"𝗜 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗹 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲."
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Elena's life is flipped upside down when her sister runs away on her wedding day and she is forced to marry her husband who despises her.
He hates her with...
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|Sebastian Ferguson|
The silence between Elena and I stretched for so long that it reached a point of maximum discomfort.
She softly sniffled before finally speaking. "How long have you known?"
How long had I known? I couldn't answer that question precisely because I didn't know when exactly.
"Please, say something," her voice softly cracked. "Your silence is killing me."
Her secret burdened her and made her feel things that reflected exhaustion. I too was exhausted from forcing myself to ignore the reality of her relationship with Xavier and what that inevitably meant to ours.
"I'd always had my suspicions from the beginning," I opened up to her.
I'd be a fool to have missed the lingering gazes, accidental brushes and palpable tension between them. Now that I was admitting it and openly talking to her about it, it felt so obvious it didn't feel like a secret anymore.
She looked at me, her glistening eyes softening more as she hugged her knees.
I looked back at her with a small smile. I needed to free her too from whatever negative feeling she felt attached to her relationship with Xavier, difficult as it felt for me.
"I became certain you two were in a special relationship that day I picked you up from the camp and told you Xavier wasn't feeling well."
I remembered that day vividly—the concern and fear in her eyes, the panic in her steps when I dropped her off by his penthouse.
I'd seen it so clearly that for a second, I envied him. I envied the way she cared so much about him it took her breath away and made her words incoherent.
I couldn't remember a time in my life when someone had been so concerned about me. Perhaps that was why it amused me so much and I put myself in a position where I craved to feel even a fraction of that care.
Now that I had it, I felt so greedy I couldn't stop myself from the aching desperation of craving more—an eternity of that care.
Of course, that was impossible because I knew I was a few minutes away from giving it all away and ripping off the band-aid once and for all.
"Do you love him?"
I'd wondered for days since I opened up myself to the idea of their relationship. What was it really that they shared? Love? Lust? Friendship? Did she wish she'd been in this predicament with him instead of me?
The answer was obvious. I treated her so cruelly at a time when I could have reached out to her warmth first. I wouldn't choose myself either.
"I care about him," she responded with a soft sigh. "I care about him a lot."
