Page 55 of Cinderella's Fling with the Off-Limits Billionaire

She made a guttural noise of surprise. “I’m not. I’m not asking you for that. I’m not asking you for anything.”

His gut rolled. Frustration was bursting through him. “You’re overthinking this. We’re good together. Why not just enjoy that?”

He knew the answer though. Because of her bastard ex. Skye wasn’t prepared to go day by day and see where her life took her. She had to protect herself and her daughter. Even from him?

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said thickly. “You are important to me.”

“I’m somewhat important to you when you’re here,” she admitted grudgingly. “But you have a whole other life on the other side of the Atlantic. You’ll forget me soon enough.”

“Stop attributing feelings to me. I live in Italy but that doesn’t mean I don’t think about you when I’m here.”

She made a soft groaning noise. “My point is that we always knew this would end. We said that, right from the beginning. It’s just…I need it to end now. I can’t keep seeing you and pretending that you don’t mean as much to me as you do. I need to stop seeing you and start forgetting you. I need to move on with my life. My life—that I’ve worked so hard to create.”

“What life?” He growled. “You are living with your parents, working a job that is well and truly beneath your potential, hiding yourself away from the world, avoiding any kind of relationship because you are scared of letting yourself live.”

She gasped. “Is that what you think of me?”

He stared at the motorway, his gut twisting painfully. No. It wasn’t what he thought of her. Not really. He felt all those things, to some extent, but only because he saw how amazing she was, and what potential she had.

When he didn’t say anything, Skye continued, “I am scared…I’m scared of letting myself down again, like I did with Jay. How I went from being independent and on course in my life to someone I didn’t even recognize, all because I thought I was in love. Everything about you, and how I feel about you, scares me, Leandro.”

“I’m not him. I would never do that to you.”

“No, you’re a thousand times better than him and when I’m with you, I feel—I want?—,”

“The fairy tale,” he responded.

Silence crackled down the phone line.

“I want an impossible future,” she admitted. “And how much I want it is why I have to end this, and now. I should never have let it start up. I should have run a thousand miles from you that first night.”

His head hurt. He stared straight ahead, wondering at the burning sensation at the back of his throat.

“I’m glad you didn’t.”

Silence.

He searched for something to say. He wanted to change her mind, but to what end? Because he still wanted to be with her? Because he liked flying to New York and having her there, waiting for him?

“Can we talk about this face to face?”

She said nothing.

“Skye?”

“Oh.” She cleared her throat. “I know I should have waited until next weekend,” she admitted softly. “But I wasn’t sure I’d be strong enough to do this if you were standing right in front of me.”

Precisamente, he wanted to say triumphantly. If they were having this conversation in the same room, he’d have been able to reach out and hug her, kiss her, to reassure her. To change her mind.

“I’m so confused, Leandro, but the one thing I know for sure is that I can’t see you again.”

It was like the tectonic plates were in a state of furious rearrangement. He gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles glowed white. “You’re serious?”

“Yes.” Such a small voice, a tiny word. “Goodbye, Leandro.”

Goodbye? She was seriously ending this, over the phone, and telling him ‘goodbye’. He was dumbfounded and couldn’t think of what to say in response to that.

It didn’t matter anyway.

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