Page 165 of The Scandal You Started
With the shell blocking her emotions smashed to smithereens, pain seeped from the bleeding cavity of her rib cage. It rose through her like black smoke. Gathered thick and suffocating in her throat, making her eyes water and hands tremble.
“But,” Carlos Faez said. “You’ve never asked before. So why now? Does it have anything to do with Dominic?”
“No. I just…I just wanted to know.”
“Rayna.” He sounded troubled. “Rayna, tell me what happened. What’s wrong? What can I do to help?”
“Nothing.”
“It’s because of Dominic, isn’t it? What did you find?”
“I have…” Her croaky voice got trapped under the lump in her throat.
“Whatever barrier you’ve run into, you’ll find a way around it. You will. I know you will.”
Her jaw ached as she forced it to move. “There’s no way around it, Dad.”
“There is. There has to be,” he said. “I know I had my reservations about him and your situation, but Dominic loves you, Rayna. And if you love him, if he makes you happy, then keep fighting for each other. Don’t lose hope.”
But love isn’t enough.
Her dad had just said that.
Love didn’t justify keeping Dominic from the life he was meant to live, the one where his family was, and where Rayna couldn’t be the majority of the time. And if she couldn’t and wouldn’t give up so much of her life to live in the past with him, what right did she have to ask him to do the same for her?
How could she ask him to spend the rest of his life with her when she couldn’t even decide if she wanted the life he envisioned for them?
But Lady Claire…
Lady Claire and Dominic would grow old together, learn together, and support each other. They’d never ask each other to sacrifice their wants or feelings for the other.
How then could Rayna selfishly try to keep him? To prevent the beautiful man from having that? On top of the fact there no longer seemed to be a feasible way to achieve it either.
Even if Dominic stayed with Rayna, if they went back to the past to see his family, history would carry on. He’d still meet Lady Claire, and maybe he’d realise he’d made a mistake staying with Rayna. Maybe he’d come to regret it and wish he never had.
But if Rayna loved him even just a little bit, then she’d let him go now, so it never came to that.
She’d let him be happier without her.
She wouldn’t hold him back from being with who he was meant to be with.
She wouldn’t take away the love history had already promised him.
“I have to go,” Rayna whispered. “Bye, Dad.”
“Rayna, wait—”
She cut the call, and her arm fell limp at her side.
Her phone buzzed in her hand, but she paid it no attention as her bottom lip began quivering and the world around her blurred.
Something wet slipped down Rayna’s cheeks.
She curled her lip between her teeth as more followed. And more. And more. Scarring her face with the red blotches of heartbreak before dripping off her jaw and searing paths down her neck.
Until a stifled sob fell from her lips, and she crumpled forward.
Crouched at her mother’s grave, Rayna cried over the only man who’d ever stolen her heart.
