Walk away
~ Stephano
By the time I pulled into the driveway, my jaw ached from clenching it the entire ride home. My hands were still tight on the steering wheel, knuckles pale as bone. Isabella’s screams still echoed somewhere in the back of my skull, fading in and out like a bad radio signal. But beneath that was something to look forward to. Someone to look forward to.
Camilla.
The house was quiet when I stepped inside. Too quiet. My heartbeat stuttered in something like anticipation and dread. I shrugged off my jacket, tossed my keys onto the console, and walked in…
…and stopped dead.
She was there, seated on the couch.
Sitting curled up with her knees pulled to her chest, a blanket draped around her shoulders, her hair a little messy, her face bare and soft in the lamplight. The moment she heard my footsteps, she snapped her head up.
Our eyes met. The look on her face hit me like a goddamn punch.
It was that if surprise first, wide, unguarded. Then relief, subtle but unmistakable. And then something else, something quieter, something like… uncertainty. Fear. Hope. Shame. All tangled together.
She stood slowly, the blanket sliding off one shoulder. For a moment neither of us spoke. We just stared, suspended in some strange, fragile tension that felt like it would shatter if either of us breathed wrong.
Finally, I cleared my throat.
“I took care of Isabella,” I said, voice low, rough.
She nodded. A tiny, careful movement. “Okay.”
The word hung between us, light but loaded.
She shifted her weight, fingers twisting the hem of the blanket. “I, um… I spoke to Alex.”
Everything inside me froze. My stomach dropped so violently I actually felt dizzy for a second. My vision tunneled on her face; everything else went blurry.
Alex. Of course. Of course she would go back to him. He was the safe option. The good guy. The one who wouldn’t tear her life apart. The one who wouldn’t drag her into scandals and danger and emotional hell.
Hell, she’d been kidnapped by the very same guy because of me, and now she was leaving me willingly. And I deserved it. Christ, I deserved it.
Every cruel thing I’d ever said to her slammed into me at once. The insults. The dismissal. The way I used her body like it belonged to me. The way I made her feel cheap in front of Isabella. The way I dragged her into my darkness.
I swallowed hard, my throat suddenly dry as sand.
“Oh,” I said quietly. “You’re… leaving?”
The words tasted wrong. .
She stared at me, visibly startled. “What? No. I…no, I’m not leaving.”
A beat. Then another.
I blinked. “You’re… not.”
“No.” She hesitated, rubbing her arm nervously. “I… uh… gave him a piece of my mind.”
That didn’t help the confusion swirling in my skull.
“What does that mean?” I asked, more sharply than intended.
She let out a tight breath, dropping her gaze. “It means… I broke things off with him. Officially.”
I stared at her. My brain couldn’t compute it. It was like trying to run new software on a corrupted system.
“You…” I repeated slowly, as if testing the word. “You ended things.”
She nodded.
“But why?” The question slipped out without permission. “After everything I.Everything I did to you, why the hell would you…”
“Because he was a jerk,” she cut in, her voice suddenly rising, cracking at the edges. “Because you were a jerk. Because every man in my life seems to be a jerk and I’m so goddamn sick of it.”
I shut my mouth. She shook her head, laughing one of those bitter, quiet, miserable laughs that made my chest twist.
“You were such a dick in high school,” she said, and if the word didn’t stab me, the way she said it did. “God, Stephano. You were awful. A bully. You made fun of me with your stupid friends, and I don’t even know what drew me to you. Why the hell did I even have a crush on you? It makes no sense.”
I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste iron.
“And then life had its little sense of humor,” she went on, gesturing vaguely, “and threw you back into my life. And suddenly I’m working for you, and you’re… you’re still the same arrogant, impossible, infuriating person. And you say things that cut me deep, so deep I don’t even know why I let it get to me.”
Her voice was trembling now. I took a step toward her, instinctively. She stepped back. That hurt more than she could ever know.
She took a shaky breath, pressing her fingers to her forehead.
“And then there’s the way you touch me,” she whispered. “God. I hate this. I hate how pathetic it sounds. How cheap it makes me. You say something cruel and then you take me on your desk or, or in a storage closet, and I let you.”
“Camilla…” I tried.
“No, let me finish,” she said, voice cracking. “Because I need to say this before I lose my nerve.”
Her lips trembled. She blinked rapidly, swallowing the wobble in her voice.
“I let you,” she whispered. “Every time. Even when it hurt. Even when I swore I hated you. And I don’t know what that makes me. A fool? A slut? Pathetic? Probably all of the above.”
I felt something inside me rupture, something I didn’t even know had been intact.
My hands curled and uncurled uselessly at my sides. I wanted to reach for her, but after hearing all that, what right did I have?
She pressed her hand to her stomach, subconsciously protecting the life we’d made.
“And now I’m pregnant,” she whispered. “With your baby. And logically I should run. I should be running so fast, Stephano. I should have packed a long time ago.”
Her breathing hitched.
“But I can’t,” she said. “I can’t bring myself to run.”
I felt my throat constrict.
She lifted her eyes to mine, and the look in them, fear, anger, longing, heartbreak, tore me apart.
“What is it about you?” she whispered. “What is it about you that makes me so angry and so utterly gone at the same time?”
A silence fell so heavy it felt like smoke filling the room. Her eyes shone with unshed tears. My chest hurt. Actually hurt. Like my ribs were too small for the organ inside.
I swallowed, slow and painful, and finally forced myself to speak.
“Camilla,” I said quietly, hoarsely, “I hurt you.”
Her breath trembled.
“Again and again,” I muttered. “In ways I didn’t even have the right to. I said things I can’t take back. I acted like you meant nothing when you… when you were the only thing that felt real.”
Her eyes widened slowly. I took one step toward her. She didn’t step back this time.
“And you’re not a fool,” I said, voice low and raw. “You’re not cheap. You’re not pathetic. I am the one who was wrong. I am the one who took without understanding the cost. I am the one who didn’t see what I had until…” I shook my head, unable to finish the sentence. “You deserved better than the man I was.”
Finally, she whispered, “And what about the man you are now?”
I swallowed.
Hard.
“I don’t know Cam,” I admitted. “But I’m trying to find out…if you’ll let me.”
Another silence followed. This one was impossibly fragile. Her lip trembled.
Please. Please don’t walk away. Please.
But I kept still. I didn’t reach for her. I didn’t claim her. I didn’t demand. I waited. For the first time in my life, I waited.