Page 168 of The Scandal You Started
It was tearing them apart.
“It doesn’t matter, Dominic,” she rumbled. “It’s just more proof that you and I shouldn’t be together. That you’re better off going back.”
“That’s nonsense,” he roared, throwing the stapled pages aside. “I will never be better off without you!”
“I can’t give you what she can.”
“There is nothing she could give me that you could not—”
“Marriage, Dominic!”
The sharp sound of his name echoed off the four walls as they both fell quiet.
Pain lanced across Rayna’s eyes, turning them glassy as her shoulders drooped. “You marry her,” she repeated. “You have a family with her. She gives you what you want.” She shook her head. “I can’t…I can’t do that. I don’t want to.”
Just like that, all his anger vanished like it’d never existed. His body swayed weakly as pieces fell off the cracked edges of his heart and clattered to the bottom of a dark depth.
“I don’t want to get married,” she continued, her voice wavering. “Every time I think about it, it feels suffocating. And I don’t want children either if it’s going to interfere with my career.” She hardened her tone. “And it will. You can say it won’t, but it will. And that’s not the life I want for myself. It’s whatyouwant…but I can’t give it to you.”
“You do not mean that,” he uttered barely above a whisper, the frayed rope of his optimism threatening to rip. “You are only saying it to convince me to leave.”
“No, Dominic. You knew this from the beginning.”
He had. But he’d thought…she’d said…she’d said she would consider it, and he’d hoped…
Dominic struggled to swallow around the lump choking him, his nose and eyes stinging.
He’d hoped.Foolishly.
“I do not need marriage or children,” he declared in one last desperate attempt to keep her. “I only need you.”
A broken sob fell from her as she glanced away before staring at him through angry, tear-filled eyes. “Stop it. Just stop it,” she pleaded. “You can’t give up what you want for me. You’ll regret it, and you’ll hate me for it.”
“I could never.”
“You will.” Her gaze implored him to see reason. “We’re too different, Dominic. We grew up in different worlds. We want different things, and if we stay together, all we’ll do is hurt each other.” She threw a tired hand between them. “We’re already hurting each other and everyone around us. And your not always being there will hurt your family at some point too.”
He shook his head, denying the truth he could hear as he approached her. “I don’t believe that. I do not believeyou. This is not you talking.” He clasped her face in his palms. “It is fear, and I understand, but please, my love, please do not allow it to come between us.”
“You read my mum’s notes,” she whispered, divulging what was really driving her away from him. “There’s no way to make this work.”
“That is not what she said. She simply did not have enough time to find a way.”
“Neither do we.”
Her words were final. And the remainder of his broken heart shattered like glass.
Rayna clasped her shaking fingers around his wrists and tugged. His hands fell away.
“Go home,” she said, her voice wet with unshed tears. “Please, Dominic. I’m begging you. Go back to where you belong.”
He teetered a few paces away, his body bruised, battered, and bleeding. Broken.
Everything he’d wanted with her, everything he’d dreamed of, was gone.
But the longer Dominic held her pleading stare, the hotter his ire grew until it sealed his pain behind roaring flames.
It wasn’t gone.It’d been taken from them.And he’d make whoever took it pay.
