The CEO's Regret: Darling, Don’t Leave Me novel Chapter 84

Chapter 62: More Closeness?-1

Clara

Packing has always given me a sense of order.

Folding clothes. Close zippers. Classify what is necessary from what can stay.

But this time there is no order. I just weigh.

The suitcase is open on the bed and I have been sitting in front of it for several minutes without moving.

The house is quieter than usual. Mom has tried to fake normalcy all day. Me too… But we both know that

this is another farewell.

Not definitive, not tragic. But it is painful.

“You have to go back,” she said to me last night, while we were drinking tea in the kitchen.

As if she was reading my thoughts.

“I know.”

And I really know it.

The company is not going to run itself. The contract in New York is not going to wait forever. There are

decisions I have to make, even if it still hurts to breathe without feeling like something is missing.

Still, leaving her here… It makes me feel guilty.

As if I were abandoning her in the middle of the shipwreck.

I go downstairs with the suitcase rolling behind me. Mom is in the hallway. She looks more fragile than

she tries to appear.

We hug longer than usual.

“I’ll be fine,” she assures me.

I’m not completely convinced.

But I understand that staying is not going to give us back what we lost either.

Alexander calls me after a while. It has been constant these days. Right. Present. Careful.

“I can accompany you,” he says in one of his messages. “Or I can come pick you up on the weekend, if you prefer.”

He says it naturally, but there is something about his tone that is no longer completely neutral.

I look at the screen and I feel that gentle pressure, that expectation that begins to grow.

It’s not his fault, it’s logical.

Chapter 62 More Closeness? 1

We have shared time. Conversations. Proximity.

But right now everything inside me is too scrambled to add anything else.

“No need, Alexander, reply softly. “I can handle it.”

“It doesn’t bother me,” he insists, barely.

“I know.”

“But I need–space.”

I do not say this as a reproach. I say that as truth.

The tension hardly changes. It is not open disappointment. It is forced understanding.

“I understand,” he says finally.

And I know he tries.

+25 Points

But I also know that he perceives the same thing as I do, something is changing, and not necessarily in his

faver.

We got into the car. The journey to the airport is smooth. We talked about work, about pending, about the inevitable. None of them touches on the emotional issue that was suspended between us days ago.

When she drops me off at the terminal, she hugs me. It is a correct, warm embrace. But different.

It doesn’t destabilize me, it doesn’t shake me inside. And that, at this moment, tells me more than I would

like to admit.

The plane takes off and I look out the window as the city grows smaller.

Return to New York. A few weeks ago that idea would have meant distance, a gap.

Ethan there. Me here. A clear line between what was and what is.

but now… Now I don’t feel that distance in the same way.

Something has changed these days.

We don’t talk about ourselves, we didn’t resolve the past. We didn’t promise anything.

But there is a new closeness. Quieter. More honest.

We are no longer two people who avoid looking at each other. We are two people who have shared silence, grief, difficult decisions. That unites, more than I imagined.

I lean back in the seat and close my eyes. I remember the hug at the door, the way he held me. The unexpected calm I felt and that worries me.

Because if I go back to New York with that feeling in my chest, everything will be different.

I will not be able to pretend that we are simple ex–spouses who coincide on business. Not after what I saw

213

Chapter 62 More Closeness? !

in his eyes these days. Not after feeling protected again.

+25 Points>

The question is not whether there is something between us, the question is what am I going to do with it.

Comments

LUCK DRAW

Vote

133

Chapter 62 More Closeness? 2

+25 Points

Chapter 62: More Closeness?-2

The plane lands and, as the noise of the city envelops me again, I understand it clearly…

To return is not to return to the same place.

New York remains the same. But I don’t, and the gap between me and Ethan is no longer as wide as it

once was.

That should scare me. But, deep down, what I feel is not fear… It is an expectation.

New York always sounds… Mermaids. Traffic. Voices. Elevators going up and down at all hours.

But today, when I walk into the building, it feels strange.

Too quiet.

The doorman greets me with that usual courtesy and I take the elevator alone. The reflection in the mirror

brings back to me a version of myself that I still don’t quite recognize. More tired. More adult. More…

exposed.

When the door to my apartment opens, the air smells the same as ever. Clean wood, old coffee, routine.

I close the door behind me and the sound resonates more than it should.

This was where I convinced myself that I was fine alone.

I walk slowly around the living room, run my fingers over the back of the sofa, leave my suitcase next to

the wall.

And then the phone vibrates. A small sound, but enough to tense me.

I take it out of my bag almost without thinking, his name on the screen. Ethan.

Just three line…

“Did you arrive?”

It is absurd that something so simple should throw me off.

Before he didn’t ask, before he could spend a whole day without hearing from me and it didn’t seem to

affect him.

I was the one sending messages. The one that confirmed, the one that tried to hold conversations that

cooled down. And now… Now it is he who asks.

I feel something in my chest, it’s not pain.

It’s a gentle pressure, as if my heart doesn’t know how to adjust to this new version of him.

The first reaction is nostalgia.

The memory of the past comes without permission; me waiting for attention, waiting for interest, waiting

1/2

Chapter 62–More–Closeness? 2

for that minimal gesture that now seems so natural. But I shake my head.

I don’t want to stay in what wasn’t, I want to look at what was.

+25 Points

In the hardest moment of my life… he was there. He did not hesitate, he did not disappear. He did not stay

on the sidelines.

He took charge, he held my mother. He solved paperwork, slept little. He worked from my home without

invading.

He hugged me without demanding, that’s real. That happened. And it is worth more than any incomplete

memory.

I look at the screen again.

The word “Did you arrive?” seems bigger than it is.

I take a deep breath. My fingers move before my mind puts together a complicated speech.

“Yes, I just arrived.”

I send it.

The message changes to “delivered” almost immediately. And I stare at the screen as if I were waiting for

something else to happen.

As if that little exchange had opened an invisible door between this city and him.

I leave the phone on the table… I walk to the window.

I don’t know what this new gesture of his means, I don’t know if it’s perseverance, I don’t know if it’s guilt, I

don’t know if it’s love trying to reappear cautiously.

The only thing I know is that it is not indifferent to me. And that… it is what really worries me.

Because if something inside me still responds when he writes, if something in my chest calms down when

I know it’s pending, then maybe the gap I thought was unbridgeable wasn’t as definitive as I thought. And

now that I’m back in this city, alone in my apartment,

r

with its message still fresh on my screen, I realize something I didn’t want to admit,

I’m not going back to the life I had. I’m entering a new one. And he… he is still in it.

Comments

LUCK DRAW >

Vote