PROTECT and SERVE (A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance) (48 page)

“You asked what I wanted, Clara. And I told you the truth. But being here, with you… I couldn’t just give this up, not even for a second.”

“You need to do this,” she answered, almost mournfully.

“Before, I was convinced… but now…”

“Now what?”

‘Now what’ indeed
, I thought for a moment.

“If there was any reason to stay, anything that could pull me from that path… that reason would be you,” I finally answered here.

The moment I saw that scared look in her eyes, I knew that I’d seriously fucked up.

Clara’s face lifted to meet my gaze. She looked terrified – a deer in the headlights, entranced but pulsating with crushing, absolute fear.

“Let me make my own decisions,” I told her gently, fighting down the concern that was swelling in my chest, desperately hoping to calm her down. “You leave that stuff up to me.”

“No,” she told me, climbing up off of me. “That’s not good enough. I can’t do that.”

I leapt up off of the bed. “Wait–”

“
No
,” she insisted, throwing my hoodie back on. “You can’t just turn down that kind of dream for me. I won’t let you. I’ll
never
let you. I can’t be the reason you throw all of that away.”

I laughed in complete exasperation. “We get through an entire car ride
with our parents, even with the most awkward
fucking conversation ever, and it’s
me wanting to travel the world
that makes you lose your shit?”

Clara turned on me with vicious eyes.

“Look,” I prefaced her, “you told me just today –
hours ago
– that you’re committed to this cause. Clara, you gave me
complete conviction
that it was gonna be you and me against the world…”

“That was
before
I knew you had this dream,” she insisted. “You just heard
me tell you that I’m not interested in that kind of a life. And now I find out that you
are?
And you
have been
for years? I can’t stand in the way of that. I
won’t
be the kind of girl to ask you to stay. It’s not happening.”

“Clara,” I repeated, firmer this time. I reached for her wrist, but she yanked it away, staring me down with hellfire in her eyes.

“No, don’t… don’t you even
think
about touching me,” she growled. “I
refuse
to let you do this. You have to go, Dalton. Live that life.”

“Clara, I don’t
want
to go. I
want
to be with you – to spend my days with…”

My words faltered as I watched her tremble before me. As Clara lifted a face brazen with furious, tear-brimmed eyes, I realized immediately what she really meant with those words.

“You have to go,” she repeated angrily.

“Clara…”

“
Now.
”

We stood there, watching each other for a moment. I didn’t dare take a step towards her, not while seeing her like this. My heart pounded in my chest, tearing apart with a wound more vicious than any that I could have received in combat.

Because those wounds – the ones you survive, at any rate – are just flesh deep. You lose an arm or a leg, maybe more. You take stray shrapnel to the chest, and with luck you survive it. It kills a part of you, it makes you weaker, but you learn to live on around it.

This was something much deeper.

This was the shrapnel that shredded your very living soul… because you can’t
remove
ghost shrapnel, even if it’s still cutting you inside, penetrating down to your core.

“
Go
,” Clara repeated through gritted teeth, her tears rolling freely down her cheeks now.

I’m not an English major, or a literary critic. My weapon was never vocabulary; it was always a knife in a holster and a rifle, slung over my back.

I say this to explain a point: I’m not equipped with the right words for this. I can’t properly express to you how my heartstrings strained
in that moment. Every atom, every ounce of my very being was
desperate
to cross the distance to her, to wipe the tears from her face and sweep her back into my warm, comforting embrace.

The look in her eyes said
Don’t you dare.

It said
Stay back, I’m warning you
.

No weapon could ever win this standoff.

Without a single syllable uttered, I silently gathered up my things and I left her.

N
o matter
how many sleepless nights passed since that devastating afternoon, I couldn’t know for sure if I’d done the right thing… or made the biggest mistake of my life.

It had been over a week since Dalton left my apartment. Every night when my cheek struck the pillow, I wished that he were there with me.

Whatever the ex-marine had seen in my eyes that day, it had convinced him of what I knew was certain in that moment. Mission accomplished. The man had gone completely radio silent.

Dalton’s words had rattled me down to my inner being. Beyond all hope and reason, I didn’t dare let him choose to stay here because of me. I’d heard how much he loved that dream; I couldn’t let myself be the obstacle to his happiness.

But did I do the right thing?

My unfettered decision had grown uncertain.

Selfishly, of course I still wanted him. I logically expected to need some time to get over him, but I hadn’t prepared myself for how my heart had fractured. When the days continued and I still had to force myself to eat, or exert willpower into every smile, I realized the true depths to the pit of my despair.

My heart broke just a little more every day.

