Ceci is pressed against the steel wall, head tilted, eyes closed. A blissful smile on her lips, that tears something open inside me.
And him. Santoro’s body pins her there. Claims her there.
His hand… his hand is on her thigh, beneath the hem of her dress. His mouth is at her throat when he says,
“You’re intoxicating. I can’t stop touching you. Having you.”
Her fingers fist in his hair.
And when she opens her eyes, she smiles at him in a way she never smiled at me.
She looks at him with hunger. With a vulnerability and an openness she never gave me.
“With you... nothing else exists,” she whispers.
Her voice is breathless. Full of things I don’t want to hear. Or understand.
The bottle slips from my hand and hits the floor with a metallic clatter. They both turn toward me.
I don’t want to see them. I don’t want to hear anything else. But my body isn’t listening. And I can’t stop her voice from replaying in my head.
‘With you... nothing else exists.’
I close my eyes. When I open them again, they’ve already pulled apart, stepping out of the elevator, fingers laced.
Ceci parts her lips, as if to say something. I don’t hear a sound. I turn my back and head for the entrance. The moment my soles hit the pavement, I start running again.
Even as my muscles scream. I run.
I run as if I could rip the last image I saw reflected in those polished metal doors right out of my skull. I run as if my legs could carry me back to a time when she wasmywoman.
There’s a scream trapped in my throat. Tears and sweat run together on my face. The city rushes past me, nothing but a blur of concrete and buildings. That fucking scene is stuck in my head and it won’t shut off—playing on a loop like I’m being punished on purpose.
‘With you... nothing else exists.’
‘With you... nothing else exists.’
“It’s really over.”
Oliver lifts his eyes from his screen. “What?”
I turn toward the glass walls of his office.
“Ceci. She’s truly moved on,” I say, my throat tightening around the words. “I ran into them earlier yesterday. They were in the elevator across the hall.”
I don’t give him details. I can’t. I’ve spent the entire day trying to scrape those images out of my head. When I finally returned to the building—after hours wasted on a pier, staring at nothing—I kept my eyes down. I didn’t look to either side. I didn’t let myself see anyone. Not until I stepped into the elevator that would take me straight up to my penthouse.
“Fuck.”
A sound leaves my chest that almost passes for a laugh.
“Yeah,” I murmur. “That about covers it.”
“I wanted the world to end right there,” I admit quietly. “But then I remember everything I put her through... and maybe this is just the universe finally keeping score.”
Oliver exhales slowly. I force myself to look back at him.
“I didn’t want to say anything. Didn’t want to pour salt in an open wound and all that. But from what Felicity’s been telling me...” He trails off, then shakes his head. “Something like this didn’t exactly come out of nowhere. It’s for real between them.”
