Page 84 of Saved By the Billionaire

She was right. He’d promised to protect her, he’d sworn to keep her safe, and then he’d been the one to hurt her. He had no right to inflict himself on her.

“I’m sorry,” was all he said, because he was.

“That’s it?” she murmured, eyes roaming his face, lips pinched.

“There’s nothing I can say to take it back.” If only.

“It’s not what you said. It’s what you thought. What you thought me capable of.”

He frowned. “Tia said you were working as an escort. You’ve told me yourself that you hook up with guys, that sex is meaningless to you.”

She gasped, and he cursed under his breath. He was making it worse.

“I’m not trying to defend myself, just to explain that it was an easy conclusion to jump to, at the time.”

“Yeah, well, you were wrong. And sex did use to be meaningless for me, and I loved that about it. I loved that I could walk away from any guy, any time. But with you…it changed. It was never just sex with you. Not for me. For the first time in my life, I understood why people call it ‘making love’.”

His gut twisted and her words coiled inside of him, spinning and lodging in his gut. She’d fallen in love with him, but had she fallen out of love? Of course she had. Yet…she was here. She was talking to him, not some other guy. Not home alone, watching whatever show she wanted, or reading a book. She’d come here. It gave him a hope he knew he didn’t deserve. But he had to get this right.

“I’m far from perfect, Kate. You told me you don’t trust easily, then somehow, you gave me your trust anyway. And I destroyed it.” His breath shuddered as the reality of that detonated inside of him and a sharp sting filled the back of his throat. “I definitely don’t deserve you.” She angled her face away, staring at the generic piece of art hanging on the wall opposite and he was glad, because he felt so close to collapsing, and he didn’t want her to see that. “But you’re right. Everything changed for me, too. From the moment I met you, I wanted to hold you close, to look after you. To spoil and adore you.”

Her jaw shifted.

“It wasn’t sex that made me love you, it was you. Every moment, every look, every laugh. You lodged deep in here,” he pushed his fingers against his sternum. “And you’re there for life. For better or for worse, you’re my other half.”

He closed his eyes then, as feelings of shame washed over him.

“I grew up in an abusive household. I grew up terrified of what I might turn into, and I’ve chosen to keep people at a distance to avoid that fate. And then you found your way into my heart and I realised I’m just as bad as him⁠—”

Her gasp drew his attention. “No,” she said, sympathy softening her features so hope exploded through him. “You jumped to the wrong conclusion, but you’re right—from what Tia told you, it wasn’t completely crazy.”

“It was.”

“Okay, but I can also see⁠—”

“Please, don’t defend me.”

“Roman, we had a fight, is my point. You said things, I said things. You said worse things,” she muttered, but she was walking towards him. “I never once worried that you were going to hit me. I have never worried that you would hurt me physically. You are not a violent person. You are not an uncontrolled person. There’s a huge difference between what happened between us and what you’ve described with your father.”

A muscle jerked in his jaw. “I hurt you.”

“Yes.” She nodded slowly. “But it’s not what you said, the other day, that hurt the most.”

He frowned.

“You let me leave,” she whispered. “My whole life, people have let me go. No one’s ever fought to keep me, and then I met you, and I wanted, so badly, for you to ask me to stay. Not for a few more hours, or one more night.”

“But forever,” he groaned, his stupidity slamming into him like a freight train. “I wanted that too, Kate. If you’d stayed another night, I would have asked the same thing of you the next morning, and the next, and the next, and every morning for the rest of our lives. I just didn’t understand that until you left, and it was like the sun imploded. All the light went out of my life.”

“Yes. It was the same for me.” She cleared her throat. “I didn’t come here tonight so you could apologise, or say any of this,” she said, taking a step back from him, so he lost the solid ground on which he’d been standing a moment ago.

“No?”

She shook her head, pulling her phone from a clutch bag. “I wanted your bank details, so I can pay you back. I emailed Garrett about it, but he never replied.”

Roman’s gut clenched. “You don’t need to do that.”

“You flew me back to Australia, first class. Obviously I’m in your debt, and I don’t want to be.”