Page 47 of Forgotten Promise

“How about you?” John asked Benjamin. “Any dream vacations still on your list, or have you been everywhere and seen everything?”

“Not quite. Personally, number one on my list is the moon.” He was teasing, enjoying the way John and Kailani both rolled their eyes at the same time.

“Lucky for you, billionaires building rockets are all the rage these days,” John said.

Benjamin shook his head. “Yeah, you’re right. Too gauche. That’s for the nouveau riche.”

The silence that fell was companionable rather than tense. Until John asked, “So what happened between the two of you?”

“Paris happened,” Kailani replied. “Benjamin surprised me with the trip. We boarded this jet, but he didn’t tell me where we were going.”

John’s eyes widened. “That’s a hell of a surprise.”

“It was,” she said, the smile on her face so reminiscent of the one from all those years ago. “It was an incredible trip. We saw it all—the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, Sacré Coeur, Notre Dame. We cruised along the Seine, drinking champagne and gorging ourselves on chocolate croissants and macarons.”

Kailani darted a glance at him, then forged on. “It’s where I…naively…decided that I was in love. That Benjamin and I were soul mates and would be together forever.”

John raised a brow. “But you had already joined the Trinity Masters, right?”

“Yes, I knew that any relationships I had should be casual. I knew not to fall in love. But I thought we were Romeo and Juliet. And it wasn’t just me. Do you remember what you said?” she asked.

It had been their first night in Paris, Benjamin recalled, the memory seared on his brain. And his heart. “I remember,” he said softly, instantly regretting the moment he spoke. Because her expression hardened and her eyes flashed with anger. “I said being with you was the first time I’d ever really been happy.”

It had been more than that, more than “happy,” but as a stupid twenty-one-year-old, that was what he’d said.

She scoffed. “You got over that quick enough.” She looked back at John. “A week later, we headed back to school. Different universities, different states. I thought Paris had changed things. That it was the start of a committed long-distance relationship, but before I could say anything, Benjamin broke things off, gave me a goodbye kiss, and never looked back. I found out from one of my best friends, Theia, who went to the same college as Benjamin, that he had a new girlfriend one week into the fall semester.”

“She wasn’t a girlfriend,” Benjamin said between his teeth.

“So you weren’t dating her? Just sleeping with her?”

“I…” Benjamin’s teeth ground together as he held back words that would explain but also make everything so much worse.

“I was heartbroken,” she said softly. “Absolutely emotionally devastated, and you can say it was stupid of me. I’ll even admit it was. You made it clear exactly how little that summer meant to you.”

“It meant something to me. But I didn’t know how emotionally involved you were.”

“You would have, if you hadn’t also decided that the end of our summer fling meant the end of our friendship. You stopped talking to me.”

“You stopped talking to me,” he shot back. “I asked if you wanted to go skiing that winter, and you told me to fuck off.”

“Because by that point I’d realized exactly how much of an asshole you were. You used information I accidentally let slip to hurt my family.”

“What?” Benjamin sat back, shocked.

“Remember when we went to Costa Rica for the weekend? And we were talking about ecotourism. I told you details about a piece of legislation my uncle was writing.”

Benjamin’s heart froze in his chest as he realized where this was going, what she must have thought.

“Your family’s pet lobbyists made sure the bill never even made it to committee. They knew details about what my uncle was proposing and the preemptive smear campaign they launched meant that multiple groups were already opposed before my uncle even finished the first draft. I told you those things in confidence. I never dreamed you’d turn around and use them to benefit yourself, to hurt my family.”

“I didn’t…” Had he? Had he mentioned something? He didn’t even remember if he had, which made it worse.

“I had to go to my family and tell them it was my fault. That I’d started a relationship with the Dara family heir. That I’d told him about what my uncle was trying to do, given him details.”

Kailani swallowed hard, and the pain he saw in her face made Benjamin want to kill the person who hurt her. But he was the one who’d hurt her.

“They reminded me I shouldn’t have relationships. I was going to have an arranged marriage. They reminded me I needed to be loyal to my family. They told me they weren’t upset, just disappointed.”

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