The CEO's Regret: Darling, Don’t Leave Me novel Chapter 103

Chapter 81: It’s Not a “Simple” Coffee. 1

Ethan:

When the door opened and saw her there, with two coffees in her hands, I thought I was imagining things.

Clara in my office, Clara in my building. Clara crossing this door as if time had not passed.

I’m still processing it, the glass is hot between my fingers. I look at the label.

It’s from the café across the street, the same as always. The one she and I frequented when she needed ten minutes of air between impossible meetings.

I take another sip.

The taste is exactly the same as always. Intense. Bitter. Perfectly balanced.

And yet… It tastes different, deeper, more… significant.

I find myself wondering something ridiculous: did they change the recipe? Or does it just taste better because she brought it in?

I watch her as she talks, as she tries to sound casual. She says she was close. That he passed by the cafeteria. That she thought of me.

She thought of me.

After last night, last night. The image hits me without warning, the door opening.

Her smile directed at me, and then… Alexander. In its living room, roses. The glass of wine… Their

comfortable, installed presence.

My chest tightens again, just like it did then; it wasn’t the scene itself. It was what it symbolized.

Intimacy, shared time, possibility.

I told myself that I had no right to feel jealous, we are nothing official, not after everything we broke up. But when I saw those roses on the table, when I saw that cup in his hand, sornething inside me reacted

with brutal clarity.

I’m losing her, not as a wife. That has already happened… I’m losing it as an opportunity.

As a future.

The image of the wine is not erased from me, the two of them alone in their living room. Talking, maybe

laughing.

Alexander is not an impulsive man. He is patient, strategic. If it’s there with flowers, it’s not improvisation, it’s intention. And that intention bothered me more than I want to admit.

Not out of pride, out of fear.

enter

I return to the present when Clara finishes speaking. Her voice anchors me back to the office. She’s standing in front of me, real. Here.

26. Points

She brought me coffee, that has to mear something. I take another sip, trying to organize the internal chaos.

I don’t want to ruin this moment, I don’t want to sound possessive. But the question burns me inside.

I look at her.

She holds my gaze with that mixture of firmness and fragility that always disarms me.

I say this before I lose courage.

“Are you and Alexander on something?”

The silence that follows is heavy.

I take a deep breath.

“I know I shouldn’t ask,” I add at once. “I’m not the one to do it, but… It’s just curiosity.”

A lie, it’s not just curiosity. It’s a necessity, I need to know if I’m late. I need to know if I’m fighting a memory… or against a man present.

She doesn’t respond immediately. And every second feels like a sentence.

My mind returns again to the night before, its dimly lit room.

The red roses, the damn wine served… Alexander standing when I entered.

Sure.

The kind of man who doesn’t improvise feelings, the kind of man who offers stability.

And I… the man who made her feel inadequate. I squeeze the glass without realizing it.

I don’t want her to notice what this affects me, but it does affect me.

More than it should.

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to,” I added, softening my tone. “Only… I prefer to know where I

stand.”

There it is.

The naked truth, I don’t want to underestimate a situation again. I don’t want to assume that I still have a privileged place in her life just because we share history.

If Alexander already occupies a real space… I need to know.

Because this time I’m not going to stand still watching someone else build what I let fracture.

I watch her in silence, coffee is no longer the only thing that burns. It’s my pride… My fear.

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– Chapte BL #Nat & “Simplendamen

And this absurd hope that was born when I saw her walk through that door with two glasses in her hands.

If she came all the way here, if she remernbered how I drink rny coffee….

Maybe I’m not out of the game yet. But if she says yes… If she tells the that they are on to something…

I don’t know if I’ll be ready to listen to it, and yet I don’t look away.

I prefer a truth that breaks me… to a doubt that consumes mie

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Chapter 81: It’s Not a “Simple” Coffee. 2

She doesn’t look away when she answers.

“No. We are nothing. We’re just colleagues,”

The air I was holding in my lungs comes out without me noticing.

It’s not total relief, but it’s something. I watch her for a second longer, looking for cracks. Doubts. Something that contradicts her words. I can’t find them.

Then the question that burned me all night comes out on its own.

“And the flowers?”

She barely blinks.

“He wanted to have a nice gesture with me.”

I clench my jaw.

A nice gesture.

“It looked like a date,” I blurted out before measuring my tone.

Her eyes widen with genuine surprise.

“No. It wasn’t… I didn’t know he was going to my apartment.”

The image returns again. The door opening… She smiling before she sees me.

That’s what hurt me the most.

Not Alexander, not the wine. It was her smile anticipating someone.

“Clara…” My voice drops a little, but it doesn’t lose its firmness. “A man should not be in an unmarried woman’s apartment at that time.”

The words come out harsher than I planned.

She tenses.

I notice it in the way she straightens her shoulders.

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“Because you’re a single woman, Clara,” I continued, holding her gaze. “And even less so by drinking wine.”

Silence, thick and dangerous.

As soon as I say it, I know I’ve crossed a line. Not because of what I think, but because of how it sounded.

I am not her husband, I have no right to dictate rules. But the idea of Alexander comfortable in her living room, at night, with a drink in his hand… it provokes a primitive reaction in me that I can’t soften.

She looks at me now differently, not surprised.

Chapte 01

But evaluating me.

““Excuse me?” she says, and her tone is colder than before

There it is, the mistake.

I run a hand through my hair, frustrated with myself.

“I’m not saying this to control you,” I clarified, lowering my voice. “It’s just… I don’t like it‘

Raw honesty.

“I don’t like to imagine him there with you.”

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