Page 87 of The Billionaire's Accidental Legacy

She shook her head. “No. It isn’t. Don’t say that. Yes, tragic things happen. They do, and we can’t control those things, but they don’t get to decide...”

“They do. Jessie, I could not bear watching you bleed out. I could not lose you. I cannot...”

“Isn’t that love?”

“If it is then I want nothing to do with it.”

“You can’t stop it from happening if it’s going to happen,” she said. “You can’t will it away. You cannot be vengeful enough to blot out what will be, or to take away your own feelings, and why should you? I did that. For so many years. I ignored my own feelings. I denied them.”

“I don’t want you away from me. I could not stand it. Not now. But I’d... I cannot be what you are asking. I can never soften myself. I can never...”

“Then I won’t stay with you.”

It cut her open to say it. It made her want to die. Then and there. Just lie down on the floor and stop breathing altogether because it seemed easier than bearing such a loss.

“I love you, Ewan. I have never let myself love. Not anyone other than my sister. I never let myself be wanted. I never let myself feel. But I do now. I do now. And I just want more than anything in the world for you to love me back. I want us to win. I don’t want the dark things to win. I don’t want the terrible things to win. And believe me, I know, because I remember. There are endless stories where the darkness wins and the hero dies. But there are also stories where they live. We have to choose it. We have to choose to live. All the way. With everything we are. We have to choose to do it with the fullness of ourselves because no one will choose it for us. The world is tragic. But I am choosing to trust in what I cannot see. And what I know in my heart to be true. There is no file in my brain that tells me that everything will be fine. That it will be fine. But I believe it in my soul.”

“I cannot.”

“Let me believe it for the both of us. If I can do that, if I can have just a small bit of hope that someday... That someday you can, then I don’t need to walk away from you.”

“I can’t,” he said.

And something inside her broke away. Something she knew that she would never get back. “You know where I am.”

“Jessie...”

“I just can’t, Ewan. Not after everything. I want to be loved. The way that I love. Because you are my favorite thing. And I don’t need to taste an array of pleasures in this world to know that. To know that you are what I want. To know that you are what I need, too. You helped me find all these things out about myself. And I tried to do the same for you. I can’t be less to you than you are to me.”

He said nothing. He simply stood there, naked and ragged, his body so beautiful it made her want to weep, his eyes so full of pain that she did.

“I’m going to call the private plane. I’m going to go home.”

She turned and walked away from him, walked across the bridge, and made her way down to the main part of the house before her knees gave out. Before she began to weep. Even as she took out her phone and put in the order for the private jet.

She had to do this. Because she had to trust.

In the evidence of things she could not see. In the gaps that her mind could not know.

In love.

Because it was the newest and greatest thing she had learned. And hope, because it was what it was saying to her soul even now.

Because she had been a woman without those things. She had been hard and isolated and lonely.

She didn’t know everything, it turned out. But she knew this.

But in the end, love was worth taking a stand for.

And she had to hope that it was bigger than vengeance could ever be.

She was gone. And he felt gutted. Hollowed out.

It was not the first time he’d felt this way. It was a grief that transcended breath.

He should let her walk away. He should let her go and find happiness. With someone else, somewhere else.

What could he possibly give to her? What could he possibly give to a child?

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