The CEO and Fate✔️

Chapter 28 (The End)

As highly requested: Blake's POV ;)

Alexa stumbled into the kitchen late tonight. It was dark, but her frame was easy to identify. I think she almost tripped from exhaustion trying to find the lights.

I watched her with worry. Usually, I was the one that never left my office, but her job was keeping her up later and later, and I could see it wearing her down more and more as the nights passed on.

She was sleeping every free moment she got. Between her job, the social calendar of my job, and the wedding planning, the stress was become an addiction for her.

A year ago, when we first got engaged, I offered to give her a job at my company to avoid precisely this problem. Jake very generously said she could work for him if she didn't want to see my face at home and at work, which earned him a flick on the forehead from me, but she refused both of our offers. Instead, she insisted that she wanted to go out and earn her way.

A nice thought, yes, but now it was turning into a problem. More specifically, it was now interrupting date night—we only had three of them left before the wedding. 

Something definitely had to be done.

I had kept the penthouse lights dark, wanting to keep her from seeing the dinner, which had long gone cold, but now, I used it as my cover to sneak up on her. When she was least expecting it, trying only to set her purse down on the counter, I slid up from behind and wrapped my arms around her waist.

She gasped. Her small frame fit easily to mine.

I instantly pressed a kiss to the top of her head, and, after a moment, she sagged into my arms.

"I'm going to kill Walter," I cursed, feeling the way her limbs trembled.

She shook her head. "He's not the problem, and you know it, Blake, so don't try and pull the tough guy act on me." She turned around, snaked her arms around my torso, and buried her face into the hollow space between my shoulders and neck. "I've done it to myself."

I frowned. Walter was most definitely the problem, I disapproved of him more than I had disliked Zane. But Zane's only threat to me was that he was good-looking. Walter had found a different way to irritate me—keeping Alexa working as late as he had the power to.

And the worst part of his tactic was that it was working. Very few things got to me the way this was. He'd found my weakness, and he was pushing me to see how long it would take before I would break.

I slipped a finger under her chin and tilted it, forcing her big brown eyes to stare deeply into me. When I did that, I knew she saw everything. And a year ago, that would have terrified me, but things were different. I wanted her to see every part of me, every broken piece of me that she'd mended, the good and the bad.

"Let's get you to bed," I said. My voice sounded cold and foreign. I was attempting to conceal the fury at Walter in my voice, but she probably mistook it to be directed towards her.

She blinked. "What? No," she said weakly, "it's date night. I can still watch a movie."

I shook my head. "Not tonight. Just go to bed. You can make it up to me tomorrow."

"But Walter's yearly conference with his investors is tomorrow," she muttered. "I'm the one running the whole thing."

"You think I don't know that? I'm one of those supposed investors."

She sighed. "Oh, yeah."

I snorted.

Before she could move, I knelt down and scooped her up in my arms. One hand under her knees and the other wrapped protectively around her rib cage.