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CHAPTER NINETEEN
Cait
“Cait!” He called out, racing after me.
“Please leave me alone, Aidan,” I sobbed as he closed the library door behind us. I shouldn’t have come in here. There was no way out.
Shit!
“Can’t do that, Clover,” he said. I glanced at him. His face was crumpled… full of lines.
“Why not?” I glared. I didn’t care if he was upset. “You left me alone for ten years. Now I’m giving you what you want, I’m leaving.”
“It’s not what I want.”
“What?” I snapped.
This man…
“I don’t want you to leave, Cait. I don’t. I thought I was protecting you, but I just realized I’ve been doing the opposite.”
I scoffed, throwing my hands in the air. He was fucking impossible.
“I was in love with you too,” he suddenly yelled, throwing his hands out in reckless abandon. “It scared the shit out of me. So I ran,” he grated, his brow screwing up.
What?
My breath left me in one go.
What had he just said?
Shock rendered me speechless.
“I shouldn’t have run, not from you, Cait. You were the only one who saw me. The only one who cared. That night in the Hamptons was the best of my life.” He crossed the room to grab my hands, but I pulled them away. I couldn’t have him touching me right now, but in typical pushy Aidan fashion, he grabbed my wrists, forcing me to look at him. He ducked so he could look me directly in the eye, and I saw the sincerity there. “I was in love with you too.”
Hearing those words… it was all I’d wanted for so long. Now I didn’t know how to feel. Why had he chosen now to bring this up? I’d just agreed to do what he wanted, and now he was changing his fucking mind again!
“Was?” My voice came out all husky and cracked as it struggled to get around the lump of tears in my throat.
“I never stopped. Not once.”
He still loved me?
My cheeks started to burn. What was I supposed to do with that information?
I chewed on my lip, searching for any sign that this was all just a trick. His moods flip flopped around so much, I couldn’t keep up… perhaps this was just another way to break me further.
Yes. Surely that was it.
“I just couldn’t take any more heartbreak,” he continued. “When my father announced that he was taking responsibility for you, I knew I was going to have to let you go. I knew it was going to kill me to see you every day and have to push you away. I knew my father would never accept it and Bree…”
“We could have made it work, we could ha-”
“And that’s exactly why I left, Cait. I knew you wouldn’t understand why I was doing it, and I knew I didn’t have the self-control to resist you.”
“That’s a shitty excuse.” I scowled at him, and a small smile tugged at the corner of his lip. He dropped his gaze away, looking at the floor, and I even saw a flash of pink in his cheeks.
“Maybe, but it’s the truth.”
