Chapter 19: The Confession
Martina closed her eyes.
Fresh tears streaming down her face.
“Why now?” she asked brokenly.
“Why couldn’t you have said this five years ago? Five months ago? Five weeks ago, before I met Marcus and started imagining a life where someone actually valued me?”
“Because I’m a fool,” Jordan said simply.
“Because I was comfortable. Because I had convinced myself that what we had—that professional partnership and late-night conversations and the way you looked at me like I mattered—was enough.”
“And then I saw you in crimson silk on another man’s arm. And I realized I’d built my entire life on a foundation of lies.”
“Nothing was enough, Martina. Nothing will ever be enough as long as you’re not mine.”
“I was always yours,” she whispered, opening her eyes to look at him.
“For five years, I was completely, pathetically yours.”
“Do you know how many times I almost quit? Because loving you and being invisible was killing me?”
“Do you know how many nights I went home and cried because you’d spend the evening telling me about your date with another woman? Asking my advice like I was your friend instead of the woman who would have given anything for you to see me that way?”
Her hands came up to grip his wrists. Holding him in place even as she destroyed him with words.
“I learned your coffee order and your mother’s birthday and the exact way you like your contracts formatted,” she continued.
Her voice raw with five years of buried pain.
“I learned how to read your moods from the set of your shoulders. I learned when you needed silence and when you needed distraction.”
“I learned everything about you, Jordan. Because I loved you so completely that becoming invisible felt like a small price to pay just to be near you.”
“Martina—”
“But then Marcus asked me about my favorite book,” she said, laughing through her tears.
“Such a simple question. And I realized you didn’t know. You’d never asked.”
“In five years, you’d never asked me what I like to read. Or what I did on weekends. Or what I wanted out of life beyond making your life easier.”
“And it broke something in me. Made me realize that loving you was turning me into a ghost. That I was disappearing into your life and losing myself completely.”
“What’s your favorite book?” Jordan asked desperately.
She laughed again, the sound broken and beautiful.
“Wuthering Heights. I love messy, complicated, impossible love stories. Where people destroy each other because they can’t find the words to just be honest.”
“Like us,” Jordan said.
“Like us,” she agreed.
