And what’s underneath hurts infinitely more. “It’s dangerous, Cece.” The fight drains from his voice. “You can’t…” He swallows. His eyes shine with something desperate. “Please, you just can’t.”
I know exactly how terrified he is. I know his heart is probably trying to claw its way out of his chest.
But instead of comforting him, I laugh. And the glare he pins me with nearly makes me choke on it.
“You can’t keep doing this to me, baby,” he says hoarsely. His voice is unraveling. “First, it was the balcony. Then you stopped caring about your portfolio crashing. Now this.”
His concern needles under my skin. Makes something soft and embarrassed twist painfully in my chest. Makes me want to retreat into the version ofmyself that used to lean into him instead of pushing him away.
But that version feels far away now. Seroquel is long gone from my bloodstream. The filters are gone with it.
So instead, I spread my arms wide. A sneer curls across my lips.
“This is me,” I say, smiling without humor. “In all my bipolar glory.” I tilt my head. “Still love me, Levi?”
The answer comes so fast it almost startles me. “Every.Fucking. Version.”
The force of it rattles my heart. And for a moment, I forget how to breathe.
I laugh again, but the sound scrapes painfully against my throat because it’s unnaturally forced.
His expression twists into grief. “You’re not making it easy to be with you right now,” he says. His hands clamp around my shoulders when he nears me. His grip is hard enough to hurt. Hard enough that I know he’s barely holding himself together. “And I know it’s my own damn fault that you’re pushing me away like this.” His breathing grows uneven. “I know I earned every bit of it.”
The anger disappears entirely. All that’s left is the raw fear. “But don’t think for a second that I don’t love you.” His voice cracks. “I can love you from afar, Cece. I can love you while you’re angry. I can love you while you’re spiraling. I can love you when you get back up.” His fingers tighten enough to bruise. “But I can’t breathe—” His words splinter entirely.
He looks away for a second before forcing himself to meet my eyes again. “I can’t fucking live if you wrap your car around a pole one of these days. Do you understand?”
The question hangs between us. But I genuinely don’t have a smart answer waiting on my tongue. I don’t even want to think about the effect my recklessness has on him.
So I simply mumble a response I don’t fully trust. “Yeah, I understand.”
He seems to accept that little token of relief.
He absolutely shouldn’t have.
THIRTY
Levi
“And Cahill?” I snap, a little too harshly for a winding down, Friday evening.
“He’s on your side,” Jasper reassures me before throwing a cautious glance toward Ronald, my VP of Operations. “For the most part.”
I sigh and rub my eyes so roughly that my headache loosens its grip for a fraction of a second.
“I need both Cahill and Huxley for this to work, Jasper.”
“And I’ve already talked to Benjamin Huxley, Levi,” Taewon’s voice comes through the conference room speakers. “We’ve got nine of the major stakeholders. You’ve got this.”
Sniffing hard, I nod reluctantly. “Then it’s settled. I’ll resign next week. Ronald and Daniel can divide the workload.”
Ronald swallows hard and looks around the roomwarily. “Are you sure? This is… risky. I can’t promise the fort will still be standing, Levi. Acting CEO won’t give me enough authority. You know that.”
“I know,” I mumble.
Every word is weighed down by so much uncertainty that I can barely tell where the line between calculated risk and outright negligence begins.
Taewon is fully on my side and relentlessly optimistic. Ronald, meanwhile, keeps presenting the vulnerabilities and worst-case scenarios that make me question my own sanity.
