The CEO reluctant bride

Chapter2

CHAPTER TWO: One Night Changes Everything

POV: Judith

The wine burned going down my throat, but I welcomed the heat because it made me feel something other than despair. Benjamin had not said much after asking if I was alright, just poured us both another glass when the first one disappeared too quickly, and somehow his quiet presence made it easier to breathe even though my world was still falling apart around me.

I told him everything except the one thing I could never tell him, that I had been hopelessly in love with him since my second month of working here when he stayed up all night helping me fix a massive filing error I had made and never once made me feel stupid. I told him about Mirabel's failing heart and the surgery we could not afford, about my mother's cancer eating through her body and our savings account at the same time, about how I worked two jobs and still could not make the numbers add up no matter how hard I tried.

He listened without interrupting and without the pity I had expected, just nodded occasionally and refilled my glass when it got empty, and when I finally stopped talking the silence between us felt different than before, warmer somehow and less lonely. The alcohol had made everything soft around the edges, made me forget for a moment that he was my boss, and I was just his assistant, made me bold enough to ask him a question I had wondered about for three years.

Why was he always so cold? I asked why he walked through life like he was made of ice and nothing could touch him, and I watched something flicker across his face that might have been pain. He drank his wine in one long swallow and then told me about his sister Clara, about how she was kidnapped when he was seventeen, and she was only eight, about how the ransom was paid, but she never came home, and they found her body three weeks later in a drainage ditch outside the city.

His voice never wavered when he told me, but his hands gripped the glass so tight I thought it might shatter, and he said his parents blamed him because he was supposed to be watching her that day, but he had been too busy with his girlfriend to notice when Clara wandered off. He said he learned that loving people meant they could be taken from you, that caring made you vulnerable and weakness got people killed, so he decided to never care about anything again except the company his father had built.

I reached across the desk without thinking and put my hand over his, and when he looked up at me, his eyes were not cold anymore but burning with something I could not name. The air between us changed, became charged with electricity that made my skin tingle and my heart race, and before I could talk myself out of it, I stood up and walked around the desk until I was standing right in front of him.

He stood too, and we were so close I could feel the heat coming off his body, could smell his cologne mixed with the wine on both our breaths, and when he reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers lingered on my cheek. Everything that happened next felt inevitable, like we were both falling off a cliff and had decided to stop fighting gravity, and when his lips met mine the rest of the world disappeared completely.

We barely made it to the leather couch in his office before our hands were pulled at clothes and our bodies were pressed together with desperate urgency, and for those hours nothing existed except the two of us and the way we fit together like puzzle pieces that had been searching for each other. He touched me like I was precious, like I mattered, like I was more than just an efficient assistant who kept his schedule organized, and I let myself believe for one perfect night that maybe he could love me back.

When I woke up, the couch was empty beside me and weak morning light filtered through the windows, and I found my clothes folded neatly on the chair with a note on top in Benjamin's sharp handwriting. Thank you for your discretion, it said, nothing more, and those four words shattered something inside me that I had not known was whole until it broke.

I dressed quickly with shaking hands and left his office before anyone else arrived, took the stairs instead of the elevator because I could not risk running into him, and when I got home Mirabel was waiting with red eyes and our mother was being loaded into an ambulance. The hospital said Mom had maybe three weeks left if we were lucky, that her body was shutting down faster than they expected, and I sat in the emergency room holding Mirabel's hand while she sobbed, and I felt completely numb.

The next two weeks passed in a blur of hospital visits and work where I avoided Benjamin's eyes, and he treated me with the same cold professionalism as always, like nothing had happened between us, like I had imagined the whole thing. I threw myself into caring for Mom and researching Mirabel's surgery options and trying not to think about the way his hands had felt on my skin or the sound of my name when he whispered it in the dark.

Then I missed my period and my whole world tilted sideways, and the pregnancy test I took in the bathroom at work showed two pink lines that might as well have been a death sentence. I was pregnant with Benjamin Morgan's baby, and he did not even remember sleeping with me, and I had no idea how I was going to survive what came next.