.
And just like that, the air was gone from my lungs all over again.
Nathan stood there, eyes blazing, hair mussed like he’d ran his hands through it a thousand times. His suit jacket was gone, his tie loose, and his chest rose and fell too fast.
“Elise.” Relief broke across his face when he saw me, but then he took in the redness of my eyes, the thick robe wrapped around me, and the fragile mess I was in, and his jaw locked. “Can we talk?”
“No.”
“Please,” he said softly. “I just need five minutes.”
Nathan’s gaze found mine again, and just like that, the whole room disappeared. It was just him. And me. And everything broken between us.
I nodded once and stepped aside, letting him in.
The suite felt suddenly too small, air thick with tension. Nathan moved closer, his hand twitching at his side like he wanted to touch me but knew better.
“How did you find me?”
He didn’t hesitate. “I always know where you are, Elise.”
My heart lurched. Not from the sweetness of the words, but from the sharp edge beneath them.
The floor swayed under me. My heart clawed its way into my throat.
I knew he was powerful. Everyone knew that.
Nathan Edge wasn’t just a CEO. He was the man who could make or break careers or make a man disappear with a single phone call.
But hearing him say it like that, as if my attempt at distance had been nothing more than a minor inconvenience for him to untangle, made me realize just how deep his influence ran.
“You tracked me.” My words wobbled with disbelief.
He didn’t deny it. “I have contacts everywhere. A woman who books under your name, pays in cash, and asks for privacy? You may as well have put up a neon sign, Cupcake.”
I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly cold even in the thick robe. “That’s not normal, Nathan. That’s—”
“That’s me making sure I know where you are so I can fix us,” he cut in, voice hard enough to shatter glass.
I laughed sardonically. “Us? There is no us anymore, Nathan. You made sure of that.”
“I can explain.”
For one fractured second, I wanted to let him. God, I wanted him to spin me some beautiful lie I could live inside. But lies were what got us here in the first place.
My laugh broke, jagged and hollow. “Explain? You chased after me because you were going to lose a lot of money and lose the record company.” My chest heaved. “Not because you liked me. Not because you wanted me. Because of some stipulation in a will.”
His face crumpled. “No. That’s not true.”
“Don’t.” My voice cut like glass. “Don’t lie to me again.”
He flinched, and I hated that I noticed. That part of me still ached for him even now.
His shoulders slumped, the fight draining out of him.
“You’re right,” he said, voice rough. “When I first read my father’s letter, all I saw was the company.
The inheritance. Edge Records was everything I’d ever worked for, everything I thought I wanted.
And when I realized the stipulation was tied to you,” He dragged a hand through his hair, chest heaving.
“I hated it. Hated that my future was in someone else’s hands.
I told myself you were just a means to an end. ”
The words sliced through me, every syllable like a fresh wound.
“But then,” Nathan pressed on, eyes blazing as if he could burn the truth into me, “the more time I spent with you, the more I got to know you, the less the money mattered. The less the company mattered. You changed everything, Elise. You made me feel things I didn’t even know I was capable of feeling.
For the first time in my life, none of it mattered.
Not the empire, not the inheritance. None of it mattered as much as you.
” His voice cracked, raw and unpolished in a way I’d never heard from him. “I fell in love with you.”
The words, once everything I’d wanted, now landed like stones in my chest.
I shook my head, tears burning hot. “No, Nathan. You don’t get to say that.
You don’t get to stand here and talk about love when you lied to me, when you used me.
Love isn’t manipulation. Love isn’t playing me like a pawn in your father’s game.
” He flinched, but I pressed on, the words spilling out of me, unstoppable.
“You took away my choice. Do you get that? You decided what I meant to you, what I was worth to your company, before I even knew the truth. You stole the chance for me to decide for myself what we could have been. That’s not love, Nathan. That’s control.”
Nathan’s eyes darkened, pleading and desperate all at once. “Elise… please. I never meant to hurt you.”
“Stop,” I said sharply, my voice echoing in the suite. “I don’t want to hear it anymore. Nathan, you’ve spent months convincing me that what we had was genuine while hiding the truth.”
He stepped closer, reaching for my hands, but I stepped back, my robe brushing against my legs as I created space. “Don’t. Touch me. Not now. Not after everything.”
“I know I messed up,” he said, his voice low and rough, the kind that used to make my knees weak. “I—”
“I don’t care,” I cut him off. “You can’t undo what’s been done. I can’t pretend the trust is still there when every moment we shared feels poisoned.”
He opened his mouth, but I lifted a hand, stopping him.
“I loved you. I gave you everything I had. But love doesn’t feel like this.
It doesn’t feel like betrayal.” My voice wavered, but I held it together.
“I can’t be with someone I don’t trust.” The tension in the room thickened as we stood there, him with that pleading, haunted look, and me holding onto the last of my strength. “We’re done.”
He looked as if I’d punched him. His chest rose and fell and his eyes held a suspicious gloss. “Elise…”
“I need you to leave.”
He lingered for a moment. Silent eyes burning into mine, searching for a crack. But there was none.
Finally, he nodded, stiffly, and turned toward the door. "I'm sorry,” he whispered, voice low, almost drowned by the sound of the closing door.
I watched him leave, the click of the lock echoing like the finality of a tomb.