Chapter 103 Book 2
Prologue
She was folded into the farthest corner of the darkened room, seated on the icy tiles, her knees drawn tightly to her chest as though she could hold herself together by sheer force. Tears streamed unchecked down her face. She made no move to wipe them away. What was the point? The pain inside her was far greater than the sting on her cheeks.
Her heart throbbed with a relentless ache, sharp and suffocating, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t quiet it.
Deep down, she knew exactly where it came from.
It was because of him.
It had always been because of him.
Why did he have this kind of power over her?
She had never been this fragile. Never this easily shattered.
“Jacqueline.”
His voice low, rich, unmistakable cut through the cold stillness of the room. It sent a shiver racing up her spine, the fine hairs at the back of her neck rising in response.
She buried her face deeper into her arms and curled further into herself, as if she could disappear into the shadows. She didn’t want to look at him. She didn’t even want the sound of him reaching her ears.
The heavy rhythm of his footsteps echoed across the tiles as he approached. They stopped directly in front of her. Her fingers tightened around her arms until her knuckles blanched white, her nails biting into her own skin.
“Jacqueline.”
This time his voice cracked strained, almost wounded. Why did he sound like that? Why did he sound as though he were the one hurting? He wasn’t supposed to hurt. He was supposed to be happy.
“I’m… I’m sorry.”
The words left him in barely more than a whisper, but to her they rang loudly in the suffocating quiet.
How cruelly ironic it was how someone could take your heart, crush it into a million splinters, and then offer an apology as if it were enough. As if a single word could gather those shards and restore what had been destroyed. Sorry was nothing more than a thin smear of ointment over a festering wound. It didn’t heal. It only delayed the rot.
She had once believed she was composed, resilient, unbreakable. He had proven otherwise. He had shown her just how fragile she truly was how easily she could be reduced to something small and trembling.
When she felt his hand settle gently on her arm, she recoiled as if burned. Her head jerked upward, and their eyes locked.
Olive green colliding with dark brown.
He inhaled sharply at the sight of her face her swollen, reddened eyes, glistening with tears. For the first time, he saw something in her gaze he had never witnessed before. The light that usually danced there was gone, replaced by raw, unguarded anguish. It twisted painfully in his chest.
She stared at him in return.
He was kneeling in front of her.
His own eyes shimmered with unshed tears. Why? Why did he look so devastated? Why did he appear as though he were the one undone?
“I… I’m sorry,” he repeated, the words sounding hollow even to his own ears.
But apologies could not rebuild ruins.
“You can’t fix something that’s already broken,” she murmured softly the same sentence he had once thrown at her.
His shoulders sagged as though the weight of her words pressed down upon him. His head bowed, and a single tear slipped down his cheek.
His chest tightened painfully.
What had he done?