Chapter 66 Chapter 66
STANLEY'S POV
The door crashed shut behind me like a verdict.
The chill of the air on my face was nothing compared to the ice in the bottom of my chest. Her voice lingered in my mind, sharp and hollowed, full of betrayal. Her last words still hung with a weight I had not expected to carry this night.
I didn't rush. There was no place to rush to. The streets were vacant, the world too still, too quiet for the turmoil in my ribcage. With each step I made, something else relived what just transpired.
"Love that begins in lies is still a lie. And it will die as that"
God! I reached the edge of the sidewalk and leaned on a lamppost, clutching the cold metal as if it would hold me up when I couldn't. My head was raised to the heavens, and darkness swallowed me whole. Her face was there, everywhere. The agony in her eye. The deception. The shock. All there like a bullet I fired into her heart.
I had told her my truth. And yet, it was like I destroyed something holy, like I shouldn't have said anything.
After a long while, I made my way back to where I had packed my car and drove home.
………..
The keys dropped from between my fingers onto the table. I still wore my coat. My phone rang, but I didn't look down. I opened the cabinet, took out a bottle of something old and bitter, filled too much of it into a glass, and sat in the dark with it. My apartment was too clean and quiet. Like no one really lived here.
I hated the way it echoed. The alcohol flamed, but it wasn't enough. Nothing ever would be. I took my computer, the one I hadn't opened in days, and typed in the password with fingers that shook more than I was willing to admit.
There they were. The emails I never sent.
Dozens of them. Some started out with "Liana, I have to tell you something." Others just sat there with only her name in the subject line.
There was that of that evening she first kissed me. I had been up for hours, in front of the screen, looking for a means to tell her the truth without losing her. There wasn't any. I was certain about that. But nonetheless, I attempted.
Still, I failed. I clicked one of the drafts and read it.
"You deserve someone who came to you with honor. I didn't. But along the way from planning to surviving, you were all that counted."
I shut the laptop.
Had the truth if it came smeared in blood? My dad was a bastard. He had two families. Two sons. But only one mattered to him. The rightful one wasn't the golden boy. The heir... I grew up watching my mother's life slip away as he sent money like pathetic envelopes in the mail. Dominic lived like a prince. We lived like rumors. He got everything he has on a plater while I got to do all the hard work for a token.
I was sixteen when I found an old newspaper clipping of Dominic shaking hands with some oil tycoon, all suited up in a more expensive suit than we had at home. I remember showing it to my mother and seeing her silently cry.
He had known that I was his brother, there were times I spent the holidays with them and he didn't care. He would treat me like dirt and ignore me the whole time like I was non existent.
So sure, I came for him. But I did not come for was love. Liana was supposed to be the key not the prize.
But I shifted focus and she became both.
I stood up and walked over to the shelf. There was a photograph there. One I'd gotten from Liana once. Cam wearing a birthday tiara, frosting on her cheeks, grinning like the world consisted of nothing more than cake and balloons.
That little girl trusted me. She held me. Made me pictures. Told me not to go home. She never knew that I was madly in love with her mom and now, she never would. Because I'd burned it all.
"You ruined it," I whispered to myself, my hand clenching on the frame until my knuckles were white. "You had everything. And you ruined it."
The worst of it? I still loved her. God help me, I loved her. I hated myself. For what I'd done. For what I hadn't done. For all the things that I'd ever wanted and never gotten.