Page 52 of Corporate Bondage

Chapter Twenty-Three

(Keith)

“Gio…”

I froze at my name on Keith’s lips. Sitting across from him while we had breakfast, I’d hoped my feeling last night was wrong. When we’d showered, and fallen asleep in each other’s arms, I’d convinced myself that I must have imagined things. Keith had slept like a baby throughout the rest of the night. He’d never slept so soundly since the first night we shared a bed. I hoped it would be the last of his nightmares, but should they happen again, I was confident I now knew how to handle it. Shaking him awake might not have been the best idea last night.

Watching as he struggled for words to what I was certain was to end our relationship, a deep sadness descended over me. This time, I didn’t know how to fight it. If we were breaking up again, we might never recover this time.

“Keith, please don’t,” I begged him.

He couldn’t look at me. He stared into his coffee cup. “You know it’s the right thing to do, Gio.”

“Breaking up with me?” I gaped at him. “Again? For how long this time? A day? Two? Keith, you can’t do this right now when I need you to get over everything with my dad. Be there for me as I was there for you last night.”

He didn’t respond immediately but sipped from his coffee while I watched him. If only I could read his mind and find out what had brought on that troubled look to his face. He looked tired, every one of his thirty-eight years. He wasn’t ending our relationship because he didn’t love me. He thought he was doing me a favor.

“I had my hands wrapped around your neck,” he said so softly I almost didn’t hear him. “Do you think I could live with myself if I had done permanent damage?”

“You didn’t.”

“But I could have!” He pushed away from the island and glared at me. “It’s fucking time for you to stop looking at me with rosy glasses, Gio. I’m destructive, even when I don’t mean to be." His voice hitched with emotions. " I’ll do nothing but hurt you. The therapy was supposed to make everything better, but it’s not working. I’d die before I hurt you again. Each time I see the bruises on you it fucking hurts.”

“Maybe I’m a sadomasochist?”

He scowled at me. “This is not a joke, Gio. It’s not.” He walked around the island and stopped by me, his hands spreading over the welts on my neck from last night. My wrists were just as bruised from the cuffs last night. He brushed his hands over the bruises on my neck. “How can you sit there looking at me calmly like I didn’t nearly…” He choked up, looking miserable, and his eyes filled with tears.

I reached for his hands and grasped them, alarmed because this was different. This time he wasn’t just speaking out of anger. He wasn’t going to knock on my door after this.

“I can’t lose you,” I gasped because it hurt. My God it hurt and it wasn’t supposed to. "You expect too much from the therapy too soon. You're going to have rough days, but this- take a look at yourself, Keith. Don't you see the changes? Because I do."

He kissed the top of my head before he let me go. “You can’t stay. I once told you that you’d either be the death of me or my salvation. I was wrong. I’ll be the death of you.”

“You’re wrong!” I stood and grasped him by the front of his shirt, afraid if I let him go I’d never be able to hold him again. “Keith, you are wrong. Why are you so quick to give up on us?”

He placed his hands on mine. “Let go, Gio. I’m doing this for you, to protect you from me.”

“I don’t need protection from you!”

“I’m only going to hurt you more!”

I released him, blowing hard. “You’re keeping something from me, aren’t you?”

The guilty look in his eyes answered my question. “It’s for your own good.”

“Let me be the one to decide that.”

He walked away from me, taking his cup to the sink. “Goodbye, Gio. You can do better than someone like me.”

There was so much I wanted to say, but none of it would change his mind. None of it would reach him. For whatever reason he didn’t want to share with me, he had decided to end us, and it killed me that I didn’t know the real reason. Was it something I had done? Was it something he had done?

I stumbled out of the kitchen and collected my phone from the bedroom. I stared at the bed where he had convinced me last night that two halves had never fit more perfectly. A lump formed in my throat as the images of last night washed over me so vividly. I’d exposed every corner of myself to him last night. Why had he asked for my soul if he only meant to destroy it? Why had he taken everything and left me empty?

You’re on a suicide mission. Tate’s words came back to me and even then, I didn’t want to acknowledge how right he was.

Without a word to Keith, I left, closing the door behind me with a firm thud.

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