Perfect timing meant that I wasn’t scheduled a single hour for the entire week after Dalton left. Banquet season had apparently slid down to a grinding halt. That meant less morning shifts to go around, and I didn’t have the energy to fight for the scraps.

Natalie was a godsend. She’s probably the reason I climbed out of bed, made it to my classes, and turned in (most of) my homework.

Dalton apparently did not have a Natalie.

He hadn’t shown up in our class.

He hadn’t tried to contact me in any way.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” she reassured me one afternoon during a commercial break of some sitcom we both liked. “He’s probably just working through things on his own. The bastard will come around, and everything will be fine again.”

“He’s not a bastard,” I told her.

“Technically, he is!” She chirped up. “Guy’s parents never married, right? So that makes him a total bastard. It’s the textbook definition.”

“Fine. He’s a bastard, then,” I grumbled.

Natalie turned to face me with welling concern. Before she opened her mouth, I saw the impending, heartfelt lecture spring to life in her eyes. “Look, Clara…”

“Don’t.” I cut her off, backing the word up with a glare. “I don’t want to hear it.”

“We both know that I might be a bit
airheaded
sometimes, but even I can see that you two love each other. You’re desperate for him, and I’ve seen the way he looks at you! You can’t ignore that!”

I turned away, but she pushed the issue.

“Find a way! Reach out to him! You know that he wants that!”

“Would you listen to yourself?” I asked her bitterly. “What kind of person would I be if I asked him to set aside his dreams for me? I can’t do that to him.”

“What was it again that he asked you to do, right before you went all psycho on him?”

“I
didn’t
go psycho.”

“Clara, I
know
you. If he hasn’t tried to reach out to you at all, then you
totally
went psycho. Anyway, answer the question.”

I ignored her insult. “He said to let him make his own decisions.”

“And you didn’t. You made it for him.”

“He would have made the wrong one.”

“You know that for sure?”

I crossed my arms. “Yes.”

“And why’s that?”

I tried to turn away again.

“Answer me, Clara!”

I stood up and finally let loose.

“Because they’re
both
the wrong fucking decision! No matter how you look at it, either choice is
wrong!
Either I make him go and uncomplicate
both
of our lives… struggle to get over him… not daring to think what life would be like if we were together…”

“Or what?” She demanded.

Defeat
filled my veins when I looked at her.

“Or… we get together, living some twisted double life around our parents and grandparents, unable to be
really
together without them judging or disowning us… until he inevitably resents choosing this life over traveling around the world.”

We were silent for a while. The sitcom had come back on in the meantime, and the laugh track occasionally clashed with the atmosphere.

“You can’t just let this go without
trying
,” Natalie pleaded quietly.

I didn’t have a response for that.

“Listen to me, Clara,” she continued. “So there are some kinks. It’s not easy. I get that.”

I bitterly shook my head, and she ignored my response to get out her point.

“Yeah. It’s a total mess and it sucks that the two of you are stuck in this unfair clusterfuck. But you
can’t
just let this thing slip out between your fingers without a fight. You know he makes you happy, and it sounds like you make
him
happy too. Just
talk
to him. Who knows what’s going on with him? If he’s dropped off the face of the earth, he’s obviously in a dark place. Maybe he needs you.”

“I can’t,” I pleaded.

“Clara,
talk to him
,” she insisted gravely.

I slumped down into my sofa next to her, and my frustration broke down into sobs. Natalie held me close while I cried it out, and when I lifted my face she had a tissue ready.

“Don’t think for a moment that I don’t want to,” I replied, gratefully taking it from her hand. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe he needs me right now. But this is short-term pain for long-term gain. He’s got a life, Nat, and he’s got dreams. Oh, if you’d seen the look in his eyes when he was telling me about them. I can’t take that away from him.”

“Even if he goes,” she whispered, “if you two haven’t made up, what makes you think he’ll be happy? What if his feet take him across the world, fueled from a place of anger and despair?”

“Then that’s his choice,” I answered.

“No, it’s not. That’ll be what you did to him.”

We sat in silence for the next episode, but the night was gone. That’s why I didn’t try to stop her when she picked up her purse and kicked her heels back on.

“Just think about it,” Natalie told me when she kissed my cheek goodbye. “You might be making a huge mistake here.”

“It’s a mistake either way,” I shrugged.

After a solemn look in my eyes, she was gone out the door, just like Dalton.

For the second time in about a week, I had driven someone away from the apartment – leaving me alone with miserable thoughts.

You will probably not be surprised to hear that solitude
plus an abyss of depressing thoughts is not exactly a fantastic combination.

For the rest of the day I sat there on that couch, letting the TV mindlessly play in front of me.
Maybe Natalie’s right,
I found myself thinking.
She hasn’t really steered me wrong yet…

But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

I knew what Dalton would say if we talked about it. He’d convince me that we could make it work. He’d find a way to talk me down, back into his arms, just shelving the problem for now.

