Just Before My Wedding: Trapped By My Ruthless Boss novel Chapter 135

Chapter 135

KISAREL

“It’s today…” I forced a smile as I sat on my boss’s desk, patting his sleek, dark hair where his head rested on my thighs.

“Mhm.,” he said, his hands tightening around my waist.

His eyes were closed, his face turned slightly toward my stomach, and one of his hands had slipped under the edge of my blouse like he needed skin, not fabric.

I traced the line of his jaw and felt how rigid it was, how the muscle there kept ticking even with his eyes shut, and I knew this stillness wasn’t peace.

“You’re tense,” I said softly. My thumb moved along his temple.

His thumb paused against my waist. “I’m always tense.”

“No.” I brushed my fingers through his hair again, watching the black strands slip between my fingers. “Not like this. You’re panicking, aren’t you? I can feel it.”

He didn’t answer immediately.

“Are you scared?”

A breath left him slowly against my skin. “Yes.”

His honesty surprised me. Oceans Stark didn’t admit to fear. He admitted to inconveniences, to irritations, to other people’s failures – but never to fear.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I’m about to walk into something I’m not sure I’ll ever walk back out of.” He turned his head, resting his cheek against me.

He opened his eyes, but they were fixed on nothing. “Once it’s done, it’s done. There’s no quiet way out the other side.”

I kept stroking his hair, my attention fully returning to the office.

I had been distracted with my own thoughts… I texted Nessa last night to ask if I could spend the night at her place, but she never responded.

That was strange enough to keep me drifting off with my thoughts every now and then. But Oceans‘ vulnerability has managed to snap me out of it.

“Can I tell you something stupid?” he asked.

“You’ve told me stupider”

–

she

The corner of his mouth lifted a fraction. “For years, I told myself there was one woman I owed the rest of my life to.” His voice had gone low, like he was handling something fragile. “A long time ago, something happened. Someone changed everything about who I became. I spent years trying to find her again, telling myself that if I ever did, it would fix whatever’s been broken in me since then.”

My fingers slowed. He’d never spoken to me about anything from before. So, I listened.

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And a few weeks ago,” he went on, “I thought I’d finally found her. I was sure of it.” He paused, and something bitter crossed his face. “I thought the search was over. I thought… maybe that was the point. Maybe everything would finally arrange itself properly in my head. But all I felt was guilt.”

“Why?” I asked.

He looked up at me then, and what was in his eyes was so naked it frightened me.

“Because my soul had already chosen you before my past caught up with me.”

The room tilted very slightly.

“Oceans-”

“I know. Trust me, I do.” He pressed his lips briefly to the inside of my wrist, the one that still had no ring on it. “I’m not asking you to do anything with it. I just wanted to have said it out loud once before tonight.”

I had to look out the window for a second because my eyes had started to burn, and I didn’t want him to see it and stop talking.

There was so much I would have loved to say back. Like how I’d let myself fall for him somewhere in the last three days and couldn’t climb back out. And that I was terrified of who I was becoming.

But I couldn’t.

Instead, I bent and kissed the top of his head and swallowed all of it.

Tonight, he belonged to someone else, and adding my weight to a man already drowning felt like the one cruelty I could still spare him.

And if he was unraveling, then I should be the rein that held us together.

“Is anyone from your family coming tonight?” I asked instead, partly to change the subject before I broke.

He let out a breath and closed his eyes again. “I don’t have much family left. I stayed away from the few I have left.”

“I’m sorry.”

“My mother died the day I was born. She traded her life for mine in a delivery room and never got to hold me.” He said it flatly. “My father raised me alone after that. Worked himself half to death building something out of nothing” His jaw tightened. “We dreamed up SSC together. The two of us, in a hospital cafeteria, arguing over a name for a company that

r didn’t have a dollar behind it. He died before he saw one floor of it finished.”

I went still. I didn’t know what to do with this knowledge.

This was the first time he’d ever talked about his family.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, and meant it more than the words could hold. “I didn’t know any of that.”

“I know.” He said.

“This company must mean so much. I mean…” I paused and looked around his office. “It’s not just a company to you.”

“No.” His mouth tightened. “It’s the last thing my father and I built together.”

My chest ached.

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Chapter 135

Houched the side of his face, and he leaned into my palm for half a second.

“So why keep the rest of your family away?” I asked gently. “If they’re all you have left.”

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He let out a quiet breath. “Because they remind me too much of what I lost. My uncle has the whole thing I never got. A wife. Two sons. A house that’s happy and complete” His thumb moved absently over my hip. “Being around them is like standing outside a window watching the life that died with my parents. So I stay away. It’s easier than wanting it.”

“That’s a sad reason not to let people in, Oceans.” I touched his face. “It still isn’t enough to keep them from your own engagement.”

“I invited them, but there is a high chance they won’t be coming.” He let out a faint, dry breath. “My uncle, his wife, and their younger son.”

My brows pulled together. “What about the other son?”

He scoffed. “Cassian Stark?”

“If that’s his name, yes. Is he coming?”

“God. I hope not.” He said it without any humor in it at all.

2

“Why?”

A beat passed. “Cassian doesn’t do family dinners or engagement parties. He doesn’t do anything that requires him to sit in a room and pretend to feel something he doesn’t.” His gaze went distant. “Cassian only appears when something has already gone terribly wrong.”

A small chill moved through me that I couldn’t explain.

“You make him sound like a threat,” I said.

“Cassian Stark is a storm. He’s the only man who has ever called me an idiot and got away with it.” He scoffed. “The fucker doesn’t manage feelings. Can’t process one.”

I laughed. “Now I’m intrigued.”

He shrugged. “He is the only man in my family who can enter a room and make me look friendly.”

I shook my head. “That bad?”

“Worse.”

I nodded slowly. “You don’t like him?”

r

“I understand him.” He said. “He’s family. With Cassian, those have never been mutually exclusive.” He let it sit, then shook his head once, closing the door on it. “But he won’t come. He’s somewhere on the other side of the world, certainly ruining someone’s life as we speak. So, we won’t be that lucky or that unlucky tonight.”

I nodded slowly. “Okay, then.”

I didn’t know why the name stayed with me, but it did. Cassian.

Maybe because for the first time, I felt the edge of a whole other world connected to Oceans… A cousin who sounded like a storm. Well… Whatever it was, I’ll never be lucky to meet him, ever.

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ahosi forgot. Isaid, switching topics because this one was too sad for me. “My ring”

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For a few seconds, he said nothing. His thumb only brushed the inside of my waist absentmindedly, like the sight of my empty finger pleased some texible part of him.

“I like you better this way.” He lifted his gaze to look at me.

“Of course you do.” I rolled my eyes.

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