The CEO's Regret: Darling, Don’t Leave Me novel Chapter 71

Chapter 49: I Will Not Give Up.–1

Ethan

A few hours later.

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I didn’t think about it, if I had, I wouldn’t have gone. But that night the emptiness was too great, too much noise in the head, too much memory in the body.

I drove to her building without a plan, without a speech, without pride. Yes, after that encounter at the meeting, I went back to her apartment. I did it purely on impulse… Each floor the elevator indicated was a question…

What if she’s not there? What if she’s with him? What if she slams the door in my face?

All the questions made sense to me, but I refused to give them an answer.

When the doors opened, my pulse was already out of control.

I rang the doorbell, for a second… Two, three times and when I thought there was no one there, the door opened.

Clara.

When I saw her there, no heavy makeup, loose hair, wide sweater… Barefoot…

What did I come here for? Why am I supposed to be here?

I swallowed loudly at the conspicuous impression in her eyes.

I looked at their feet and saw them like this, naked, like before… Like at home, it was, it was

strange.

She looked at me in surprise.

“Ethan… what are you doing here?”

I didn’t answer, because if I spoke, I would regret it.

I took a step, she barely backed away, but not afraid… With warning.

“It’s not a good idea for you to be here.”

There it was. She immediately marked the distance, that transparent line, but one that separates us.

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Chapter 49: I Will Not Give Up–1

“I can’t keep pretending that this isn’t affecting me,” I said at last.

My voice didn’t sound firm. It sounded real. Her eyes barely changed.

“You shouldn’t come like that.”

“I shouldn’t have let you go.”

Silence.

The sentence was suspended between us, she took a deep breath.

Her eyes spoke before her own voice.

“That was a long time ago, Ethan.”

“Not for me.”

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She took a step toward the door, as if she were going to close it. And something inside me

broke.

I couldn’t handle a door more closed in my face, I couldn’t help but see once again the possibilities slipping through my fingers.

So, I just did. I grabbed her face, not violently. I took it with contained desperation and… yes… Maybe it happened fast, but in my head it happened too slow.

I looked at her mouth, I remembered the softness in my fingers, I remembered her taste. I remembered at that moment why I had come here, yes, that’s what I came for.

I came to kiss her… And I did, I kissed her.

It wasn’t a calculated kiss, it was a shock. One touch, we pressed our lips together, but she’s there because of how I pressed her face. Years compressed into a second, her mouth tightened at first. Her rigid body.

And then…

An instant, a second… a damned instant where it was reciprocated.

Where her lips moved against mine as if bodily memory had won.

That was enough to set me on fire.

I pulled her closer, I felt her breathing quicken.

My heart goes crazy and I swallow loudly. I felt the warmth of her body against mine.

The memory of how we fit in, my mind screamed for me to stop.

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Chapter 49. I Will Not Give Up.–1

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My body didn’t want to, the kiss got deeper… More urgent, not soft, not romantic…

Painful.

Like two people trying to prove that there is still something alive.

Her hand gripped my shirt, and for a second–a second–I believed there was hope.

That little hold of her hand to my shirt, I felt it as a possibility… But the hope was short–lived. Until she pushed me, and not hard, but she was firm.

She pulled away and her lips were red. Her irregular breathing.

Her eyes… full of something that was not indifference.

“Don’t do this,” she whispered.

“Tell me you didn’t feel anything.”

Wrong.

“Don’t go back to my house again, and I don’t want that, I don’t want to… Don’t do that again.”

I saw how she passed her hand through her mouth. Then, she said no more.

And her silence was more honest than any answer.

“Clara…”

“You can’t show up when you want and mess everything up,” she said at last.

“I never stopped loving you.”

The phrase came out without a filter, without a strategy… It was the truth, the harsh truth.

She closed her eyes for a second.

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Chapter 49: I Will Not Give Up.–2

That destroyed me more than if she had screamed.

“Wanting was not enough,” she replied.

And then I understood something brutal.

I’m not fighting Alexander, I’m fighting what I broke myself.

I approached her again, not to kiss her. To lean my forehead against hers.

“Tell me it’s too late,” I murmured.

Her breath was crashing against my mouth.

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I wanted to kiss her once again, I wanted my hands to touch her bare skin, I wanted to take off her clothes and make love to her. I wanted to make her mine, but this time giving her pleasure only by myself… suddenly the thought that someone else could… tears me apart.

I snapped out of my thoughts; that would drive me even crazier than I already am.

“Ethan…”

She did not finish the sentence. But this time I didn’t interrupt her, because if I kiss her again… I cross a line that can break it more.

I let her go.

I took a step back, she stood still. But with the chest going up and down.

“I’m not going to give up,” I said, more to myself than to her.

And this time it wasn’t pride, it was fear. Real fear of losing her forever.

I left the apartment with the taste of her lips still in my mouth. And I knew that there is no turning back.

Because after that kiss… Nothing is going to be professional again, nothing is going to be simple again.

And the worst thing is that I now know for sure that she still affects me.

The question is…

Will that bring her closer to me?

Or will it push her straight toward him?

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Her door won’t close, I didn’t hear the door slam, so I slowed my steps and turned. She was there, she was watching me.

“I know you,” she said, looking at me. “I know you. You come just because, what went wrong?

huh?”

I didn’t understand what she meant.

“You’re not doing this because you feel bad. Ethan Blackwood is the least empathetic person, you… I know you didn’t feel bad. You never felt bad when you pushed me aside. You’re certainly not going to feel bad now.”

Each word was a clean blow.

“Yes,” I replied before my pride intervened. “I know. I accept it. Sorry. I did it wrong. I wasn’t… I wasn’t there for you.”

Her gaze changed, it did not soften.

It became harder.

“You weren’t there in every way.”

That hurt differently.

“I felt ignored for a long time,” she continued. “Being your shadow… and not even as your shadow dresses me.”

I wanted to interrupt her, to justify myself… Explain, but for the first time, I forced myself to

listen.

“I got carried away with work,” I said at last, knowing that it sounded weak even to me.

“Work?” she repeated, incredulous. “It wasn’t just work, Ethan. There were so many things that-” She ran her hand through her hair, frustrated. “Ugh, it’s not worth it anymore.”

That turned me on.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Wrong.

I saw it in her eyes immediately.

“Tell you what?” she answered, stepping a step toward me. “Tell you how you should treat your wife?”

Silence. That blow was hard.

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“I’m not a child who needs instructions,” she continued. “I didn’t have to explain to you that I wanted you to have dinner with me. I didn’t have to ask you to look at me when I spoke to

I didn’t have to beg you to touch me as you should have…”

you.

My throat closed.

“I thought you were all right,” I murmured.

“Of course you thought that. Because it was easier to think that.”

She came closer.

Now there was no distance.

What actually happened, is I thought she would never leave.

“Do you know how many times I went to sleep alone while you were in that office? Do you know how many times I waited for you to leave the studio, even if it was five minutes?” Her voice was no longer filled with anger. It was the accumulated weariness of her. “I got used to competing with your schedule. To see you arrive and not give me a look later, after waiting for you.”

I wanted to get closer, but she raised her hand… She didn’t let me.

“I, I was building something for us. You know it.”

“No. Don’t lie,” she shook her head. “You were building it for yourself.”

That went through me.

“Everything I did was to give us stability, to grow…”

“And what good is stability to me if I felt invisible? Ethan, I know that the moment we decided to get married, love wasn’t planted between the two of us, but you know something? I did love you…”