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I pull away from her, staring at her in disbelief. She laughs, but there’s no humor in her eyes.
“You find that harder to believe than me cheating on you?”
I run a hand through my hair, unsure of what to say or think.
“Tell me you love me, Alec. Tell me you love me, too, and I’ll rip these divorce papers up right now. Hell, tell me you feelanythingfor me, that you think youmightlove me someday, and I’ll stay.”
After everything she and I have been through, after everything we’ve seen… how could she even believe in love? How could she ask it of me?
“Alexander,” she says, her voice trembling. She slips off my desk and straightens out her clothes, her head hanging low. “I’ve spent my entire life loving people that didn’t love me back. I won’t do it again. I won’t. Not even for you.”
She looks back at me before she walks away, her eyes dropping to the divorce papers on my desk before the door closes behind her.
Chapter 58
Elena
I stand at the entrance of the house I grew up in, everything feeling unfamiliar. I walk up the stairs to what used to be my childhood bedroom and pause in the doorway, shocked. My entire room has been converted into a walk-in closet, not a single one of my belongings remaining.
I walk into the room, my fingers tracing over the brand-new dressers that replaced all my furniture. There are over a dozen rooms in this house—there was no need whatsoever to wipe away every memory of my childhood.
I sink down to my knees in the middle of my room, tears filling my eyes. My head drops down to the thick carpet, and I let myself fall apart for the first time in years, hot tears streaming down my face. A sob tears through my throat and I try my hardest to keep it in, but I fail. All I accomplish is choking on my tears, my lungs burning. All the while, my heart feels like it’s in physical pain. I’ve never felt thisbroken.
I curl into a ball, my heart shattered beyond repair. I’ve lost so much in the last couple of years, and every time my heart broke, I lost a little part of it, leaving my heart forever incomplete. It wasn’t until Alec that I dared to hope.
“Honey?”
My mother strokes my arm, and I look up. I sniff, and she holds her arms out for me. I hug her, and she holds me tightly.
“Mom… it just hurts so much.”
She nods and holds me closer, my head against her chest, both of us seated on the floor.
“I know, honey. I know it does. You’ve been so strong, so brave, for so long. Elena, my darling, I’m so proud of you.”
Her words just make me cry harder. I almost lost my mother too. What would I have done if I did? I’d have been all alone, without a single person who truly loved me. Without anything to live for.
“Honey, you’re breaking my heart. What happened, Elena? Why did you suddenly want to move out of the Kennedy’s residence? What’s going on with Alec and you?”
I sit up and wipe at my tears furiously, unable to stop them from falling. “I… he doesn’t love me, Mom. Maybe I’m foolish for leaving, but it’s all I want. I just want to come first to someone. For once, I just want to be the center of someone’s universe. I want to be all someone can see. And maybe it isn’t possible, maybe that doesn’t exist, but being with Alec, knowing that he used to love someone that way, and perhaps still does, knowing he can’t give me even a fraction of what he used to feel for her? It killed me slowly, Mom.”
Mom leans in and brushes away my tears, a smile on her face. “I see,” she says, her voice soft. “And does Alec still love this girl?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know, Mom. I don’t think so. I don’t know. All I know is that he doesn’t love me the way he loved her, and he never will.”
She rises and holds her hand out to me. I take it from her, inhaling shakily, trying my best to stop my tears from falling.
“Come on, sweetie. Crying on the floor of your old bedroom isn’t going to help you. Let’s go.”
“Where are we going?”
Mom smiles. “To Jade’s room.”
She pulls me along and walks to the room that used to be hers. My heart twists painfully. I’ve been so absorbed in my own pain that I didn’t even stop to think about how hard this must be for Mom. Being confronted with the evidence of my father’s affair, with all the years she’s lost, it can’t be easy. Yet she smiles as she enters her old bedroom.
She looks around and laughs. “God, so tacky,” she says, her eyes roaming over the room. I grin, my tears forgotten. She isn’t wrong. The frilly bed sheets are so gaudy.
Mom picks up some of Jade’s cosmetics and stares at them. Then she smiles and pulls her arm back, throwing it all against the wall with as much force as she can muster.
