Chapter5
1118 Words
“No,” Roman said quietly. “Just yours.”
Selene looked up at him, unsure whether the answer was meant to comfort her or warn her.
The city lights spilled silver through the floor-to-ceiling windows, washing the lounge in a cool glow that made everything feel sharper than it should have—Roman’s pale eyes, the dark line of his suit, the trembling in Selene’s fingers. She still hadn’t managed to stop.
She looked away first.
“That’s a very strange thing to say to someone you met ten minutes ago.”
Roman moved toward the bar, his expression unreadable again. “You’ve had a strange night.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“It wasn’t meant to.”
Selene watched him pour water into a crystal glass and bring it back to her. He held it out with the same composed authority he seemed to do everything with, as if he had never once in his life doubted that people would take what he offered.
She accepted it because refusing would have been childish, and because her throat felt dry enough to c***k.
“Thank you,” she muttered.
Roman took the armchair opposite the sofa instead of sitting beside her, which should have made the room feel safer. It didn’t. He crossed one ankle over the other knee, posture loose and elegant, but there was something watchful in the way he looked at her—as if he were waiting for the exact moment she would either fall apart or get angry enough to do something reckless.
The thought irritated her.
“You can stop studying me like a business problem,” she said.
Roman’s brow lifted slightly. “Can I?”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
Selene stared at him. “Do you always talk in cryptic one-liners, or am I getting special treatment?”
The corner of his mouth moved, barely. “You ask a lot of questions for someone who’s trying very hard not to cry.”
The words landed with humiliating accuracy.
Selene’s grip tightened on the water glass. “I am not going to cry in front of you.”
“Good.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Good?”
“I dislike tears when I haven’t earned them.”
For one stunned second, Selene just looked at him.
Then, despite the wreckage of the night, a laugh escaped her.
It was brief and shaky, but real.
Roman’s gaze sharpened, as if the sound had caught him off guard too.
Selene covered her mouth, horrified by herself. “I can’t believe I just laughed.”
“Why? I’m charming.”
She blinked at him. “You are absolutely not charming.”
“So I’ve been told.”
By women or enemies? She almost asked, but stopped herself. She knew enough about Roman Vale’s public reputation to understand that he inspired both. There had always been a certain mystique around him—self-made billionaire, ruthless investor, impossible to read, private to the point of paranoia. He was the kind of man people wrote about in glossy magazines with words like visionary and merciless in the same paragraph.
And now she was sitting in his private lounge in a ruined engagement dress, trying not to cry while he made dry jokes at her expense.
It felt unreal.
The silence stretched again, though not as sharply as before. Selene set the glass down on the table and looked at her hands.
The missing ring was impossible to ignore.
A pulse of anger rose beneath the shock and humiliation, cleaner than the ache that had been threatening to crush her all evening. She thought of Daniel’s face when she had walked into the suite. Not guilty enough. Not ashamed enough. As though her pain was merely an inconvenience to him.
“I should have seen it,” she said quietly.
Roman’s voice stayed even. “Seen what?”
“That he was cheating.” She laughed under her breath, bitterly. “Maybe not with Vanessa specifically, but something. I knew things were wrong.”
He didn’t interrupt, so she kept going.
“He’s been distant for months. Always distracted. Always working late. And every time I asked if something was wrong, he’d kiss my forehead and tell me I was imagining things.” Selene looked down at her bare hand. “I told myself he was stressed. That I was stressed. That I was being unfair.”
Roman was silent for a moment.
Then he said, “You told yourself what was easiest to live with.”
The truth of it made her chest tighten.
Selene looked up at him. “Do you ever soften anything?”
“No.”
“I noticed.”
“And yet you’re still here.”
The words came out calm, but something about them sent a strange flicker through her stomach.
She hated that she noticed how beautiful his hands were when he reached for his drink. Hated that she noticed the expensive watch at his wrist, the sharp cut of his jaw, the way his dark hair had fallen slightly out of place over the evening. Hated most of all that in the middle of the worst night of her life, some reckless part of her brain still had room to find him attractive.
It felt like a betrayal layered on top of another betrayal.
“I should go downstairs,” she said suddenly, pushing herself to her feet.
Roman’s expression didn’t change. “No.”
Selene froze. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“I do if you’re about to walk back into a ballroom full of people while looking like your life just imploded.”
Heat rushed to her face. “That’s exactly why I need to go. My mother is down there.”
Something in Roman’s gaze shifted at that.
Not softer, exactly. But more focused.
“Sit back down.”
“No.”
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