Just Before My Wedding: Trapped By My Ruthless Boss novel Chapter 88

Chapter 88

Chapter 88

OCEANS

For the first time in years, I was nervous.

I couldn’t tell if I was nervous because I was eager to hear the truth, or because I so badly didn’t want it to be Moonie.

For reasons my fucking self couldn’t tell, I just wish this was all a misunderstanding.

I wanted that watch to have passed through twenty wrong hands before landing in her bag. I wanted some pawn shop, some thief, some careless stranger, any explanation that did not end with Moonie being the woman I had searched for for six

years.

I hated this woman with a passion so hard it could consume an entire nation.

How the fuck was I supposed to live with it?

Love her?

Be grateful to her?

I stood by the window of the guest room–the one I had ordered cleaned for her and loosened my watch, buckled it back, and loosened it again. My fingers wouldn’t stay still. My jaw was clenched so tight I could feel it in my temples.

The room felt too hot because my pulse would not settle.

My phone rang, and it was Reeves. I swiped and answered.

“Speak.”

“It’s Miss Harry.” He said, and for a second, my blood ran cold.

“What about her?” I asked.

“She didn’t go to her new apartment.” He said.

“Where the fuck is she?” I pressed the phone harder to my ear, my head already painting possibilities that made my fingers tremble.

“She went to Elgin’s house.”

Oh. Fuck.

Here I was, thinking she was in danger.

“Then let her.” I said, “As I said, Reeves, she’s not the priority tonight.”

I dropped the call before he could say anything else.

The door opened behind me, and my men stepped in with Moonie between them. Her arms were held loosely, and she wasn’t fighting

One look at her and something in my stomach shifted.

Her face was swollen like she had been crying for hours. Her eyes were red, lashes wet, mascara faintly smudged beneath them. Tears were still running down her cheeks, and her lips trembled as she looked at me like the sight of me broke whatever small strength she had left.

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16:41 Fri, May 22 M

Chapter 88

I hated that it affected me.

I hated it.

“Get your hands off her,” I said.

The men released her immediately.

“Leave.”

The men released her immediately and filed out. The door clicked shut.

Moonie stood there for one second, swaying slightly, then broke down all over again. Her hand flew to her mouth, and a sob tore out of her like she had been holding it back with her teeth.

I stayed where I was.

For a moment, I genuinely did not know what to do.

This was Moonie.

The woman who annoyed me simply by breathing too close to my schedule. The woman whose name in my phone felt like an obligation. The woman who had never pulled any real emotion from me except irritation, boredom, and a kind of cold impatience.

And if the woman crying in front of me was the girl from that night, then every feeling I had ever had toward her was standing on a foundation that could crack beneath me.

“Moonie,” I said.

She shook her head, crying harder. “I can’t. I can’t do this.”

I crossed the room before I could think too hard about it.

Her knees buckled slightly, and I caught her by the arm. She flinched, then folded in on herself like my touch had opened another wound.

“Sit.”

My voice came out rougher than I meant it to.

I guided her to the couch and made her sit. She curled forward immediately, both hands covering her face, with her shoulders shaking.

“Stop crying.” I said.

She only cried harder.

I pressed my tongue to the inside of my cheek and looked away for half a second because the sound was doing something to my head.

If this were real, then I had left her bleeding on the pavement.

If this were real, then I had spent six years hating the woman who saved my life.

If this were real, then I had just walked into hell.

“Moonie.” I forced my voice lower. “Look at me.”

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16:41 Fri, May 22 M

Chapter 88

She tried. She really did. Her tear–filled eyes lifted to mine, then dropped immediately to the watch in my hand.

A fresh sob left her.

“I didn’t want to talk about it,” she whispered. “I never wanted to talk about it again.”

My heartbeat hit hard. “What happened?”

She shook her head so fast her hair fell around her face. “It was too much. I buried it. I had to bury it. I didn’t want anyone to know. I didn’t want my parents to know. I felt stupid for saving a stranger who couldn’t even say a simple thank you‘ to

me.”

My hand tightened around the watch.

Fuck.

She was the one.

I sat beside her, willing for my hands to stop shaking, but they didn’t.

“Tell me everything you remember.”

By the time Moon finished narrating all she went through that night, I was drowning in emotions.

I didn’t know which to feel.

She was the one.

She was.

Fuck.

“I had to beg one of my aunts for money for plastic surgery. To cover the scar. I couldn’t let my parents find out what happened. If they knew I had been there–if they knew I had been shot–they would have killed me.”

Her hand moved to her shoulder, pressing against the fabric of her dress.

She was a crying, sobbing mess as she ended her story.

I let the silence sit between us. I didn’t know what to say.

“Did

you

know who the man was?” I asked, my voice rough

Moonie looked at me through tears. “No.”

“You never tried to find out?”

“I was scared.” Her lips trembled. “I was young, Oceans. I had just been shot. I thought my father would kill me if he found out I ran away. I didn’t have room in my head for anything except surviving.”

I said nothing.

She wiped her cheek, but more tears followed immediately.

“I kept the watch because it was the only thing I had from that night. I didn’t know whose it was. I didn’t know if it belonged to the man or someone around him. I didn’t know why I couldn’t throw it away.” Her voice broke. “Somewhere in my heart, I just… it felt too wrong to let it go.”

16:41 Fri, May 22 M

Chapter 88

My heart slammed against my ribs.

“Fuck.”

I turned the watch over in my palm, exposing the initials at the back.

“O.S.”

Her eyes dropped to the initials, then returned to my face.

I watched the understanding reach her.

Slowly.

Beautifully.

Terribly.

“The man you saved.”

She looked up at me, confused and afraid.

“The man standing near the curb. The man the bullet was meant for.”

She nodded slowly. “Yes.”

“That was me.”

Her face emptied.

For a moment, she did not move.

Then her face emptied of everything except shock.

“No,” she whispered.

Her hand lifted to her mouth. Tears gathered again, fast and violent.

“No… Oceans…”

She looked down at the watch, then at me, and something in her expression cracked so completely I felt it under

my

ribs.

“It was you?” she breathed.

I could not speak.

She covered her mouth fully now, sobbing into her hand like the truth had torn open something she had spent years trying to bury.

“It was you,” she whispered again, and then she broke.

For the first time in a long time, words failed me completely.

And all I could say was. “Thank you.”

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