Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 86322 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86322 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
I managed a smile, but the compliment struck like a weapon meant to puncture my chest, warping it into a grimace.
Silence stretched between us. I shifted my weight from foot to foot until he broke it, sparing me from blurting another offensive comment.
“Listen, can we talk?” he asked, gesturing with his thumb to my office behind him.
“Yeah. Sure.” I edged past him, holding my breath, hoping we didn’t come into contact—and hoping we did.
I fumbled with the door and pushed through, heading straight behind my desk. More space and obstacles between us were better—safer. I wasn’t sure I could emotionally survive a repeat of the last time we were alone—even if my body begged me to try.
“Felix is…”
He raked a hand down his face, and I ached to ease his struggle. While I wouldn’t allow myself to offer physical comfort, I could save him from saying the words any more than he had to. “I heard,” I said. “I just heard, actually. Like five minutes ago.”
“Yeah,” he croaked.
“I’m so sorry, Lucian.”
He tucked his chin deep into his chest, attempting to hide his crumbling face. Witnessing his pain, remembering the sharp agony of loss myself, pulled a choked whimper from my chest that I quickly shoved down and hid behind a cough.
I’d spent the past week telling myself I hated him and wanted him to suffer, but not like this. A desperate ache swelled in my chest, begging to go to him.
I told you, Aspen. I don’t do love.
I replayed his words, pictured his sneering mouth saying them, and held firm with the reminder that he wouldn’t want me anyway.
“Can I do anything?” I offered instead.
He gave a broken laugh. “Funny you should ask that,” he said dryly.
My brows knitted as I tried to make sense of what he meant.
“You can marry me at the hospital tomorrow.”
“Wha…” My jaw dropped, and my eyes shot wide. Surely, he wasn’t serious. Yet, when I took him in, there was no denying he meant his request. “Lucian…I…”
I struggled to find the words. Hell, I could barely wrap my head around it. I had no clue what brought him to my office, but asking me to marry him—sooner than our original agreement—after everything we’d been through hadn’t been in the same country as anything I could have imagined.
My mouth opened and closed as I studied him, searching for a clue, any hint of how to respond.
His bleak eyes held resignation, as if he knew his request was a long shot—but somewhere beneath it, hope shimmered, pleading from the dark depths.
“Grace knows.” He dropped the two words like stones at my feet, as if they weren’t the most shocking thing he could have said.
“What?” I screeched.
“She knows it was all a lie.”
“Oh, god,” I cried, imagining every worst-case scenario—how she found out, how she blamed me. As if my heart weren’t shredded enough, more layers flayed away when I thought of the woman I’d grown to love finding out I was a fraud. “She probably hates me.”
“Not at all, actually.”
“What?” I repeated, my voice still sharp and brittle.
“She explained that she knew from the very first time I lied,” he said, voice calm, “but didn’t say anything because it made Felix so happy.”
“Oh…” I said, dumbfounded.
“Yeah.” He laughed softly through his nose, incredulous, as if he couldn’t believe any of it himself. “She revealed all of this to me at the hospital before asking me to find a way to go through with the wedding before he passes. She let me know that she wasn’t above begging if it meant giving her husband his dying wish.”
“Oh…god,” I breathed.
I hated the idea of Grace being so desperate. But the image of her doing everything she could to make the man she loved happy flooded me with more warmth than I’d felt in weeks.
The image was painful, but oh so beautiful, too.
“So, I’m not asking you to do this for me, but for Felix,” he implored. “I know it’s a lot, and I know we need to talk—about last week and the way we ended things. I have so much to tell y—”
“I’ll do it,” I blurted.
“What?” He recoiled, shocked by my quick acceptance.
“I said I’ll do it.”
“You will?”
“Of course,” I confirmed. “Grace is right. We can do this for Felix.”
“Okay. Ummm.” He fumbled for words, clearly unprepared for me to actually accept.
But I didn’t want any words from him. The wave of panic that hit when he mentioned talking about anything prior to this moment blocked everything else out. A single no screamed through my mind. I didn’t want explanations for why he didn’t want me. I didn’t need more reasons for his actions. I didn’t need reminders of all the rules I’d broken.
So, I took control of the situation, cutting them off before they could rip me apart all over again. “We’ll do this. You don’t need to say anything else about it. We’ll get married and get an annulment afterward. No promises. No commitment. No big deal.” My words were clipped, each lie pushing past the lump threatening to choke them off.