“I don’t want to answer it,” I grit out. My eyes land on his wrist. “It’s my turn to ask you a question.”
His smile widens, satisfaction written all over his smile.
“Why do you always wear this ugly bracelet?” I know the reason behind my hatred for it: because I also gave him a bracelet. And it was much prettier than this one.
He never removes this bracelet. He even wore it on our wedding day.
“It has something special in it, given by a very special person,” he says, rolling the bracelet on his wrist.
My heart clenches. Of course he’s wearing a bracelet given by someone special who is not me. I inhale a long breath. It’sokay. I don’t care, I’m just sad about wasting money on him in the past.
“Won’t you ask me what’s special about it?” he asks, raising a brow.
I shake my head. “I have no interest,” I say, in knowing who and what special you’ve got here.
But he unclips it anyway. He takes it in his palm, and despite my insistence that I have no interest, I take it eagerly when he extends it in front of me.
“Press the tiny button on its top end.” I find it and press it with my nail.
“Now press the other button on the opposite end.” I do as told, and the bracelet opens. I almost drop it from my hand. Inside the bracelet is the one I gifted him.
My fingers turn cold. I lift it up with shaky hands.
Iselyn loves Matleon.
My lungs burn with trapped breath. That sixteen-year-old girl fills my thoughts—giggling, flushing, typing the words on the site for them to etch into this gold bracelet. The girl who was nervous and excited to confess her feelings to the prince of her dreams.The girl who never smiled the same way again while looking at the word love.
He lifts my chin, and I blink through the blur of my tears to see the frown on his face. He has also come closer to me while I was lost in my thoughts.
He wipes the wetness from my cheeks. “I’m sorry. I know it won’t change what I did, even if I say it every day.” His face and voice are filled with guilt, something I’ve seen only a second time on his face, this time deeper than that night.
“Tell me what I could do to atone for the pain I caused you. Ask me to do anything, Angel. I will do everything you say to heal the heartIbroke.”
“Free me from this cage,” my lips move barely.
His eyes widen for a second, then his face falls. “I can’t.”
“Because you’re afraid I’ll fall for someone else?” I whisper.
He shakes his head, then presses his forehead against mine. “Because I would lose everything. The next morning, when I lifted my phone to see your message, I found nothing. I never blocked you; I was only angry, more at myself than at you, because I couldn’t understand what I felt for you.”
He lifts his head and looks into my eyes. “I waited every day after that for your message. Every time my phone pinged, hope would rise, and then crash when it wasn’t you. Even then, I wasn’t ready to accept that you were important to me because it made no sense. You were too young for me to feel any desire for you, and you hadn’t been close to me since childhood like everyone else. You came into my life at a time when I was becoming the man who had to rule over a nation after my father. I had no place to keep my own heart, let alone yours. I was too immature to see your value, but you placed yourself inside me despite my denial, in a way that I couldn’t shake you from my mind. There wasn’t a single day when you didn’t come to my thoughts, and without you, the place you had carved inside me felt hollow. I lived with that hollowness for five years, Angel.Please… don’t ask me to live with it again.”
His eyes turn red. “I don’t want to feel that again.”
“What about me, Matleon?” My voice breaks when I say his name. “How do I live? You broke my heart without thinking about me. You forced me into this marriage again without thinking about me. Do you know how it feels to live so helplessly? No, you don’t, Matleon, becauseMatleon gets what he wants. Always.”
He shakes his head, a trembling smile tugging at his lips. “No, Angel. Matleon doesn’t always get what he wants.He couldn’t get the one thing he wants the most.” His voice lowers. “I’ll send you back to Vladivostok tomorrow.”
My heart stills.
He agrees to set me free.
And yet…
Why don’t I feel the happiness I should?
Why does relief refuse to come?
