Chapter 110 The Words Between Us
The frozen gravel of the quad gave way to the concrete steps of my dorm building. My breath was coming in ragged, shallow hitches, the kind that burned deep in my chest. I didn't want to hear any more of his logic. I didn't want to hear about his "duty" or his "protection." Every word he spoke felt like another brick in the wall that separated us—a wall built of gold on his side and grit on mine.
"Mila, stop! Just for one second, listen to me!" Nate’s voice was right behind me, a low thunder that echoed off the brick facade of the building, vibrating through the soles of my shoes.
"I’m done listening, Nate!" I shouted over my shoulder, my hand fumbling blindly in my pocket for my key card. My fingers were so numb from the January wind that I could barely feel the edges of the plastic. My eyes were stinging, blurred by a mixture of the biting cold and a frustration so deep it felt like it was drowning me. "Go back to your penthouse. Go back to your board meetings and your destiny. Leave me to mine. We both know how this story ends, and I’m tired of being the one who gets crushed in the final act."
I reached the top step and finally pulled the card out, but before I could swipe it against the reader, a hand clamped firmly around my upper arm. I spun around, ready to snap, ready to scream at him to let me go, but the expression on his face stopped the very air in my lungs.
He didn't grab me to pull me back or to force me into a car. He held me just tightly enough to make me stop, to make me finally look at him without the shield of my anger or the distance of my pride. His hair was a chaotic mess, whipped into his eyes by the winter wind, and his face was flushed, his eyes bloodshot and shimmering with a frantic, unpolished desperation that I had never seen in a Salvatore. All the cool, calculated elegance of his bloodline had evaporated, leaving behind something raw and terrifyingly human.
"You think this is about power?" he roared, his voice cracking with a raw, uncharacteristic honesty that seemed to shatter the very air around us. "You think I’m standing out here in the middle of a goddamn freeze because I want to control you? I’m not doing this because I’m a Salvatore, Mila! I’m not doing this to fix a 'project' or to manage a 'rounding error' that’s making my life inconvenient!"
He stepped closer, his chest heaving with exertion, his face inches from mine. The heat of his breath was the only warm thing in a world that had gone completely frozen. I could see the pulse jumping in his neck, the sheer force of his emotion stripping away the last of his carefully constructed defenses.
"I’m doing it because I’m in love with you!"
The silence that followed was deafening. It wasn't the quiet of the night; it was the kind of silence that happens after a massive explosion—a ringing, hollow void where the world used to be. The wind seemed to die down as if held back by the weight of the words, and the distant, muffled hum of the city faded into nothingness.
I stared at him, my mouth slightly open, the key card slipping from my nerveless fingers and clattering onto the concrete with a tiny, insignificant sound. The words hung between us, glowing and terrifying in the moonlight. In love with you. Not "I care about you." Not "I’m attracted to you." Not "I want to help you."
In love with you.
Nate didn't move. He didn't look away, even as his own breathing remained jagged. He looked like a man who had just jumped off a cliff without a parachute and was waiting to see if he’d hit the water or the rocks. The vulnerability in his gaze was agonizing to witness. This wasn't the king of Alverstone or the heir to the Salvatore empire; this was just Nate. A man who had just handed me the only weapon that could actually destroy him, and he was standing there, chest bared, waiting for me to use it.
I felt a surge of pure, unadulterated terror. It was a cold, sharp panic that started in my toes and raced up to my throat, threatening to choke me.
If he loved me, I couldn't just be the girl from Brooklyn fighting the heartless billionaire. If he loved me, he wasn't a "species"—he was a person. And if he was a person, then the wall I’d built to keep myself safe, the one made of "us versus them," was nothing but a pile of dust. I couldn't hate him if he loved me. And more importantly, I couldn't hate him if the reason my heart was currently trying to hammer its way out of my ribs was because a part of me had been waiting to hear those words since the moment we first crossed paths. It was the one possibility I hadn't prepared for, the one thing my survival instincts couldn't account for.
"Mila?" he whispered, his grip on my arm softening, shifting from a hold to a desperate caress. His thumb brushed against my sleeve, a plea for some kind of sign, some kind of recognition.
"I... I have to go," I choked out, my voice sounding like it belonged to someone else.
I didn't wait for a response. I didn't wait to see the light go out in his eyes. I lunged for my key card, snatched it off the ground, and swiped it with hands that wouldn't stop trembling. I practically threw myself through the heavy glass doors, the electronic lock clicking shut behind me like a guillotine. I didn't look back. I didn't want to see if he was still standing there in the cold, or if he had finally turned away. I ran for the stairs, the sound of my own frantic, sobbing breathing filling the stairwell, drowning out everything else.
I slammed my dorm room door shut and locked it, leaning my entire weight against the wood. My heart was a wild animal, trapped and screaming in a cage of my own making.
I'm in love with you.
The words echoed in the small, dark room, bouncing off the cinderblock walls. I slumped down to the floor, pulling my knees to my chest and burying my face in my arms, the bitter cold of the hallway still clinging to my clothes like a ghost. Did I love him? Could I actually love someone like Nate Salvatore? Could a girl who had nothing ever truly be the partner of a man who had everything, or would I always be waiting for the price tag to appear? Would I always be looking for the exit?
I stayed there on the floor for hours, staring at the shifting moonlight on the linoleum, terrified of the answer, and even more terrified that I already knew what it was.