AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She steps back again and my hand slides from her chest. “This is your family. It’s not just you to think about. They’ll lose everything too. Can you live with yourself knowing that? You’ll resent me one day. Because without me, you could have saved it all.”
I force down the burning lump in my windpipe. She’s wrong. I could never resent her. But she’s also right. My family will lose everything if I can’t find another way. But that doesn’t mean what she’s doing is right.
“Don’t do this.”
“Tell Gabrielle you’ll marry her,” she whispers.
“What? No.”
She puts her fingers over my lips and presses a kiss to the back of them while they’re between us like a barrier. Her watery eyes are glistening with a million broken-hearted, unspoken words.
“Please, Logan. I want you to be okay. I want you to live your dream. For Vex to work. I…” Her voice cracks. “Tell Gabrielle. You like her. You’ll love her one day too. And you’ll love the beautiful children you’ll both have. I don’t deserve you, Logan.”
I grab her wrist and pull her hand away to plead with her to stop. To tell her she’s fucking crazy. But the finality in her eyes makes my stomach clench.
“Tell her. Please, Logan.”
“I can’t,” I choke. “I’ll do anything for you. But not this. Don’t ask me to do this.”
She looks into my eyes as I flail around for reasons to convince her to stop. For anything I can say that will talk sense into her.
“Marrying Gabrielle won’t even work now. Not without the funding. If Vex is ruined, then Spencer’s offer is gone. He can’t fund it himself. The cost is huge.”
“How much do you need?”
“What?”
“You said you can make Vex happen if you get some of the funds back, and that Spencer might be able to add the rest. How much have you lost? What do you need to make it work?”
“It’s irrelevant, Mads. It’s—”
“How much, Logan?”
I drag a hand around the back of my neck. “Twenty… Fifteen. I could do it with another fifteen million.”
She nods gravely, then looks away. “You should go home.”
“No. We need to talk about this. We need to—”
“Please, Logan,” she whispers. “Don’t make this any harder than it already is.”
I freeze, staring at her as she refuses to meet my eyes. How did we go from grabbing at each other and pulling each other as deep into one another to this? How does anything so good and so right fall apart in a matter of minutes?
“Mads?”
“Please.” She slaps her hand over her mouth and shakes her head hard, still not looking at me.
I search her face one last time, looking for a softening, a small sign that tells me I can convince her otherwise. But there’s nothing. I won’t get anywhere tonight. I know Maddy. I’ll leave her to calm down. Come back tomorrow and talk to her then.
Although the sinking in my gut tells me that nothing will ever have settled. I could have lost more investors by the morning. Things could be worse than they are now. But no matter how bad they get nothing can compare to the gut-wrenching pain of seeing Maddy like this. Hearing her tell me to go and have a life with someone else. Have a family with someone else. Someone who isn’t her.
Nothing.
I trail my eyes over her tear-stained face one last time, but she won’t meet my eyes. I go into the hallway, dragging on my cold, wet clothes. She doesn’t come out after me.
I walk back into the bedroom and she’s standing in the exact same spot. I go to her, closing my eyes as I wrap a hand around the back of her neck and press a kiss to her forehead.
“You think I’m going to be poor with no business? No money? You’ve got it all wrong.”