No,
I thought to myself.

I have to be strong for him… for both of us.

A slight rumbling pulled my attention away. I glanced over at my phone to see a number I didn’t recognize.
Nope, not the time,
I thought to myself.

Instead, I tried to embroil myself into the television. I was actually starting to chuckle at a few of the jokes when the phone rang again.

Same number.
I ignored it again.

Not two minutes later, it rang again, and then again. I was starting to get frustrated now, but the caller wasn’t letting my voicemail pick up.

It was on the fifth call that I bitterly snatched the phone up, paused Netflix, and answered.

“You’ve got the wrong number!”

“Oh, I think I have the
right
number…”

My breath caught in my throat.

“…
Jeremy?
”

“Yeah, it’s me,” my ex-boyfriend smoothly whispered down the line. “I switched phones a few weeks back. Glad to see that your number still works, because it
didn’t
before…”

“I blocked you,” I angrily told him. “Just like I’m going to in just a moment.”

“Before you do that, I wanted to talk to you about something,” Jeremy coolly stated. “Can you give me just, like, five minutes of your time? For old time’s sake?”

Right then and there, I knew that I should hang up. But I was weak and upset, and something inside me seized up.

“Look, what do you want?”

Jeremy paused. “Clara, you sound upset.”

“Yeah, well, it’s been a rough couple of days,” I bitterly mentioned. “So just go ahead and tell me whatever you want to tell me. Not five minutes. You’re getting
two.
Clock’s ticking.”

“No, that’s not important right now,” Jeremy replied, sounding almost concerned. “What’s
much
more important to me is that you’re okay. Are you okay? You sound like you’re about to cry.”

“Just leave me the fuck alone,” I growled.

“Look, I know we didn’t exactly end… on a good note, but I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am,” Jeremy murmured. “And we don’t ever have to speak again… if that’s what you really want. But I’ve changed, Clara. I was such a fool to let you go…”

Is this SERIOUSLY happening right now?

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I half-chuckled. “After all this time, you choose
now
to apologize for that shit? You seriously hurt me, Jeremy. I didn’t think I’d
ever
get over what you did to me. I’m only
just
becoming okay with it now… or, I thought I was.”

“I know,” he replied. “I was a serious asshole. I deserved you dumping me. That’s exactly what it took for me to see the truth…”

Oh, no. Don’t you DARE.

“…That I love you, and I’m just lesser without you. You make me complete, Clara. You always did.”

“We are not having this conversation right now,” I told him furiously, feeling something inside start to crack. It cracked so quickly that it even broke my voice. “Just leave me alone. I’ve
moved on,
Jeremy.”

“I can tell that you haven’t, not really,” he replied calmly. “Look, I’m not asking for any promises or anything. But it sounds like you’re having a rough go of things, right? Maybe that guy from that date; I’m guessing things didn’t work out so well with him?”

My breath stopped in my throat, and I couldn’t even squeeze out the slightest reply.

Jeremy chuckled sardonically. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. You’ve been hurt again. All I’m asking is for a little of your time, okay? I know you’re comfortable around me. Let’s get your mind off of him, isn’t that what you need?”

“What I
need
, I
have
,” I barely choked out.

“Let me guess… you’re at your apartment. Natalie’s out, so you’re alone and watching Netflix, right? Just you, alone with your thoughts?”

Goddammit, he’s got me fucking pinned.

“Look, Clara, I
know
you. And you know
me.
You know that I’m not a bad guy, I just got my… priorities fucked up, for a little while there. I’m not asking you back… I wouldn’t dream of that yet. But I’m lonely, and you’re lonely… we’re both hurting. Let’s go get dinner together, okay?
Just
dinner. No pressure. What do you say?”

It was so sudden. I hadn’t seen it coming, and I was never good about being put on the spot like this… especially with someone that I
did
miss, even if he was a complete asshole.

But then again, Dalton had been a total prick the night that I met him, too… at least at first. Maybe Jeremy
had
changed. He certainly sounded like he might have.

And he was right, as much as I hated to admit it. The last thing that I really needed right now was to be alone with myself, trying to solve some depressing problem in my head that nothing was going to fix, no matter how I tried…

I could use the distraction.

Besides… it was only
dinner
, right?

Dinner was practically
harmless.

“Okay, Jeremy, ” I finally conceded with a defeated shrug. “Let’s do dinner tonight.”

“Perfect. I knew you’d come around, Clara.”

As I heard his wicked little chuckle over the phone, I wondered if I hadn’t just made a
huge
mistake…